The Ultimate Guide to Learning Full Stack Web Development in 6 months, for $30
The 2019 Guide to Learning Web Development.
Hey everyone! In this article I’m going to show you how to go from knowing little to nothing about Web Development to Junior Full Stack Developer in just six months, for under $30.
This article will cover everything you need to know! You’ll first learn the basics of Web Development with an online coding bootcamp ($15). You’ll follow that up with an advanced bootcamp ($15). Then, we’ll jump into free tutorials, articles, and documentation where you will reinforce everything you’ve learned in the first two bootcamps. Next, you’ll build a few projects with your new skills and open-source them on GitHub. Finally, we’ll focus on resume creation, interview preparation, and salary negotiation.
Disclosure: I write reviews and receive compensation from the companies whose products I review. All opinions expressed here are my own.
Here’s what you’ll learn if you follow this guide:
- HTML/CSS
- jQuery
- JavaScript
- Git/Version Control
- React
- Node.js
- MongoDB
Ready? Lets dive in.
#1. The Web Development Bootcamp
First thing’s first — You need to learn the basics and build a solid foundation of web development principles. There are many ways to do this, but in my opinion, this is the best and easiest way.
Colt Steele’s Web Development Bootcamp is the single best web development course money can buy. It’s sometimes on sale for $20 or less, and it’s packed with more than 40 hours of on-demand content.
Colt Steele, the instructor, was a lead instructor at a coding bootcamp in San Fransisco before moving to online coding education. This course is the online equivalent of what he taught at his in-person bootcamp.
This course covers all of the web dev basics: HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Bootstrap, SemanticUI, DOM Manipulation, jQuery, Unix(Command Line) Commands
Once you’ve got the basics down, you’ll explore more advanced topics like: NodeJS, NPM, ExpressJS, REST, MongoDB, Database Associations, Authentication, PassportJS, and Authorization.
Colt not only knows web development, but almost more importantly, he knows how to teach it. He clearly explains tougher concepts and breaks everything down in the easy to handle chunks. Plus, the course revolves around projects, so you learn by building real-world things, not boring reading and test taking.
#2. The Advanced Web Development Bootcamp
Now that you’ve taken the first bootcamp and know how to build full stack web applications, it’s time to take your learning a little deeper. This course builds upon the first by introducing more complex technologies, frameworks, and tools you can use to build beautiful, responsive, web applications.
The Advanced Web Development Bootcamp is designed to take your coding skills to the next level! Don’t worry, this course is also project based. You’ll build 10+ projects and explore dozens of code challenges with solutions to ensure you understand everything!
Here’s what you’ll learn in this course:
- Build upon your CSS Skills by learning CSS3 Transitions, Transforms and Animations
- Dive into a front-end Framework and learn React, React-Router, and Redux
- Enhance your JavaScript skills with ES2015, ES2016, and ES2017, as well as Callbacks, Promises, Generators and Async Functions
- Building charts, force graphs and data visualizations
- Testing with Jasmine
- D3
- SVG
- Building Node.js APIs
- Building Single Page Applications
- Object Oriented Programming in JavaScript
- Closures and the keyword ‘this’
- Functional Programming in JavaScript
- Authentication and Authorization
- Asynchronous Code with JavaScript
This course has nearly 350 lectures and 30 hours of content, you’re going to learn a lot!!
#3. Reinforce your Skills
At this point, you’ve taken two online coding bootcamps and you’re hopefully starting to feel comfortable with your web development skills. You can successfully take a simple idea and build it out beautifully using a Node.js backend, and React on the front-end. Plus, you’re confident in your CSS abilities to style out a mobile first, responsive page.
Now it’s time to continue learning while reinforcing your new skills. Below is a list of documentation, articles, and tutorials.
Reading these a few months ago probably would’ve made no sense — but with your new skills you can handle them like a champ.
You don’t have to work through every link I’ve provided. Think of these more like starting points.
HTML/CSS
JavaScript
- JavaScript — The keyword ‘this’ for beginners
- JavaScript — Arrow Functions for Beginners
- JavaScript: What the heck is a Callback?
- JavaScript: What the heck is an Immediately-Invoked Function Expression?
- JavaScript for Beginners: The new Operator
- Javascript: Learn Regular Expressions for Beginners
- JavaScript Template Literals and Tag Functions for Beginners
- JavaScript & the spread operator
- JavaScript: What is short-circuit evaluation?
- JavaScript: What is the ternary operator?
- JavaScript: Why does 3 + true = 4? (and 7 other tricky equations)
- JavaScript — What’s the difference between Null & Undefined?
- Learn and Understand Recursion in JavaScript
- Understand Closures in JavaScript
- JavaScript 30 for 30 — Learn to build 30 things in 30 days with 30 tutorials. No Frameworks, No Compilers, No Libraries, No Boilerplate.
- Learn FrontEnd Frameworks — Free 8 Week course focused on JavaScript Frameworks. Learn to build SPA’s (Single Page Applications) in both Angular and Ember from scratch.
React
- create-react-app — Learn the quickest way to get started with React.
- react-router — Simple routing for React.
- Navigating the React.JS Ecosystem
- Official React Tutorial
Full Stack
- Intro to Back End Web Development
- Deploying Applications with Heroku
- Client Server Communication
- Serverless Stack is a comprehensive guide to creating full-stack serverless applications. Create a note taking app from scratch using React.js, AWS Lambda, API Gateway, DynamoDB, and Cognito.
- Node JS and Authentication
- Express JS Database Integration
Databases
- Relational vs. Non Relational
- SQL vs. NoSQL
- Learn MongoDB — Free courses & tutorials
- Express — Using a DB with Mongoose
- Node JS and Databases
Git
- New Developer? You should’ve learned Git yesterday.
- A Step by Step Guide to Making Your First GitHub Contribution
Deployment
#4. [Optional] Courses
Want to keep learning? Here are some additional courses that I recommend that dive deeper into the subject of your choosing:
#5. Coding Games
Level up your skills in your free time with these fun coding games and challenge websites.
#6. Build Something
Go forth and build something cool! Show off all of the skills you’ve learned and bring an idea from concept to production!
Need some help brainstorming what to build? Here are a few links that should have you thinking in the right direction:
- 94 Full Stack Examples
- 6 Absurd Ideas For Building Your First Web App
- Fullstack Student Final Projects
- Web app ideas for the growing web developer
Make sure to open source your project so you can show off everything you’ve learned. The first bootcamp goes into Git and GitHub with great depth, but if you’re still not feeling comfortable with it, you can check out these two links for a little additional motivation and help:
#7. Resume & Portfolio
You’ve learned the skills, now it’s time to make your resume shine and make your portfolio stand out. Here’s a collection of links to help you accomplish that:
Make your portfolio
- Customizable Web Developer Portfolio — Built with Flexbox.
- 10 Awesome Web Developer Portfolios
How to Apply
- I spent 3 months applying to jobs after a coding bootcamp. Here’s what I learned. (FCC)
- Lessons from my Post-bootcamp Job search (FCC)
- How to land a six figure job in tech with no connections (FCC)
Resume & LinkedIn
- What are some of the best resume formats you’ve seen?
- Model examples for Fullstack Developer LinkedIn profiles
Personal Projects
#8. Interview Prep
Your resume and portfolio got you the interview! Awesome! Use these links to prepare for your interview:
- CS50 — Prep and Practice for Technical Interviews [YouTube]
- How to Break Into the Tech Industry — a Guide to Job Hunting and Tech Interviews
- Common JavaScript Interview Questions and Answers
- Ammon Bartram — Ask an interviewer anything: interview questions, answers, mistakes
- Sharing some interview tips (Silicon valley employee)
- Job interview questions to ask the interviewer
- I suck at programming interviews.
- When solving an interview problem, talk all the time.
- Hiring managers (or other seasoned developers), what qualities do you look for in your ideal candidate?
- Post your best interview questions
- Been interviewing with a lot of tech startups as a frontend dev, here are the technical questions I’ve been asked (MID-SENIOR LEVEL)
- 10 Interview Questions every JS Developer should know (Medium)
#9. Salary Information
You’ve gotten the offer! Now you just need to negotiate your compensation package. Here are a collection of links to help:
*Closing Notes*
You made it to the end of the article… Good luck on your Web Development journey! It’s certainly not going to be easy, but by following this guide, you are one stop closer to accomplishing your goal.
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