Hi people, I was wondering what should I learn apart from the full stack developer course on freeCodeCamp. And what should be my expectations from the first job?
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Hi @hrs070!
I am also a beginner but I found some articles on FCC news that might interest you.
Hope that helps!
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Hi there,
Why do you think you should learn something apart from FCC?
How about finishing what youāve started and asking afterwards?
It just increases complexity when you do multiple things at the same time.
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Iām definitely going to finish this course. What I meant by something apart is like Data Structures and c/c++, etc. for interviews and all. Because Iām learning web dev in order to get a good job. So any advice for that?
I see. My advice is to finish the course first while taking notes about what you think is missing in your knowledge. This differs from person to person because everyone has a different background.
If you ask questions now for problems in 6 months, your answers will be old then. So you have to do the work in 6 months nevertheless. So I wouldnāt waste my time now.
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Why would you need to know c/c++ for web dev jobs?
Donāt get me wrong C is kind of cool but it might be best to focus on getting really good at javascript for web development.
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By the end of the full stack developer course you should have a very broad set of skills and a fairly comprehensive portfolio. Thereās a chance youāll land your first dev job before you finish or shortly after.
What I would focus on after you complete it is starting a new project from scratch or expanding on one of your existing projects and tie as many of your skills together in one place.
It can be as simple as a todo app. I think people underestimate just how much you can show off in a simple app. This app will be the primary portfolio piece you share with employers as well as your primary area for diving deeper and refining your skills as well as exercising new ones.
Hereās just a small list of things you can add to a simple todo app:
- User authentication
- User roles and permissions
- Password resets
- Multi-device session management (can delete sessions open on other devices)
- Two Factor Auth
- Configurable light/dark themes
- Localization of static content
- Localization of dynamic content
- List sharing (can share a link with a friend and let them see your private list)
- Profile management
- profile photo uploads
- locale preferences
- display name preference
- Realtime notifications (if another user completes a task on one of your lists)
- Public API (setup management of api tokens and create the ability for users to integrate with other apps like Slack or Discord)
Hereās a list of things you can implement just from a tooling/tech perspective:
- Unit testing
- End-to-end testing
- Dev/Prod parity (your dev environment closely resembles your production environment, maybe using Docker or a VM)
- Code Linting/Formatting (same rules across all contributors and automated)
- Continuous integration (where you run tests and linting)
- Continuous delivery (automatically deploy your site when a branch is merged to
main) - Documentation (API docs, internal docs etc)
- Git workflows
The list can just go on and on. And you can be as shallow or as deep as you want on all of these points. But if you can check off everything on this list you have a crazy portfolio piece and it would be hard to not look at you as a very serious candidate when reviewing entry-level/junior applications.
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sure, gonna try to complete the first set of projects today and get the certificate. 
first of all, thank you for replying. Your answer mentions everything that I am eager to learn like user authentication, roles, permissions, localization, and all the testing methods. Does this course cover all these topics? Since Iām only at the first module that is the HTML & CSS, I donāt know whether these topics are covered or not. Also, the project that I want to make requires these functonalities.
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As you dive deeper into the curriculum you will start to learn all of that stuff.
Specifically the last two javascript sections before the python sections. (quality assurance and API and microservices certificate)
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Youāre welcome 
Iām not 100% sure if everything in that list is covered but you will at least get exposure to most of whatās in that list.
Itās been a while since Iāve looked at the whole curriculum and I never ended up finishing it myself. But just judging from the projects Iāve seen people post the curriculum covers a lot.
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Jessica is absolutely right! c/c++ arenāt being used much in business development. JavaScript is essential and Nodejs and related frameworks/libraries is being used everywhere. Python would be the only other actual language as it is used heavily in ML/AI and IoT. C++ might be useful if you have connections for becoming a gaming developer āHa unlikely and poor pay for the knowledge needed.ā.
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Wow, this is an incredible list and I appreciate this very well thought out answer and very pertinent to my specific situation. I am going to use this and get started checking it off right away! Thank you very very much!
I would be very interested in any insights or advice for developing Test-Driven skills, Iāve seen so few tutorials that really go in-depth into Test-Driven development?
I would like to add something that Iāve been working on myself and that is to create a code snippet base for quickly creating default projects. Iāve been working on an alias that builds a linux directory structure that I use for a base eCommerce structure and another for a base webBlog and base toDo webApp. I have finished this and now working on a step-by-step minimum daily project build practice to reinforce the understanding and familiarity with the structure of Nodejs apps.
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btw, here is the alias for building the directory structure and a few files. Havenāt finished yet but itās a start!
alias qwikShop=āmkdir -p qwikShop/{controllers,models,public,routes,views} qwikShop/views/includes qwikShop/public/css; touch qwikShop/app.js qwikShop/routes/{admin.js,shop.js} qwikShop/public/css/main.cssā
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No problem!
Iām not aware of too many great resources on TDD in the JavaScript stack to be honest. The courses Iāve taken were all in PHP. I just transferred the TDD skills I picked up in PHP over to JavaScript and never really took any courses.
Itās such a big topic too but my advice on it is to learn a little bit about each kind of test (unit, functional/integration/feature, browser/end-to-end).
The easiest to start with are browser tests in my opinion. Use Cypress. You just want to get the feel of that red, green, refactor cycle and not worry about whether your tests are blazing fast, or if they touch the database or whatever.
Youāll naturally push yourself to get better at testing as you come across pain points, and itāll come to you with time and practice.
Creating a tool to quickly scaffold projects is a great idea!
I used to do that kind of stuff all the time and itās good practice. I used to make and use a lot of boilerplates too. Just let me hit the ground running. Now days, most of the major frameworks already have CLIās that do all the scaffolding for you, plus theyāre extensible so the community writes all sorts of templates and plugins for these tools.
Makes building your own scaffolders and boilerplates feel more academic now, but itās still a fun thing to do!
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Unfortunately itās in PHP but this is the course that really helped me a TON when I was first trying to become proficient with TDD: https://course.testdrivenlaravel.com/
I asked on Twitter and someone suggested
And actually if you just go check out the tweet thereās been a few more suggestions and they may keep coming in
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Such incredible advice thank you so much! Being much older and coming from the dot-com crash era only have built one website since this information is helpful beyond what I can express. I know Iām going to have to prove myself beyond what most others would have to do because of my age ā58ā, the other problem I have is I am particular to my employment not having to have to work. I really just want to work at Zwift.com, because I enjoy the platform so much that I want to improve upon it! I think it is hard for recruiters to understand that I may have credentials to be an executive, but I have no interest in positions like that. I just want to build things and be of help in the best way possible for something I really believe in!
While you are going through the FCC curriculum, I would start building your online presence and network alongside that.
Start writing about what you are learning, set up your GitHub and LinkedIn profiles, and create a portfolio site that will help you stand out.
Getting hired as a junior dev with no experience can be tough, so you really need to make yourself stand out and make yourself attractive to employers.
Employers hire junior devs for their potential, so make sure you communicate that you are eager to learn and humble about taking advice and being coached by others.
Building relationships with others is huge! The majority of developers donāt get hired through traditional job boards and applications, they get hired through their network in some way.
Start doing this stuff now, while you are still learning, and you will put yourself in a much better position when you are ready to start working.
A few resources I really like:
Building a great portfolio site - https://www.joshwcomeau.com/effective-portfolio/
Building relationships with other people in the industry - https://www.amazon.com/Reach-Out-Strategy-Increase-Influence-ebook/dp/B0743MSXNH
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