www.upskillcourses.com
I seriously cannot understand why Upskill is free. It is at least as good as any of the best courses on Udemy IMHO.
I really enjoy video-based instruction, and is completely based on videos. But it is far from informational - the first part of the course has you create an account on Cloud9, set up a Rails server, and publish a Rails blog. All within a few short videos. It’s very deep-end, which I love, but done at an achievable pace. The whole thing is set up as a project-based curriculum, so you are creating things as you go.
You then take a step back when learning HTML - install Sublime, and create HTML pages on your desktop. Then you move into styling with CSS.
I haven’t progressed further than the above as yet, so will update as I go. But I’m really impressed, and that’s after playing with Free Code Camp, Team Treehouse, Code School, Coursera, and Udemy. I’d say it’s complementary to Free Code Camp, and is of equal value to all the listed paid resources.
Hey @garysmeade.This course is absolutely awesome.You kind of learn a lot by building a full stack app by integrating HTML,CSS,SCSS,JavaScript and Ruby on Rails plus some git skills which comes unconsciously as you progress with the course.
I must admit that FreeCodeCamp is the Programming BLUEPRINT,but then by branching off to this course has taught me a ton of skills.Now I can comfortably continue coding here and learn more.
As for jobs,If you make an effort to understand and implement the skills learnt here ,then you will have an easy ride at Upskill courses.
They have a coder manual where you could try your luck by applying to the listed jobs.
Looks good, although there is only one course available and it looks like they may add additional paid courses later. I hope I am wrong and they continue to offer high quality courses in the future for free! Thanks for the link.
Just started the free course the other day based on this thread. The teacher, Rob Dey, is really excellent in my opinion. I’m considering purchasing his full course on udemy just to flesh it out entirely, and honestly, to support the guy.
My only concern thus far is that he directs us towards Ruby. I hadn’t really thought about it before, but I guess what we do on the back-end might end up somewhat arbitrary based on who teaches us…and I guess if you learn better from one tutor than another, then there are perhaps worse ways of making that decision.
I also signed up for this course after reading this thread. I would not be too concerned on his choice of ruby and rails to get everything going on the back end… it will be good experience with an MVC (Model, View, Controller) framework, just like Django is interesting as an MTV (Model, Template, View) framework. Getting experience in more than one back end setup would probably be a benefit down the road.
I just want yo say thank you all ! Im new on programing and so far the community is always trying to help you be better giving you tips and making me feel more inspire to continúe. Thanks!
Thanks for the validation @hypersoniq. How far into the course have you gotten? Another thing I noticed is that his udemy course has all of his Javascript lessons, which the free course does not. I think that might be another good reason to purchase. I’m still a little shaky on how to fully apply fundamentals vis-a-vis JS, and I really like his teaching style. Can’t get enough quality review of these principles in my opinion.
Ok. Now I’m confused. I went ahead and paid, and the first thing I see is announcement saying that the whole course has been migrated to the Upskill site. Starting now to question my though process.Is there actually new material in the paid course (yes, the JS does not appear in the udemy course, but perhaps he figured we didn’t need it). Your thoughts @hypersoniq?
I am right at the lesson where I start with a Rails project on cloud9. Unfortunately I am also driving a truck and in the middle of an online calculus course ( class # 7 of 40 toward my 8!year plann for a computer science degree).
I am not sure why there is not a JavaScript section, unless he just mixes it in when needed in the HTML and CSS topics.
Hello @hypersoniq ,This course is absolutely awesome. I have successfully built the rails blog app and it was fun.I also managed to pass through the full stack app up to the final lecture passively .The only problem is that the project consumes a lot of airtime and I had to literally take a teaching job so I could afford enough airtime from the Internet Service Providers.
The most important take away from this course though,is that you learn how to integrate a couple of skills at a go.Plus you can build a close cousin to the app using the skills learnt.
The Rails blog was fun. I had my son go to the cloud9 URL for my project and post a message, but I had to hit refresh to have it show up.
Wow how that was so easy to get Rails up and running, almost too easy. I put Ruby and Rails on my raspberry pi. Sorting through versions, dependencies, the RVM (Ruby version manager, like NPM in node and pip in Python) finding the right GEM files, etc. Cloud 9 was like cheating on that part.
I am slowly getting through the HTML section, but the calculus class I am taking online dominates my free time, and will for the next 5 weeks. Trying to keep above 3.0 to graduate with honors in 7 years (at 1 class per each of the 5 terms per year). By the time I get the CS classes in web programming, I should have a decent head start!
Update: Almost done the Ruby section and ready to start the final project.
I must say Ruby is easy to get started with. It’s like the simplest parts of Python and JS in a clean streamlined syntax. puts "Hello, World!"
Easiest code I have seen for that time honored tradition (orders of magnitude easier than the boilerplate code needed to get Java to do the same thing).
I am wondering if the final project (deployed to Heroku) would be a suitable item for the portfolio page (because it’s just a tutorial and not a challenge like FCC projects)… If so, maybe I might finally finish the portfolio page I am building on my desktop and upload it to GitHub pages.
The instructor seems to be instilling a great deal of best practices that would carry well to a dev career… can’t believe it’s all free!
About 40% done. This is a goldmine should you want to seriously learn the Rails framework. I am moving through and the regular Git commits and pushing changes to GitHub is becoming second nature. I had also jumped out of the material to read some documentation on some of the videos that he recommended further study. (Like Ruby Gems to install bootstrap and sass rather than a CDN link).
I might pick back up with the Odin Project after this to learn more about JavaScript in their newly re-designed front end section.
Starting to get used to the Ruby/Rails back end… liking that even better than the LAMP/WAMP stacks I have set up on the home network.
