I’m thinking about a career change to web development. If I go for it, I’ll self teach online part-time for quite awhile to get ready. For front-end developing which certificates (if any) do you recommend I work toward getting? I know of the following…
FreeCodeCamp’s Responsive Web Design Certification (300 hrs) and Javascript Algorithms and Data Structures Certification (300 hrs)
WOW‘s Certified Web Developer Novice (CWDVA-novice) and Certified Web and Mobile App Developer Novice (CWMA-novice)
CIW’s Web Foundations Associate and Site Development Associate.
IWA’s CWP Associate Certificate, CWP Enterprise Developer Certificate, CWP Application Developer Certificate, and CWP Web Developer Certificate.
I personally only know of FCC’s certificates, and of those I recommend trying to get as many of the front-end related certificates available.
Besides FCC use your own judgement as to if the content is worth learning, don’t focus that much on the certificate itself. Most certificates don’t mean much, especially when it comes to web development. It’s vastly better to just gain raw experience doing the work. If you want to be front-end, design skills, responsive design skills, JS skills, React skills, Redux skills, CSS, HTML, accessibility, and SEO optimizations are all up there.
If getting one of these certificate means you had to learn most of those skills and not just “take a test and get a cert” then it might be worth it. Just remember, taking a test is nothing like building what you want to build.
Finally, I recommend learning by doing. Taking courses and studying is ok to learn whats out there, but you gotta use what you “learn”, otherwise you forget it. It’s like math, you can read an entire math book, but unless you have a photographic memory your going to forget everything unless you use what you read. Learn what can be done, how it can be done, then take what you learned and apply it to building projects.
Good luck getting the certs you do choose, and good luck building stuff
PS. Be sure to host all the stuff you build on github, showing off what you have built is vastly better than showing off certifications most of the time.
