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Web Development

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

9

Options
Considered

33

User
Recs.

Jul 15, 2020

Last
Updated

Here’s the Deal

9 Options Considered

Best resources to learn full stack web development?	Price	Languages	Features
-- FreeCodeCamp	-	HTML, CSS, JavaScript	Projects, chat, exercises, written tutorials, video tutorials, progress saver
-- Udacity	-	HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Java, Python, Swift, SQL, R	Editor, progress saver, forum, video tutorials
-- Codecademy	-	HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby, Python	Code editor, forum, progress saver, written tutorials
-- exercism.io	-	scala	Exercises
-- The Odin Project	-	HTML, CSS, Ruby, JavaScript	Projects, written tutorials

FreeCodeCamp

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Top 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. See More

Top Con

No offline version

Specs

Languages:HTML, CSS, JavaScript

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

Top 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 See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Actively developed

They are frequently updating courses and adding new material. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Completely free

Free for anyone who wants to take the camp. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

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Udacity

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Top 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. See More

Top Con

Nanodegrees are expensive

Udacity is quite expensive at $200/month if you want to do a nanodegree. See More

Specs

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

Features:Editor, progress saver, forum, video tutorials

Price:Paid/Free

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Courses taught by industry professionals

Top Pro

Courses are easy to understand

Top 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. See More

Codecademy

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Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Specs

Languages:HTML, CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Ruby, Python

Features:Code editor, forum, progress saver, written tutorials

Top Pro

Free

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

Top Con

Buggy

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

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Good editor

Codeacademy has a powerful, beginner-friendly integrated development environment (IDE) that can also be used outside of curriculum. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Bite-sized lessons

Each lesson in code-academy focuses on a single concept, and repetition is provided to drill the concept. See More

exercism.io

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Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Specs

Languages:scala

Features:Exercises

Top 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. See More

Hackr.io

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Top Pro

All kind of courses - front end as well as back end - available

All courses recommended by the programming community. See More

NEXT Academy

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Top 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. See More

Top Con

Requires your commitment and time

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

Specs

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

Features:Projects, Video Tutorials, Exercises, Code Editor

Top Pro

Offers certificates of achievement after each course

Top Con

Paid

Most full-tme courses are around US $2000. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Human review and feedback

Students will get actual feedback from mentors on coding projects/exercises. See More

Top 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. See More

PHP

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Top 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%. See More

Top 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. See More

Specs

Price:Open Source (free)

Current stable version:7.3

Top 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. See More

Top 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. See More

Top Pro

Most prominent language for web applications

Part of the de facto standard web application stack. See More

Top 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. See More

Top 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). See More

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