The Best Udemy Web Development Courses + Top Free Courses

Hi freeCodeCamp people!

I researched & published an extensive resource on the best Udemy courses. I figured it would be useful to the freeCodeCamp community. Here’s a quick summary:

Best General Web Development Courses on Udemy:

  • The Complete Web Developer in 2019: Zero to Mastery by Andrei Neagoie
  • The Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele
  • The Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp by Colt Steele

Best JavaScript Courses on Udemy:

  • The Modern JavaScript Bootcamp (2019) by Andrew Mead
  • Modern JavaScript From The Beginning by Brad Traversy
  • Accelerated JavaScript Training by Maximilian Schwarzmüller
  • Accelerated ES6 JavaScript Training by Maximilian Schwarzmüller
  • ES6 JavaScript: The Complete Developer’s Guide by Stephen Grider
  • JavaScript: Understanding the Weird Parts by Anthony Alicea

Best React Courses on Udemy:

  • React 16 - The Complete Guide (incl. React Router 4 & Redux) by Maximilian Schwarzmüller
  • Modern React with Redux by Stephen Grider
  • Advanced React and Redux by Stephen Grider

Feel free to click through on the page above for:

  • The reasoning for the choices above.
  • My selection of the best Udemy courses for: SQL, Python, Android, Java, WordPress & Unity.
  • A link to activate $9.99 Udemy site sale: To save you time rooting around for the best deals!
  • The top free (or 100% off) Udemy courses that I’m aware of (80+ courses in various subjects).
  • Tips to make the most of Udemy

Also, I’d love to see discussion about which are the best Udemy courses from people who’ve taken these or any others that they thought were the best for a particular goal, thanks!

I hope this helps those who weren’t sure where to begin to get started improving their development skills - Good luck!

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Hey just a heads up, a lot of the links for the Javascript courses don’t go anywhere. I haven’t checked the rest in the other sections. Like the main course title links all seem to be pointed to coupon links instead of their course pages.
For a quick example the “ES6 JavaScript: The Complete Developer’s Guide” in your guide goes to : https://www.smartmoves.life/to/udemy-es6-javascript-the-complete-developers-guide-coupon (which takes me to a 404 page)

Instead of something like this: https://www.udemy.com/javascript-es6-tutorial/

Otherwise, looks like a great guide!

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Well spotted @dlyons and thanks for taking the time to let me know - I’ve fixed the links. Please accept these rather cool shades :dark_sunglasses: as a token of my appreciation!

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I must say that Brad Traversy isn t a good instructor… I followed a NodeJS course and he has no idea how NodeJS works he just copy paste code without knowing himself how it works under the hood plus the fact he doesn t explain almost anything at all. He just wants you to blindly follow without knowing why is like that. My advice: stay away from this instructor.

On the other hand Tony Alicea is a great instructor, he explains thoroughly concepts in Javascript and he also has another course about NodeJS where he explains how it works really good.
Also Maximilian he s a nice instructor too he explains what he does and you can also check his youtube channel. There you can find lots of projects for free.
Another javascript course that worth mentioning is: The Complete JavaScript Course 2018: Build Real Projects!, Jonas Schmedtmann. You actually build some projects and help you put in practice what you ve learned which is important imo.

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Thank you for your input @Osiris! Some people do like Brad Traversy’s style but opinions may vary of course! Agreed that Jonas has a great course on JavaScript as well.

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“I must say that Brad Traversy isn t a good instructor… I followed a NodeJS course and he has no idea how NodeJS works he just copy paste code without knowing himself how it works under the hood plus the fact he doesn t explain almost anything at all.”

Ok, so I thought it was just me regarding his teaching style. However, I’ve noticed a rash of coding/programming YouTube channel “instructors” that have the same style and what I’ve concluded is that although they may be professionally in the field their knowledge isn’t on par with the videos they produce. What I’m saying is they seem to just be regurgitating coding examples from sites like W3Scools and even other YT channels just to produce content that they can make a buck on. I mean it’s clever but not intellectually honest in my opinion. I’d rather pay a few dollars for a Udemy course or FCC (free) / SoloLearn courses where at least you have the opportunity to grasp some of the concepts with the challenges/projects provided though not perfect either.

Just my opinion based on the observations I’ve made.

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No offense intended at all, but have you personally taken those courses in your list, or are you recommending them solely based on some nebulous “extensive research”? I feel that the FCC audience should be able to take your post in the proper context.

Funnily enough, I thought the exact same of Rob Percival in his The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0—he copy-pasted code (very rarely writing it from scratch), usually from Stack Overflow, without seeming to know how it worked and didn’t explain anything about it. I thought it was very strange especially when he had to Google a basic algorithm on how to determine when a number is prime, and copy-pasted a code snippet from Stack Overflow, when he purports to have a degree in Math. Anyone who has a degree in Math shouldn’t need to Google that, they should know how to do that!

I’ve said it before and will say it again here, no one should waste their money or time on Rob Percival’s course. That was the first ever course I bought on Udemy, which nearly made me write off the entire platform—but it’s a good thing I didn’t, because Colt Steele’s course (The Web Developer Bootcamp), on the other hand, is actually really good, along with some others on Udemy.

But by and large, I do find Udemy overall to be hit & miss—I’ve now done a handful of courses that I thought were really good, but most of them have either ended up being “average” or “disappointing” in one way or another. In my experience, the great courses don’t outweigh the inferior ones, but fortunately they’re good enough to make Udemy useful.

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Ye indeed he might copy some code and throw it there cause definitely he has no idea how things work. Even in NodeJS he was making newbie mistakes like for example restarting the server after he made changes in the views files… and so on.
The purpose of a course is to teach you not copy paste code and imitate. If you don t understand what happens there it s 0 progress. In this case I prefer to follow pro instructors because those ones can make you understand. That s the point of programming. Many times he said like, it s ok guys you don t have to know what this does. Excuse me??? How can you say that as an instructor? He doesn t know himself either. He might know what that code does sometimes but he doesn t know why it does that or how is possible and it has to do with important fundamentals.

Well I followed his course too… Also another huge mistake. I tried to force myself following him… but after a while I just… couldn t. I honestly had the feeling I knew more CSS and HTML than he did and I was in the beginning… I ve also seen a post someones asking if he should follow his course or something like that and I told that person to stay away form him really… What bothered me was that I ve seen many people leaving such a good feedback for his course.
My eyes were bleeding when I was reading those comments. Prob they were new and it was their first course. If you watch other instructors that are really good at that you can make a comparison.
Also in the moment he was recording some dude entered in his room I believe and he started to talk to that guy. Did he actually hear about editing his video? I was like what s going on there? Is this a prank? lol

Ye he graduated Cambridge I m pretty sure of that. I also graduated Harvard and I m hanging around here just to prove myself my programming skills on FCC :rofl:

You re right. I don t trust those courses anymore I try to spend more time reading feedback those ones between 1 and 3 stars because most of the time, not 100% though, they are right somehow.
Sometimes are those people who can t ever get satisfied even when the course is good but I have to figure myself who is honest and who is like that. I also scroll to see what the course contains to have an idea if it covers good content, but it s a risk in general.

I think they should filter these instructors somehow because you can t really trust users ratings since they re newbies most of them they think that things go the way these bad instructors expose to them even though they have no idea that they do or use bad practices.

I saw lots of positive comments on those bad courses but we can t really blame the students cause they come with 0 knowledge but it s a bad thing because they will write bad code thinking that is good code.
I think that Udemy is too overrated because too many people pretend to be instructors and only few of them actually know what they re doing.

@astv99 Yes I do have direct experience of the courses but rather than just post an individual personal opinion, the goal of my page is to capture the general sentiment regarding which are the best courses on Udemy: This is why I’m keen to get feedback from this and other respected communities. I realize that opinions may vary as to which is the best, so ultimately each person should decide for themselves: I’m proposing a shortlist to save people time. Also, I’ll be keeping the page updated as new information and new courses come to my attention.

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I’m doing Traversy’s Modern Javascript course and its pretty good. Sometimes he doesnt explain everything but i understand it. I took his course because he’s doing a lot of projects and i learned a lot of modern javascript. However, i dont think that course is for beginners in javascript. Im planning to take his NodeJs course next because its newer than Colt’s node js sections.

I did only html and css from Rob Percival. I prefered his course over Colt’s because he covered PHP and in my country PHP is 3rd most used language and node js is rarely used. . I realized Colt is better instructor so i bought his course and its much better than Rob’s.

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I just finished Modern Javascript by Andrew Mead, and I must say its really good. He explains everything extremely well. I also have Traversy’s Modern Javascript, he covers a few more topics but Andrew Mead’s teaching style is way better.
I would recommend this course over most others, I did Colt Steele’s Bootcamp but that course just feels outdated now. Even though Colt is a great instructor I don’t think spending all that time on his course is worth it now.

Here’s the link Modern Javascript - Andrew Mead

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Good points @rishabhkariyana. I’ve been thinking along similar lines lately. I’ve updated the General Web Development and JavaScript recommendations in my article to reflect this. Thanks for your input!

Nice site you have…thanks

Thank you for the compliment @tadejdanev! Glad you found it useful :slight_smile:

Traversy isn’t a terrible teacher, the problem is that development moves quickly, and you need to keep this stuff updated. Mead, Grider, and Schwarzmuller are all very good teachers, but also are pretty aggressive about making sure that their courses are updated. One convention that Andrew Mead uses in his Node.js courses that literally all other teachers need to copy is providing the exact versions of packages/dependencies that he’s using so that students won’t run into the headache of versionitis and breaking changes.

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currently i am learning from FCC but which course is best to start with for javascript?
The one taught by Andrew Mead or by jonas schmedtmann.
I am new to coding don’t know anything about algorithms and arrays so consider that before recommending.
Thanks in advance.

The Andrew Mead JavaScript bootcamp is very, very good, you can’t go wrong with that.

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what about for Node? I heard Andrew Mead is good but I’ve always heard bad things about Rob Percival and it looks like they teach the Node class together

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Rob might have co-written some of it, but the presentation is all Andrew.