Lynda vs Udemy >>> which is the best

Hello @YaserHamame01.
What I can make out of this thread is that you are looking for a well structured course where someone holds your hand and leads you from a total noob to a full-stack/ front-end developer. I am afraid no such course exists though there are some which will pretty much expose you to the fundamentals of almost everything and then it is up to you to consolidate the knowledge gained. One of them is FCC. I suggest you start by identifying what it is that you want to learn, list them down and then start learning them one after another.

Regarding which one of the two is better between Udemy and Lynda, I donā€™t know. I suggest you look at each component of the MERN stack and look for courses specific for that component. For example if you want to learn react, search for react courses on Udemy or Lynda or even a free platform like FCC. Most of these paid learning platforms have ratings and reviews which can give you an idea of whether others who took the course before you found it useful or not. I believe it will give you an idea of which course will meet your expectations.

Finally the MERN stack is quite wide. My hones opinion is that it is difficult to find a course which covers all the stack in depth even if some claim to do so. I suggest you start with fundamentals of HTML, CSS and Vanilla JS . You can then pick up React and progress to Node/Express and MongoDB. If you do all of them at once I am afraid you will end up frustrating yourself.

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Hello,

I admit that the FCC is the best direct route to take me where I want, but I have read that it contains unnecessary points and takes a lot of my time.

the challenges are not mandatory, if you donā€™t want to di the jQuery section, do not do it, etc

I donā€™t feel comfortable and confident if I cross any section of the course.

you just said that there are useless parts, if for you jQuery is useless, not learn it, if SASS is useless, avoid it

if you are talking of the vanilla language, itā€™s a thing, but if you are not interested in a library or similar, you donā€™t need to learn it

the front end libraries and frameworks certificate can be obtained just learning react, just use react to create all projects

Hey @YaserHamame01!

I understand why you are struggling this much.
You are making a big decision to try and learn something new and you donā€™t want to screw up.

I was the same way when I first started 6 months ago. I too signed up for udemy classes because it made me feel safe that I could complete something with the comfort of a instructors walking me through step by step.

A lot of beginners feel this way.

But once I finished the course, and looked at my projects they looked really cool but once I tried to build something on my own I had no clue where to start.

I totally understand that it is not fun trying your best to learn something and continuing to fail over and over. It makes you question if you are even cut out for this.

But I promise you what ever path you choose, once you start building projects on your own and have small victories along the way your confidence starts to get stronger.

It did for me. :smiley:

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@YaserHamame01

So essentially FCC has content that you think is not necessary for you but again you donā€™t want to skip stuff. I guess you want a course which teaches exactly what you want to learn from A to Z i.e. MERN stack. I donā€™t know of any such course. I think one of the best options is searching on the paid platforms and looking at the course reviews and ratings.

Hello, how are you?

Iā€™m learning web development and Iā€™ve got JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures Certification in FreeCodeCamp, and Iā€™ve taken a Colt Steel and Angela Yu course at Udemy and the first course of Full-Stack Web Development with React.

Iā€™ve tried to follow a lot at FCC, but I find things are very new and have to look a lot for a video explanation. Currently, Iā€™m considering taking the React course - The Complete Guide (incl Hooks, React Router, Redux) by Maximilian SchwarzmĆ¼ller and the Complete Node.js Developer Course (3rd Edition) by Andrew Mea.

I donā€™t know how to coordinate between taking Udemy courses first and then proceeding with FCC or taking both.
Some at FCC advised me to take it and look for what I needed during my follow-up at FCC. At the same time, Iā€™m thinking of taking a REACT course from Lynda.
ā–²

FCC does have a lot of free courses published on YouTube but the curriculum itself isnā€™t a great resource for learning.

I look at the curriculum more as a very solid guide or path to becoming a fulltime paid web developer. Paired with the projects you can end each certificate with some decent portfolio projects.

But the rest is up to you to follow the ā€œRead, Search Askā€ loop and part of that may be picking up paid courses and seek other resources to help you along your journey.

Sounds like you have a few in mind so I would just go with whichever makes sense to you and try to continue checking off FCC challenges along the way.

Thatā€™s the strategy I took and I ended up securing a job in this industry before I ever completed a certificate and now 5 years later Iā€™m revisiting it just for fun :slight_smile:

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I think the projects I did on my own are only projects that were from Freecodecamp, I still need to learn a lot before starting a real project on my own.

I think freeCodeCamp has helped me and forced me to build a site on my own since I started learning with it, but I ran into some difficulties and stopped. Now Iā€™m thinking about going back to freeCodeCamp and doing the exercises to REACT, then Iā€™m thinking of attending The Complete Guide (incl Hooks, React Router, Redux) by Maximilian SchwarzmĆ¼ller.

After completing the Maximilian SchwarzmĆ¼ller course, I return to complete Freecodecamp exercises and projects, and so on to ā€¦

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Iā€™d be careful. Iā€™m counting you taking 3 courses, and considering 3 more courses not including anything you did from freeCodeCamp. This is a lot of courses, and could mean your stuck in tutorial hell.

This is the most telling sign, because you will always run into difficulties when building a project. How you handle such difficulties is how you know if your in tutorial hell. If you throw up your hands and look for another tutorial ā€œbecause you donā€™t get it yet and need to learnā€ your in tutorial hell. However if you run into such difficulties and continue to grind your way out of it by googling, and trying different things, then your good, and probably not in tutorial hell.

To put it simply, you will always be running into issues and you will need to figure them out to continue. If your waiting for a day where you can start, and finish a project without any problems, such day will never come. Building stuff is hard, programming is finicky, technology is always changing, and new problems always come up. If you donā€™t run into an issue now, you might in the future, regardless knowing how to tackle it is how you build experience.

You donā€™t gain such experience watching someone build something perfectly through a course or tutorial. A course/tutorial presents 1 path to building something, when there are really infinite paths, and infinite ways to screw it up. Running into problems teaches you more than elegantly flying thru everything perfectly.

Donā€™t get me wrong courses and tutorials are great to teach you that one path, but that path isnā€™t what actual development is, and thinking it is is how you end up in tutorial hell.

The idea of ā€œprojects firstā€ is somewhat ā€œpainfulā€ in the sense you will get stuck, and you will have trouble and you will need to go out and get help and learn more. However, I consider that how you learn more and gain the experience that you need to build your own stuff. When you build your own stuff there will only be some vague ā€œhappy pathā€ talked about in the tutorial, and a bunch of landmines of problems you can run into. The goal being not to doge all the landmines and walking the happy path, the goal is to get hit with those landmines, stand back up, and walk it off and continue the march to building what you need or want. That is development.


So I suggest to maybe dive back into building stuff and facing those difficulties head on, google your way, thru em, bash your head, understand the problem as best you can and find solutions to said problems. It might take some time, grit and a lot of googling but you will figure them out given enough time!

Good luck, keep building, keep learning, keep stepping on them landmines ;D

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