Udemy Full Stack Web Development Bootcamp
Kristin Banyas
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I feel that any good review now days when it comes to a programming tutorial requires some background information about yourself. People need to know your general skill level when it comes to coding, so that they can better understand how difficult the coding tutorial/guide was.
I'm currently a first year student at UCI studying Computer Science. Currently in my CS classes, we are going through Python. Coming into this course, I understood a lot of the basics of Python (if statements, loops, lists, dictionaries). Outside of class I also had some light experience with Java, and some familiarity with Front-End web development. I think it's important to mention that I breezed through a lot of the Javascript basics because of my experience with Python and Java. I also have had no experience with any Back End web development. To summarize, I wasn't a complete beginner when it came to programming or web development, but I certainly didn't have a solid understanding of everything.
I'll start off this review by talking about the instructor Colt Steele. He was a former webdev bootcamp teacher now turned online content producer. Colt claims that his webdev bootcamp was very similar and equally comprehensive as his in person bootcamp (This is what got me hooked in the first place). Overall Colt is a solid instructor. He makes it pretty clear in terms of explaining and understanding a lot of the CS concepts involved in building web apps.
The first half of the course was pretty much all front end. I learned HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript, and jQuery. The front end course definitely was pretty straight forward for me. Wasn't very difficult to grasp the concepts that Colt taught because A) He's a great teacher, and B) This wasn't the first time I've worked with front end web development.
Some of the projects I made during the front end portion of the course were pretty cool. Two of more notable ones that I built was a simple to do list web app, and a color guessing game. Both of these projects primarily focused on applying, and reinforcing HTML, CSS, and Javascript concepts.
The color guessing game was my personal favorite. The game basically gives you RGB values of some randomly generated colors, and the user is supposed to guess which color it is. The hard option featured six colors to guess from, while the easy option featured only three colors to guess from. A fun little game that after I completed played quite a few rounds of myself.
Overall though, the front end part of the course in my opinion was rather straightforward. You don't need to really do a lot of critical thinking or intense coding to power through this part of the course.
Having no experience in the past working with backend frameworks, the task of learning MongoDB, Express, and Node.js was going to be a challenge. People had told me that the MEAN stack wasn't difficult to pick up, but I assumed that was because the people who told me that had a solid CS background already.
A lot of the backend portion of the course is done through the online IDE Cloud9. This made things a lot simpler in terms of setting things up, and making sure that you were on the same page with the instructor.
The way that Colt teaches you the backend technologies is by going through a few concepts from a certain language, then asking you to apply them to a project called YelpCamp. YelpCamp is basically a Yelp clone but for campsites only. As I worked my way through the lectures, Colt made an emphasis on making you sure you understood what was going on. Albeit, I got confused a couple times while working through the lectures, as some parts involving some of the complex functions in Express made it difficult to keep up. Good thing about online video lectures though is that you can always rewind, and watch it again.
A big plus of the tutorials in my opinion was the section on RESTful Routing procedures, where you build a blog application that followed such procedures. Learning how to use RESTful routes made developing web applications much simpler and more streamlined for me as a student.
If you're interested in programming, and are looking to learn the MEAN stack, this is a great place to start. I see Colt's course as an opportunity to introduce you to the MEAN stack. It's definitely not comprehensive, but it's a great place to start, and get your feet wet in building web applications. For $24 on Udemy, I would consider this course a steal. After taking this course, I feel like I have a better understanding of full stack web development. If you have any questions, feel free to message me, or leave a comment below.
This is my review of The Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele. I have to say this was course was easily worth $1000. I learned the full stack like he promises in his sales pitch. I want to break it down by three topics that I want to touch on.
I agree the course is amazing but I do not think it is worth paying $200 for when you can find material in other places. If you want to buy the course you should find a coupon from somewhere which I do not think is too hard to do.
I signed up on December 8 on a sale that had the course on for $19 CAD and which was supposed to end December 11 (today). I tried to sign up my daughter about 30 minutes ago but the price was bumped to $205.
Rob is a self-taught developer with a teaching background while Colt is a seasoned full-pledge bootcamp instructor and that sounds incredible to a complete beginner like me. I might consider a refund and get this course instead.
However, I hit rock bottom financially, and emotionally after being screwed from a developer that I paid $6000 deposit for a client site, and he walked away. Which was last year. That is when I decided screw this, I need to learn this backend stuff myself.
Back in 2016, I designed commercial kitchens for a living. This meant I consulted with restaurant owners who were starting their business for the first time. And made recommendations on how best to run their operation.
It's 2020 now and I've been hired on as senior frontend engineer, working in React/NodeJS primarily. I didn't go through a coding bootcamp, and just learned mostly everything through things I found online.
I remember how much of a struggle it was trying to find the best learning resources out there. And what things I should even learn as a webdeveloper. There's just so many tutorials out there that I didn't know where to begin, so I spent a great deal of time auditing many of the popular courses out there.
I'm writing the article I wish I had read, when I first started learning to become a web developer (React / NodeJS). What I should learn, in what order, to get that first job and start my coding career.
You can learn only so much on your own, and real-world experience always trumps things you learn in a course. You should focus on getting a job ASAP in the software space, and figure out what you want to do after.
I always recommend any junior developer to get a frontend developer position. This is usually someone who makes a website pretty and functional for users. Like what the site looks like, how it talks to a backend, and cool little widgets that make the web fun.
It exposes you to the whole software development cycle and you learn many applicable skills to ship real-world products. Frontend developer roles usually don't have a huge barrier-to-entry and are junior developer-friendly.
I recommend taking multiple courses in different related topics, and not to take a one-course fit-all plan. You learn much faster when you learn from multiple teachers and see different viewpoints on related topics.
Most of the things you learn in Harvard's CS50 will pop up later on. When you learn the basics, learning everything else just becomes much easier. There are many patterns that emerge in programming, and they're usually tied to computer science.
For (1), FreeCodeCamp is a free online platform for teaching frontend and backend development. Originally, it started as a way to teach frontend development (HTML, CSS, JS), so I recommend sticking with that.
The two certifications I suggest going for at this point are the "Responsive web design certifications (300 hours)" and "Javascript Algorithms and data structures (300 hours)". These two certifications teaches you the basics of Javascript, HTML, and CSS in a more learn at your own-pace hands-on fashion.
Watch and code is from an ex-google engineer. He teaches you how to build a todo-app from the ground up, and more so how to think like a programmer. Taking this course taught me a lot of foundational design patterns, and how to properly write out the requirements of an app before building it
Colt Steel's Bootcamp is a high level introduction of how the web works. How a backend talks to a frontend. It's a solid course covering all the fundamentals, but I still recommend watch-and-code though, since the next course will cover overlapping topics
Brad Traversy doesn't really explain how everything works, but just enough for you to understand what's going on. It'll teach you how everything is connected together using React and NodeJS so you can reference down the road later. It'll teach you just enough backend knowledge such that you can entirely focus on frontend afterward
At this point, you have solid foundational knowledge on Javascript, HTML, and CSS and have built a few small projects through FreeCodeCamps certification challenges. And have an overview of how React, NodeJS, and MongoDB work together through Brad Traversy's course.
After taking these courses, you'll have built a few React projects, have a solid understanding of react hooks, class components, lifecycles, and redux. Redux is a steep learning curve but once you get over that hump everything else is pretty easy.
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