Hi!
I recently started the Front End Development course and have just finished the HTML5 and CSS section. I have no prior knowledge of programming but I understand that it’s important to learn more even outside of FCC.
Are there any specific books, videos, additional resources, etc, that are recommended for usage alongside the course? I mean things related to the course, so that they supplement and help with what I’m doing here. There are so many things out there, so it’s a little bit confusing for me.
I was about to ask the same thing. It seems like FCC is great for learning front end, but not good for learning back end. For back end, it seems like some other resources or plan of action are needed. I’ve been going through Michael Hartl’s Ruby On Rails book myself.
Hi, I use www.w3schools.com and also www.codecademy.com Both are great in my opinion. I mainly put up the w3 Schools tab next to FCC and reference both back and forth.
Thanks! I just checked W3 out and I’m guessing you just open the relevant tutorial to whatever section you’re working on in FCC? Is it the same with Code Academy or do you just do one of their courses (as a normal student) alongside FCC?
Optional for those who either already have a degree in computer science (or math, which would be equivalently applicable), or have moderate proficiency with C, or an object-oriented language (C++, Java, Python, Ruby, et al)
($0) “Practical JavaScript” on Watch and Code by Gordon Zhu (which I linked earlier)
($29/mo) HTML/CSS path (all courses) and JavaScript path (top 5 courses on the core JavaScript Language) on Code School
You only need to pay for 1 month to have enough time to complete the above material
($19/mo w/ 1-month trial period, or free through academic & government organizations like your local public library) “Become a Front-End Web Developer” learning path on Lynda
I’d recommend pausing on this path after finishing course #7 in the path, CSS Essential Training 2, and resuming on the path after finishing resource #6 on this list
I’d also recommend doing these courses in addition to get a solid foundation in HTML and CSS: “HTML5: Structure, Syntax, and Semantics”, “Learning CSS”, and “CSS: Page Layouts”
This learning path should take no more than 1 month to complete (up through course #7 anyway, though paying for 1 more month might be needed when returning to finish the path)
($10 when on sale) “The Web Developer Bootcamp” on Udemy by Colt Steele
Expect this course to take a while (it took me about 3 months to complete)
It’s not necessary to finish this course before moving on to #7 below, but I’d recommend getting up to at least the “Node JS” section before moving on
($99/yr w/ 14-day trial period) “Learn JavaScript Syntax and Programming Principles” on SitePoint Premium by M. David Green
14 days (SitePoint’s trial period) is more than enough time to do this course, so it might make sense to do M. David Green’s “Master JavaScript Closures, Data Structures and Map/Reduce” course within the trial period as well
($10 when on sale) “Git a Web Developer Job” on Udemy by Brad Schiff
This course can be flipped with #7, but should be completed before starting #10
Recommended starting point for this resource only—it’ll probably take most people quite some time to get through it, and I’d recommend doing it simultaneously throughout #10 and #11
($10 when on sale) “The Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp” on Udemy by Colt Steele
The learning path on Lynda (and the other courses I mentioned in bullet point #5) should be completed before starting this course
($10 when on sale) Your choice of either a React or Angular course on Udemy (for React, I’d recommend Andrew Mead’s course, or for Angular, I’d recommend Mosh Hamedani’s course)
Wow this is amazing! Thank you so much! I’d already seen many of these during my research but I had no idea how to go about it. But this is so detailed and even ordered!
I have two small questions regarding this plan.
For the first step on FCC, that includes the Bootstrap and jQuery sections as well, right? Are those also considered things under HTML and CSS or are they separate (and just things I should complete)?
If I want to get the FCC certifications, how would you recommend going about it? I imagine that with all these other courses, I’d only need to do the challenges required for the cert, but when should I come back to those?
Sure no problem, and hopefully it helps out others as well.
You can skip FCC’s Bootstrap and jQuery sections if you want to, or you could do those for the sake of completeness, really doesn’t matter. Neither is all that important these days in 2018 (they were both more popular about 2-3 years ago), but can still be useful to know. My recommendation would be to skip them, and if you want to do those later, you can do them at anytime. Bootstrap is a CSS framework—separate from CSS, but definitely related. jQuery is a JavaScript library (separate, but definitely related) and isn’t something you need to learn until after you learn “vanilla” JavaScript. And although lots of job postings will mention Bootstrap and/or jQuery, you shouldn’t worry about that until after resource #8, which is around where you’ll start to be job-ready.
I don’t have any of FCC’s certifications myself yet, but that’s mostly because I’m just lazy and haven’t spent enough time on the curriculum here, and have been using other resources instead.
Considering the challenges for FCC’s Front-End certificate, I think I’d add another course for a newbie to programming, which would have to be Harvard’s CS50X on edX ($0). The reason I recommend that course in particular for newbies to programming is because you should have a solid foundation in computer science basics before attempting FCC’s Algorithm-related challenges (Basic Algorithm Scripting, Intermediate Algorithm Scripting, and Advanced Algorithm Scripting), which CS50X will cover (and none of the other courses will). You don’t need to do the entire course if you don’t have time for that, but I’d highly recommend doing up to Week 4 (Data Structures) at least.
I’d place CS50X just below #1—it should probably be considered as #1A. Edit: just edited my previous post to add it in as #2 instead.
For the Front-End certificate, and assuming you do CS50X, you could start attempting the Basic Algorithm challenges as soon as you finish #3. You should be able to do Intermediate and Advanced, and the rest of the Front-End Projects, by the time you finish #7 (or possibly earlier).
The list of resources is only for front-end, and I’m not sure I have enough proficiency in back-end yet in order to make a list for FCC’s Back End certificate. So I can’t speak for that one yet, or for Data Visualization either.
All right, that clears things up. I’d like to see my Cat Photo App completed haha so I think I’ll do Bootstrap and jQuery for that.
This guide seems to be geared towards back-end and it contains some things you’ve already mentioned, so I’ll just do it after yours and see how that goes then.
You should stay away from w3schools. Their materials are often outdated or plain wrong. You will learn lots of bad habits learning from them. Use Mozilla Developer Network docs instead.
