A Udemy course I completed to become a web developer.
Disclaimer: I am writing this post without sponsorship from Udemy, the instructor of the course or any affiliates.
The Course
Angela Yu’s complete web development bootcamp on Udemy. Here’s the link if you’d like to check it out:
The Complete 2023 Web Development Bootcamp
My Experience
I enrolled in this course around March 2022 with the goal to finish it by the end of the year. I finished the course in August 2022. I ended up skipping the Web3 content as it wasn’t my employment goal. I marked them complete in order to gain the certificate of completion.
There are other ways that I’m also going to make posts about (like MDN documentation, freeCodeCamp and #100Devs) but if you’re into watching an instructor-led course then keep reading!
What I liked
What I liked most about this course was how the instructor went about introducing topics. I feel like the learning order was on-point and she layered in some tips about how to learn, when to rest and consistently reminded the student to try to do the work themselves. Important things such as reading product documenation and how failing can actually teach you more than success were pressed upon.
I found her easy to listen to and you could tell that she’s had experience teaching in the past. At the same time, she showed a bit of her own personality in the lessons, example projects and video content which I found to be a lot better than a very static-sounding set of videos.
What I disliked
The course is always being updated, but the tech world evolves faster than the content that exists for it. I don’t think that’s a fault of the product (like this course) but just know that some of the videos and content that you’ll consume here may be out of date. Any solution I found to one of these issues I made sure to put in the course’s Q&A section so chances are you’ll see my name a time or two! I hope it helps but those are probably already out of date as well.
Overall
This course taught me to be confident in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and some frameworks like Bootstrap and React. It taught me about front and back-end development including server routing, databases and working with APIs. It filled in the blanks of being a new person in tech such as how NPM packages are made and how to effectively read documentation to get answers.
I was able to create at least four projects to showcase on my portfolio site as well as built the portfolio site itself. There were many other unhosted projects that contributed to my overall knolwedge that I kept stored as GitHub repositories. I’d say that it gave me enough experience to be confident in applying to junior-level development roles (or roles that don’t specify a level so long as the requirements match the course).
Between August 2022 and November 2022 I revamped my resume, updated my LinkedIn Profile and using the skills learned in this course landed my role at Best Buy.
There are many ways to learn, but I hope that I can help others to see this course as a valuable resource for changing careers. It definitely helped me!
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