Learning Web Dev Series – Part 3: All That Front End

Posted by Gjermund Bjaanes on February 22, 2015

This will be a short update about my progress on learning web development.

Last time I mentioned I wanted to get more fundamentals in place before starting to use things like Bootstrap and other utilities that lets you skip a lot of details. I also said that I would do some courses on CodeSchool (and I have). I even got some tips for great learning resources on the web.

 

CodeSchool

CodeSchool have their courses lined up into what they call Paths. They are basically courses lined up in some useful order.

I have done quite a few courses on CodeSchool, and they are really great!

I started out on the HTML/CSS path where i finished the following courses:

  • Front-end Foundations
  • Front-end Formations
  • CSS Cross-Country
  • Journey Into Mobile

I also wanted to do something else than just HTML & CSS, so I started down the JavaScript path as well. There i have finished:

  • JavaScript Road Trip Part 1
  • JavaScript Road Trip Part 2
  • JavaScript Road Trip Part 3
  • Shaping up with Angular.JS (I was just really curious)

 

Next up

I feel like I get very much back from doing these courses, and I will continue doing them. There are a few more HTML/CSS courses I want to do, and there is at least 5 courses left on the JavaScript path i want to finish.

BUT, that is not all I am going to do from now on. I will start coding on more small projects to really make all this learning stick. I have done that throughout this journey, but I want to spend even more time doing “real” coding.

As an example of what I have started doing:

http://bjaanes.github.io/

I want to create a personal page that is just about me, and I want to create it from the bottom up myself. I have started doing the design (lending/stealing bits and peaces from around the web) on my own, but I feel really inadequate when it comes to design, so that is something I might consider learning more about as time goes on. For now though, I will focus on the coding.

All in all, I am very happy that I realized that my previous path was a wrong one. Learning more fundamentals from people who know what they are talking about (hopefully!) seems like a much better path than just learning to create website really fast. I need to have a strong fundament before doing too much

 

The Journey – Visualized

I have a visual aid to help show where I am currently at on my journey. I have created a “prezi” presentation to visualize my path more clearly.

It will be updated through the course of this series – so it might be longer than the current post you are reading.

Follow me on Twitter: @gjermundbjaanes