Need advice on learning web development

I’ve been actively doing FCC challenges for 15 days and I think in 2 days I will reach the intermediate algorithms sections(provided I create Twitch.tv API project in 2 days,like I did with all others prior to this). When I first finished the HTML5 and CSS3 section of FCC - my first thoughts were “Misleading challenge section name,there was 0 HTML5 and CSS3 here,it was all HTML 4 and CSS 2” (later on I realised that Bootstrap is actually HTML5 and CSS3) and I felt that this was very incomplete. The JS course seemed to be ok,but I felt like some things were missing here. jQuery coverage was basic but enough for the projects. Projects made me learn a lot,but there are some things I noticed that I should know about.

Although the challenge rules say that I shouldn’t look at the example project codes or at the other people’s project codes while I’m making that project,I broke the rule every time and I looked at them just to take a look at the code. Although I didn’t copy and paste anything from those,I noticed that pretty much all of them used HTML and CSS pre-processor things like Jade ,SASS/SCSS even Angular JS libary on JS part on one of them and I felt like I am too far behind with my HTML,CSS,Bootstrap and jQuery stuff. I never tried using other libraries on my projects because I don’t know where to start and for what things I need a library and what libraries I need.

I decided that I need to learn about HTML and CSS pre-processors (and maybe more CSS3,although Brackets IDE helps me discover attributes through auto-completion but there must be other ways to learn it) and learn React.js but I don’t know good (and free) resources on them that teach that stuff and I don’t know when and where to start.I hope the React and Sass challenges will be there in next 60+ days under the Data Visualization category (60 days is the estimate time it will take me to do the rest of the Front-End web development certification),but what other resources I can try before I reach Sass and React challenges on FCC?

Sorry for this long wall of text.

I guess these are good for the start. I’ll keep an eye on the posts in forums for the “resources” document you’re working on. Thank you for sharing this

Hi,

I can recomend a couple of books for html and css

html and css, john ducket, beginner level

Responsive web design with css and html. . This one will really give you a good handle on how to make websites responsive without bootstrap. But i’d read the other one first if you want to start at the beginning.

And then there’s plenty of online resourses for Bootsrtap and good docs if you were using bootstrap.

I would get a handle on the basics before using pre-processors for sure. I had a quick look at pre processors and thought it just looked like adding a whole new syntax so i decided i had enough on my plate and to stick with learning the basics - I don’t regret it one little bit.

This looks like it’ll be good when it’s ready. It reminds me of the Odin project, which is a good thing because I thought the only thing missing from FCC was a directory for external reference to enrich the parts of the curriculum that are not intended to be a focus.

I think i’ll go and partake in your list above, I’m very comfortable now with html/css and media queries so maybe it is time to look into haml and sass, especially sass because I’ve run into the need for variables in css a couple of times now.

On the Odin project, yeh they’re very good at curating, but when I looked through it, it felt a little neglected with dead links and articles from 5 years ago - i’m not sure if its still like that.

There was a trial period for me as a beginner between FCC and ODIN. FCC won, partly because of the neglect.

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All good news really @P1xt , I’d like to learn more about testing as right now it really consists of just loads of logging. (check the console on this!). I’m really looking forward to the data vis section too - I think it might be my forte as I somehow like a good chart :smiley:

As for Odin, I quite liked the style there too but I don’t think i’m qualified to know which is better, just that they both seem to work ok for me. I think FCC is tougher but that forced me to be more self sufficient which is a plus. I will be really pleased if they have updated Odin, I will most likely use it to get a dedicated backend language under my belt after FCC unless I find an equivilent for Python (as I believe it may be better for me if I do end up a fan of data vis).

thanks for posting this! I have the same issues as 799arman - I’m sure many of us go through the challenges and are fairly excited. Once you get to the projects (for me its the portfolio page) you realize how much you don’t know. Looking at other people’s portfolios reinforces this. Thanks again!

Ah thanks for that, it’s a great link, I had wondered what I was going to do about that as I keep reading the words “data science” almost everywhere I go. It’s like a damned buzzword on Quora.

Excellent, bookmarked :thumbsup:

The easiest and organized way would be moving along this path:

  1. Learn what a Website is, Client-side scripting, Server-side scripting.

  2. How websites actually work. Get to know the complete server traceroute.

  3. Learn HTML, CSS and a tincture of JS for flavor :wink: .
    HTML is the skeleton of the website.
    CSS will provide the muscles and skin to your site.
    JavaScript is what makes your website dance.
    My advice would be to use CodePen for learning and putting stuff together.

  4. Time to move on to server-side scripting
    Start with PHP
    Create forms and stuff.
    Validate forms with JavaScript

The easy part is over. Three cheers for you. Now, you have to be specific about what are you going to do. Choose most appropriate language, platform, and framework.

  1. Learn how to setup databases, use SQL queries, manipulate inputs.

  2. What is better than creating a personal website. So get on with it. Build yourself a cool site, show it off to your friends. Do you know what the best part is? You did it on your own.

  3. Stuck somewhere? Head on to Stack Overflow. There will always be someone to help you out.

Be Inspired. Think Creative. :slight_smile:

nice sharing thank you !!

i recommend you to use html css by jhon ducket and if you have any query feel freely to ask quantilytics