Web Development

What are the best resources to learn full stack web development?

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FreeCodeCamp vs Udacity vs Codecademy

 vs exercism.org vs The Odin Project vs Fullstack Academy vs Hackr.io vs NEXT Academy vs W3Schools vs PHP

Specs

Languages

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python

Features

Projects, chat, exercises, written tutorials, video tutorials, progress saver

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python, Swift, SQL, R

Features

Editor, progress saver, forum, video tutorials

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby, Python

Features

Code editor, forum, progress saver, written tutorials

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

Bash, C, C++, C#, Clojure, Dart, Elixir, Erlang, Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, Python, Ruby, Rust,TypeScript

Features

Exercises

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

HTML, CSS, Ruby, JavaScript

Features

Projects, written tutorials

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

-

Features

-

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

-

Features

-

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby on Rails, Swift for iOS

Features

Projects, Video Tutorials, Exercises, Code Editor

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

-

Features

-

Price

-

Current stable version

-

Languages

-

Features

-

Price

Open Source (free)

Current stable version

8.0

Pros + Cons

Pro
 Browser-based

All courses used by freeCodeCamp are done in the browser, rather than students having to set up their own environment. This makes it much easier for beginners to get started.
Comment

Pro
 Completely free

Free for anyone who wants to take the camp.
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Pro
 Six certificates available

Responsive Web Design Certification Javascript Algorithms And Data Structures Certification Front End Libraries Certification Data Visualization Certification Apis And Microservices Certification Information Security And Quality Assurance Certification
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Pro
 Welcoming, active community

freeCodeCamp strongly encourages interacting with other learners and experienced programmers. They provide chatrooms which are always active and full of members happy to answer any questions you may have. Pair programming (programming with another user) is encouraged as a great way to work through some of their coding challenges. There are also meetup groups where you can code in person with other freeCodeCamp students.
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Pro
 Actively developed

They are frequently updating courses and adding new material.
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Pro
 Open source

Due to freeCodeCamp being open source, you are able to contribute to the program that helped teach you how to code in the first place. It's a great way to give back and gain experience.
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Pro
 Gain real world experience while helping nonprofits

Once you've completed all the courses and practice levels on FreeCodeCamp, you are able to participate with other learners on developing software for non-profits. It's an amazing way to gain experience and build your portfolio as a developer, while helping out a non-profit organization.
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Pro
 Self-paced

There is no set schedule with Free Code Camp. You can work through the program as fast or as slow as you want.
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Con
 No offline version

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Con
 Learning material is not in-depth

The teaching content provided by Free Code Camp tends to act more as an introduction than a solid learning resource. Unless you already have some prior experience, you won't have enough knowledge to get through the coding challenges and development projects without using outside learning resources to fill in the gaps.
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Pro
 Two certificates available

There are currently two certificated available (Front End Development and Back End Development) that you can get once you've completed all the projects. There is a third certificate in the works (Data Visualization).
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Pro
 Actual feedback on coding projects

You get actual feedback from developers on your code, which is useful. Yes having your sites/apps do what it is supposed to do is important, but you need feedback to learn industry standards/best practices and other gotchas that are much harder to learn on your own.
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Pro
 All courses are self-paced

Courses are always made available which means there is no waiting for the specific course you want to run. You can work through the courses as fast or as slow as you want.
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Con
 Nanodegrees are expensive

Udacity is quite expensive at $200/month if you want to do a nanodegree.
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Pro
 Courses taught by industry professionals

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Pro
 Courses are easy to understand

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Pro
 Offers Nanodegrees

Udacity offers a few different Nanodegrees which provide access to various different courses, project reviews and coaching support for $200/month. Current options include Front End Web Developer, Data Analyst and Android Developer. See the full list here.
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Pro
 Interactivity

Right from the start, users write code. They start small in an environment that has constant feedback and gradually progress to more complex concepts. Users can see code results instantly, giving great feedback.
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Con
 Lack of context 

Codecademy is great for providing a hands-on approach, but there is a lack of context regarding how to start a project in real life. While users may learn how to code using Codecademy's interface, they may not have any idea how to code independently.
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Pro
 Free

Codecademy does not offer pro/paid accounts. Instead, all of their content is available entirely for free.
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Pro
 Excellent progression 

Codeacademy doesn't overwhelm beginners with information. It gives bite-sized information, the bare minimum needed to finish a task and get to the next one. As the course progresses, it slowly fills in background information.
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Con
 Buggy

Codecademy is known to have many bugs which interfere with the editor, resulting in error messages despite having the correct answer.
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Pro
 Good editor 

Codeacademy has a powerful, beginner-friendly integrated development environment (IDE) that can also be used outside of curriculum.
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Pro
 Bite-sized lessons

Each lesson in code-academy focuses on a single concept, and repetition is provided to drill the concept.
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Con
 Not the best structure for quick refreshers

The content of the lessons is aimed very much at people just starting to learn how to code. This is perfect for beginners but if you want to use Codecademy to refresh your knowledge the lessons are not designed to be quickly done.
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Con
 Allows infinite loops to run

If you run an infinite loop, the browser freezes. Many other similar websites will give you an error, preventing the loop from running. Though not a bug, the lack of feature to stop infinite loops from running can be quite frustrating to beginners.
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Pro
 Human review and feedback

Rather than merely test for code correctness, Exercism uses peer review to improve general programming techniques. Users are encouraged to comment on others' solutions, and refine their own based on feedback.
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Pro
 Practice with production tools

Unlike many code practice websites, Exercism requires the user to develop and test entirely offline, submitting only the finished code. This promotes familiarity with essential tools and workflow, not just the bare language.
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Con
 Custom commandline client

Exercism requires using a CLI utility to fetch and submit exercises. This is inconvenient compared to web-only alternatives, and poses an additional barrier to entry for some users.
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Pro
 Build a portfolio as your learn

The Odin Project is a project-based curriculum which means you are able to build projects for your portfolio as you work through the sections.
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Pro
 Free and open source

The Odin Project is a completely free and open source alternative to coding bootcamps.
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Con
 Light on CS

The Odin Project touches on computer science concepts, such as data structures. However the explanations are quite light and something you'll want to learn more about from other resources.
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Pro
 Focuses on one language

While many other bootcamps will teach a couple of languages, Fullstack Academy uses only JavaScript. This means you are spending less time learning new syntax and more time gaining a more in-depth understanding of programming.
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Con
 Exposes you to less skills because of language focus

Because the course focuses mainly on JavaScript, you won't be exposed to other languages/frameworks.
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Pro
 All kind of courses - front end as well as back end - available

All courses recommended by the programming community.
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Pro
 Has an in-person training mode

You can enroll in the Blended Learning Platform where you can meet with your mentor face to face. This is best for students who learn more with one-on-one mentoring.
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Pro
 Offers certificates of achievement after each course

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Pro
 Practice the code after each video 

After each video, you will be given the chance to build projects and do exercises to test what you have learned.
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Pro
 Human review and feedback

Students will get actual feedback from mentors on coding projects/exercises.
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Pro
 Bite-sized lessons

Next Academy doesn't overwhelm beginners with information. The lessons are bite-sized, and video lectures/tutorials are between 2-5mins long.
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Con
 Requires your commitment and time

Next Academy's courses are not self-paced and follow a set of schedule.
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Con
 Paid

Most full-tme courses are around US $2000.
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Pro
 One of the most common languages

According to the 2015 Stack Overflow Developer Survey (26,086 people surveyed), PHP was the 5th most popular/used language at 29.7%.
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Pro
 Used by most common CMS platforms

Many clients are looking for an easy-to-update web site that's flexible and free. Drupal and Wordpress fill those needs very well.
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Pro
 Most prominent language for web applications

Part of the de facto standard web application stack.
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Pro
 Great third-party package manager

PHP standard library is somewhat subpar, but if you need plugins, language features, composer has them all( you can even puzzle together a custom framework from composer).
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Con
 Poorly designed language

Despite its widespread use, PHP is generally looked upon poorly from a design point of view. The consistency of function names and function argument order, lazily and borderline non-functional implementation of object oriented programming, can only receive requests via POST methods, slow version adoption (the PHP you learn right now may not work on every webserver you'll work on), and a focus on "hacking things together" rather than "doing it right". These are all very common complaints when it comes to working with PHP. While not a bad language to learn, PHP is not at all a good language to learn first, as it will probably teach bad habits.
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Con
 Most tutorials are out of date

A lot of very bad tutorials are still widely circulated among beginners, and these tutorials teach very poor programming practices.
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Con
 Immense catalog of insecure frameworks

The most serious security problems in websites on the web today are almost universally found in popular PHP frameworks, CMS platforms, libraries and code samples, almost all stemming from poor language design, bad tutorials and awful resources.
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