The Web Developer Bootcamp - Udemy Review

Go there right now!
They have it for $10.
https://www.udemy.com/the-web-developer-bootcamp/

No one will be able to let you use the account because it is tracked for every course one takes for progressing.
Enjoy!

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If I could see your progress on the FCC exercises, and saw some consistency I would buy you the course.

I started FCC over a year ago and was having a hard time making significant progress. I felt that I was not grasping the topics and was missing information. That is when I signed up for both of Robā€™s and Coltā€™s courses. I did not make much progress in Robā€™s course, but I did finish Coltā€™s course. In my opinion, the difference between the two is night and day. Some of the subject matter in Coltā€™s course is spoon-fed, but he does a great job of explaining why he is doing it that way and how it works with the other code.

The final project is a version of ā€œYelpā€ for campgrounds. You write all the front and back end code and deploy it on Heroku. It incorporates all the HTML, CSS and JS from the front side and employs Express, Node, npm and MongoDB on the server side. You will also handle authorization and authentication. It is all done through a free account on Cloud9.

I often refer back to his videos when I am having difficulty understanding a topic on FCC. He has recently added additional material APIā€™s and more advanced JavaScript. Since I have lifetime access to his course, I will certainly return and complete the new sections.

In summary, I really enjoyed Coltā€™s course and recommend it with not reservations. One caveat, you may get bored with the early material, but try to complete it as it is required for the certificate of completion.

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Iā€™m not seeing any material about React in his course. Are you thinking of something else?

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Yea, OP here. I quickly jumped in to see about React from Colt. I think youā€™re thinking of his new course for mysql? does that have react?

Just jumping in to add my five stars for Colt Steele. Also, he has an awesome cowboy name.

I found that a lot of free resources assumed knowledge I didnā€™t have, and Colt never did that- I never felt lost or confused in the material. He also started from the beginning using JavaScript in context, running every program through an html script tag so that I finally understood what JavaScript was actually meant to do in a webpage. Iā€™m a little less that 2/3rds finished at this point, and I have found it to be enjoyable, informative, and well paced- I like to work on it on my lunch break and I usually can finish one or two videos in the half hour I have. The one time I had a question posted to the Q and A, Ian responded pretty quickly with a helpful solution even though he just had a baby. I paid $10 but I think itā€™s worth the full $200.

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Yes, you can skip whatever you want. You just pay once for eternal access.

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I finally started taking Colt Steeleā€™s course myself recently, and itā€™s definitely a big upgrade over Rob Percivalā€™s 2.0 course. Like I said before in another thread, Iā€™d rate Percivalā€™s course with negative stars if I could, itā€™s that bad. But Iā€™d tentatively rate Colt Steeleā€™s course at least a 3 out of 5 (the primary reason for deducting 2 stars is for some poor practices that he demonstrates throughout the videos, but I guess I canā€™t fault him too much for that when heā€™s more of a ā€œteacherā€ than an industry practitionerā€”but even then, there are still no excuses for some things that he flat out just shows ignorance on, like improperly using the header tags). And the subtitles are just hilariously badā€”those really need to be fixed eventually, because thatā€™s just embarassing and shouldnā€™t remain like that for non-native English speakers.

Colt Steele also looks way younger in the videos than I was expecting, I mean he looks under 30 which nearly shocked me out of my chair. That black & white photo of him on Udemyā€™s main course page had me expecting a 40ish-looking guy with early graying hair. :stuck_out_tongue:

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Thanks for the Review! I just purchased the course and now starting!

XDā€¦I practically had to scan through everything to check if I was missing it too. lol

Hi astv99,

What is he doing with the header tags? Iā€™m 65% through the course and Iā€™d hate to be forming habits of doing things wrong. What other things are improper? Thanks for the help!

I like having subtitles too, especially when I play the video faster. I always thought theyā€™re automatically generated though.

Thanks!

Iā€™m not sure which part of the course you are onā€¦but if I remember correctly at some point a header.js file is created with all the header code. So for awhile you are coding without the appropriate header code because it is later going to be included in a partial file.

Colt basically uses the HTML header tags (H1 through H6) in any order that he likes and skips over the ones that he thinks arenā€™t necessaryā€”i.e., he starts with H1, but then skips over H2 and then uses H3 where an H2 should be, or an H4 where an H2 should be. Thatā€™s not good practice because it breaks the flow of your document outline, and you should use these tags in order sequentially to establish the structure of the document. Using them in order also helps with SEO, as it helps search engines like Google to understand the layout of a web page better.

James Williamsonā€™s HTML Essential Training course on Lynda.com goes over this topic in two very good videos titled ā€œUsing headingsā€ and ā€œControlling document outlinesā€ which Iā€™d recommend to watch for every aspiring Web developer. If you donā€™t have a Lynda subscription (or access otherwise), then Iā€™d recommend signing up for their free trial just to watch those two videos, as I havenā€™t seen any other courses on Web development anywhere else that cover the subject, let alone as concisely as James Williamson.

Coltā€™s course additionally isnā€™t up to date with HTML5 (he never covered the latest tags that are part of the specification like HEADER, NAV, ARTICLE, ASIDE, and FOOTER), he doesnā€™t cover why using ā€œpxā€ as a unit of measurement for fonts in CSS can be problematic on websites (basically itā€™s not responsive, which is bad), he kept mispronouncing ā€œemā€ (the unit of measurement in CSS, not the HTML tag) as ā€œe-mā€ and not ā€œemā€ (one syllable, youā€™re not supposed to pronounce it one letter at a time), and the videos show that heā€™s using the Tab key as TABs in Sublime Text instead of using the ā€œIndent Using Spacesā€ option. Ordinarily that Tab setting isnā€™t a problem in itself, especially if youā€™re coding alone, but once you start getting into GitHub and coding with others that setting can be VERY problematic because a lot of people tend to have their tabs at different settings. And since Git canā€™t tell the difference between Tabs and Spaces, itā€™ll think your document is different from someone elseā€™s who may have exactly the same code but just different space characters. So if you arenā€™t using Indent Using Spaces in Sublime Text, then you should start using it now.

Itā€™s actually quite unbelievable that someone at Coltā€™s level has that setting off, as it shows his inexperience with code editors. Having that setting off would be a very bad thing for any production code involving 2 or more programmers.

Colt additionally doesnā€™t cover the accessibility implications of using the STRONG and EM tags, as they really arenā€™t for just making text bold and italic, theyā€™re way more than just that. Anyone whoā€™s using those tags to just bold and italicize text are using them wrong, theyā€™re more for setting accessibility indicators for disabled people using screenreaders. If your intent is strictly visual and nothing more, then you should use the SPAN tag to apply a class thatā€™s targeted by CSS instead of using the STRONG and EM tags.

It is good that Colt defers to MDN a lot, but heā€™s never mentioned the W3C once, which is sort of worrisome, because the W3C is the organization that sets the HTML standards. James Williamson on Lynda.com defers to the W3C a lot in his videos in most of his courses.

As for the subtitles, yeah they most likely are automatically generated, but theyā€™re so often inaccurate (at least a few errors every single minute) and sometimes are so off that itā€™s just hilarious. Iā€™m sure most native English speakers wonā€™t need them anyway, but Iā€™d bet that leads to a lot of frustration for non-native English speakers. Thereā€™s probably an option to manually fix those, which Colt should absolutely do eventually.

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Well, W3C isnā€™t really upto date. The examples they have there pretend that itā€™s magic. He did mention w3c once but forced us to look up MDN which is a better resource.

Even with the frontend shortcomings this is still an amazing course.

Thanks for pointing that out. Sorry about wrong info. I was thinking of the final section on ā€œTricky javascript stuffā€. I have gone back and corrected my post.

hanks for pointing that out. Sorry about wrong info. I was thinking of the final section on ā€œTricky javascript stuffā€. I have gone back and corrected my post. I do not think his new SQL course has React. I bought it when I got the email, but have not started it yet.

I love Coltā€™s course. He explains things in a manner that is very easy to follow. In my experience, it certainly complements my FreeCodeCamp journey. As @astv99 mentioned above, maybe Colt didnā€™t use the right tags etc. But, in my opinion, for those starting out, Coltā€™s course is amazing. It certainly helped me a lot.

There are certainly other resources out there to complement this course and FreeCodeCampā€™s. I think @P1xt amazing posts is great place to start finding other resources.

At your recommendation I purchased this course and I am very excited. For anyone else reading this post Udemy is having a 48 hour new student discount and I was able to purchase the course for $10.00!

Hereā€™s my two cents:

This course provides a fantastic foundation in web development. Of course it cannot provide the same intensity and job preparation as an in-person bootcamp but it can take you from an absolute zero-knowledge beginner to someone who can use HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Bootstrap, jQuery, Node, Express, MongoDB etc. to make working web applications (and understand why they work).

Its main strength is the quality of its instructors. Colt is obviously a talented, thoughtful and passionate teacher. He is excellent at explaining difficult concepts in accessible terms and has clearly put a great deal of thought into the design of the course. Not to mention that heā€™s also funny and engaging. Later in the course Ian and Elie prove equally clear and helpful.

Its other great strengths are its practicality and focus. There is much more emphasis on making applications that work rather than on abstract theory (though Colt does a great job of explaining the concepts you need to know and Elieā€™s videos go into greater depth when it comes to JavaScript). By the end of the course you will have a great foundation in JavaScript and Node.js and will be able to use them to make real-world applications, not just to complete exercises. This focus on JavaScript means you get into much more depth than if you were to just jump around between languages and frameworks.

There are still things that would be desirable in the course if it were to rival an actual coding bootcamp: the Git and Github section needs fleshing out (though Ian makes his Git course available for free); there could be more emphasis on APIs; it would be nice to at least cover AJAX if not something as complex as Angular or React.

My only real gripe with the course in its current form is that the videos for the YelpCamp project donā€™t currently get as far through the refactoring as Colt originally promised. That said, Ian has been adding new material there on a regular basis so that problem is gradually going away.

Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed this course, learned loads, and feel much more confident in my programming abilities. I would certainly recommend this course for anyone looking to get into web development.

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Iā€™m currently taking (again) my courses in FCC but as motivation, I bought the course for USD 10 in the independence day (thanks USA); the only thing I gotta say is that I feel no remorse or guilt for acquire the course. Itā€™s excellent!

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