I’m fairly new to FCC and I’m a long way from being a potential job prospect. But what are your guy’s experience with FCC and how it translated to job opportunities? Also, any tips for making someone who took the untraditional route more appealing to job prospects who have degrees? Thanks to anyone who takes their time to reply to my question.
P1xt’s answer is, of course, correct, but I can understand if you don’t currently know what “great at web development” means. You’ll get a better idea by continuing to make your way through the curriculum, and also by checking out other people’s projects when they post links on the forum, which happens pretty much daily.
All that being said, I run a coding group and I’ve gotten to see many of our members go from not knowing anything to being hired at an entry level. I also talk to potential employers for our members regularly, and they seem to expect similar things from self-taught developers.
You’ll want to know HTML, CSS and Bootstrap to the point where you can quickly and consistently make clean, responsive sites. Knowing a bunch of fancy effects doesn’t seem like a highly in-demand skill, at least not for the employers in my area. Clean and responsive seems to be enough. Knowing SASS seems like a plus.
You’ll want to know JavaScript very well. This is your core skill and where you’ll get hit in coding tests. You should be able to complete all the beginning and intermediate algorithm challenges and build all the projects for the front-end certificate. You should be able to do this using your own code. Cutting and pasting isn’t learning.
You should have a good working knowledge of jQuery. This isn’t tested so much as it is assumed. You should also be able to work without jQuery. Know it, but don’t rely on it.
You should have a good working knowledge of a front-end framework such as Angular or React.
You should have at least a familiarity with a back-end language and framework, such as Express.js, Ruby on Rails, C# and .Net, or Python and Django. You’ll also need to know at least one database language like SQL or Mongo.
Lastly, you should know how to deploy sites and apps by FTP, Heroku, and maybe a cloud host.
I know that sounds like a lot, but it’s just the basics! Expect to spend one to three years developing this skill set. If you can demonstrate skill with all the above technologies, and you have a solid portfolio where employers can look at your work, you should find yourself hired or contracted out pretty quickly.
Now that you’ve heard all that, put it out of your head and just work on the Free Code Camp material. If you can get the full stack certificate, you’ll have covered everything I mention above.
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