Note: I originally wrote this story on my personal blog and I am just re-sharing it here. Oh and there are no affiliate links, don't worry, I am not getting paid to say this.
Over the years, I've found out that watching video courses and reading books helps me level up in my web development career. I've watched a lot of courses from different course platforms, and in this blog post, I'll share some of them.
When I finished college, I noticed that I am lacking knowledge to start working as a web developer intern somewhere so I was hungry for more information and knowledge, and I found that on various video course platforms and blogs.
The first video course platform and blog I found useful was...
TutsPlus Code
TutsPlus Code has a ton of useful written and video tutorials that helped me relearn everything that I learned in college but with a more real-world like approach and examples.
TutsPlus Code is just one of the many sister sites of Envato which cover specifically code but they do have other sites for business, web design, graphic design, music & video, game development etc.
The next video course platform I discovered was...
Treehouse
Treehouse, like TutsPlus Code, has a ton of courses on different areas and you can learn different programming languages, tools and technologies, but I really like that they do have paths and it is really helpful for newcomers who do need a guide what to learn.
They also have workspaces with coding examples and quizzes while you are taking a course, which is very helpful to refresh your memory.
After Treehouse, I found out about....
Code School
Code School does not exist in its initial form today because it was bought by Pluralsight but it was a great platform for learning because it had an improved practical examples and a coding editor in the browser for the student to learn after each section of a course.
The video courses might be there but the platform will never be forgotten!
The founder of Code School Gregg Pollack founded a new video course platform called Vue Mastery few years ago which has that Code School design and feel.
I already mentioned it but by far the best video course platform award goes to....
Pluralsight
Pluralsight has by far the best courses out there, and has courses that covers almost everything out there. It has some of the highest quality content I've seen so far from the best instructors in the world.
I really like this platform because it has both specific language / tool / technology fundamentals courses and it has practical courses as well, so as a student, I have learned so much over the years, especially JavaScript and NodeJS.
They also have certification courses and even workshop courses from Frontend Masters, which means every dollar spent monthly or yearly is a dollar well spent on this platform.
Intro into Laravel's world
Back in 2014, I was curious about the Model-View-Controller architectural patterns, so I watched a short course by Jeffrey Way on TutsPlus Code where he explained a chaotic project structure that Wordpress is and a well structured project that Laravel provides out of the box.
When I saw that Laravel seems more developer friendly than CodeIgniter, I got curious, so I started googling the best courses on it and i found out that Jeffrey founded....
Laracasts
Laracasts is one of the best video course platforms that has a ton of PHP, Laravel, JavaScript and VueJS courses and videos that has helped me a ton to level up in my career and get better as a developer.
It also has a forum which is very useful, because a lot of people are active there. I was very active for a few years on the forums, and I've learned a lot, and even got some recognition because of it when people were contacting me and offering me a job. I was one of the top contributors on the forum there but I haven't been active lately.
I still do watch courses there and still learning something new from almost every episode, no matter if it's a beginner or an advanced course.
I highly recommend this video course platform, because I devoured knowledge and got me a lot of skills along the way.
Jeffrey has been an inspiration for my career and I thank him for that. He knows how to explain things in a non-boring way.
While Laracasts has a ton of practical project building courses, I stumbled upon another video course platform which I love called...
Code Course
Code Course is one of the best PHP and Laravel video course platforms because it has a ton of practical project building courses, building projects from scratch using PHP, Laravel, Javascript and VueJS.
I've learned a ton from here as well, because Alex Garrett is another amazing instructor who knows how to explain things in a non-boring way and helped me a lot in my career.
The platform also has a lot of courses related to the fundamentals of languages, frameworks, tools and technologies but I recommend it mainly because it focuses mainly on practical project building courses.
I still use this video course platform until this day and I still learn a new thing every time I watch a course there.
Over the years I got a lot of interest into VueJS which is very popular in the Laravel community and year and a half ago, I found out about this VueJS and JavaScript specific video course platform called...
Vue School
Vue School is also a great place to learn from if you are interested in VueJS specifically because it has a ton of specific videos about the framework, while it also has the VueJS Master Class, which is a long course where the great instructor Alex Kyriakidis aka Hootlex is building a forum and shows and explains a lot of practical ideas how to use the features of VueJS.
I still watch courses on this platform because I am curious about the inner workings of VueJS 2 and can't wait to learn more when VueJS 3 is released.
Let's back up a bit and let me tell you how I learned about servers from this awesome video course platform with a ton of courses that goes by the name of...
Servers For Hackers
Servers for Hackers is one of the best video course platforms when it comes to servers and you need something PHP or Laravel specific.
Chris Fidao aka Fideloper is another one of those awesome instructors who has helped me in my career to learn something more about servers and how to configure them.
The platform has a ton of free content and some premium courses which include:
- Scaling Laravel
- Shipping Docker
- Deploy PHP!
- MySQL Backups and an ebook called Servers For Hackers The Book
Besides the video courses, I really like this platform because there are a ton of blog posts and even transcripts for each video in written form to skip to the things that I really need.
Conclusion
There are a ton of other courses that I did not mention in this blog post, but these are some of the best ones that comes to mind and which I found so far in the last 7-8 years or so. There are a lot of video course platforms and resources that I did not mention but I will do that in the future.
Without these learning resources, I wouldn't be able to progress so fast in my career and get to a point of my career where I want to be, so I am thankful for that.
In a future blog post, I'll mention individual video courses and ebooks from developers that I've found to be some of the deep dive courses that focus on a specific topic and cover that in detail (PHP and Laravel specifically).
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