If youâre referring to coding âbest practicesâ and actual demonstration of skill by the instructors, some of the instructors on Udemy are certainly better than others. Iâve completed (or partially done) about 20 courses so far by different instructors, and even out of that tiny sample size, have found that in general, the not-so-good instructors vastly outnumber the better onesâand some of these not-so-good instructors have pretty bad holes in their knowledge too!
This is mostly because Udemy does absolutely no âvettingâ of the instructors who offer courses on the platformâtheyâll host a course by anyone who uploads one, whether that person actually knows the topic or not, or is a qualified instructor or not (and remember: just because someone is a good developer doesnât automatically mean theyâre also a good instructorâIâve run into some âinstructorsâ on Udemy that Iâm sure are good developers but canât teach to save their lives!). This point cannot be repeated enough, and is the major contributing reason why course quality varies so much on Udemy.
If your question is more of wanting to know if completing certain courses on Udemy are good enough to learn pro-level skills, Iâd say this is definitely not the case. Even the best courses that Iâd recommend on Udemy often donât showcase skills that you need to learn as either a front-end or back-end (or full-stack) developer. So yes, even doing the top few courses that Iâd recommend on Udemy is still just absolutely scratching the surface.
For example, 3 of the top courses that Iâd recommend on Udemy are Colt Steeleâs âThe Web Developer Bootcampâ, Brad Schiffâs âGit a Web Developer Jobâ, and Andrew Meadâs âComplete React Developer Courseâ. Theyâre all great courses and absolutely worth doing, but completing those 3 is still just the beginning towards getting into web development, whether thatâs front-end or back-end. Theyâre only a start to a solid foundation. You need to keep going and learning as much as you can about a ton of different things.
Taking a look at this will reveal a lot of the topics that you should learn: https://github.com/kamranahmedse/developer-roadmap
Furthermore, you should absolutely not be limiting yourself to Udemyâs platform to comprehensively learn web development via online courses. Putting aside other resources like Google and StackOverflow (which are also essential), and books (whether ebooks or in print), there are definitely better platforms for learning web development:
- Lynda / LinkedIn Learning
- Pluralsight
- SitePoint Premium
- Frontend Masters
- Linux Academy
- MongoDB University (free!)
For the topic of learning HTML5 specifically, you wonât be able to beat Lynda. I havenât found a better platform than Lynda for learning HTML5 in particularânone of the other platforms have anywhere close to the coverage on HTML5 that Lynda does. Itâs worth taking advantage of Lyndaâs free 1-month trial to do all of the HTML5 courses by James Williamson, he really knows his stuff and is probably the most qualified individual to teach the topic!