Are you a beginner developer and want to level up your dev game and progress faster than your competition? Read on and I’ll give you honest reviews of some of the courses I’ve taken on Udemy.

These are courses that I’ve paid for (using my hard earned money) and this article is in no way sponsored by Udemy. There are no affiliate links so you can be doubly sure that I’m not putting any course here just to earn some extra bucks. If you wish to purchase any of these courses then make sure you wait for a sale (Udemy has them on a bi-monthly basis).

For Absolute Beginners

The Web Developer Bootcamp 2021 by Colt Steele

This is the new version of Colt’s The Web Developer Bootcamp, Udemy’s most popular web development course. This course has been completely overhauled to prepare students for the 2021 job market, and has over 60 hours of brand new content. Some of the highlights of the course are:-

• The instructor, Colt Steele, is extremely knowledgable and witty. He makes the tricky stuff a lot less tricky, his explanations are spot on and his cat and dog jokes make you chuckle.

• The course everything a beginner web developer needs to know — from HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript all the way to Node.js, Express and MongoDB.

• It follows a logical structure so that the student (you!) is not overwhelmed or confused.

• There are a lot of mini exercises to re-enforce what you are learning and make it stick.

• You make a BIG project towards the end and learn Node.js, Express and MongoDB in the process.

Overall, this a great intro to the world of web development for beginners and you can’t go wrong with this one. Get the course here .

Levelling Up Your CSS and JavaScript

Although Colt’s course covers the basics of CSS and JavaScript, I think spending some time to brush up what you’ve just learnt and more importantly why is does what it does will go a long way in making you a better developer. And the next two courses are perfect for that.

Advanced CSS and Sass: Flexbox, Grid, Animations and More by Jonas Schmedtmann

This is the perfect course to level up your CSS skills and getting a better understanding of CSS and even SaaS. Some highlights of the course are:-

• Understand how CSS works behind the scenes. Learn about the cascade, specificity, inheritance, value processing, the visual formatting model, the box model, box types, positioning schemes and stacking contexts etc.
• Learn about CSS architecture. *Learn about Flexbox and Grid layout.
• Introduction to Sass.
• Lots of cool and real world projects.

Get the course here .

The Modern Javascript Bootcamp Course (2021) by Colt Steele and Stephen Grider

One of the best courses to get an in depth understanding of JavaScript by two of Udemy’s best instructors — Colt Steele and Stephen Grider.

The first half of the course is mostly theory and mini exercises and is taught by Colt. The second half will have you build a lot of cool and interesting projects that you can use in your portfolio. Some of the cool things you’ll build in the course:-

• Fetch and manage information from third-party API’s.
• Build command line tools from scratch using Node JS.
• Build a fully-featured E-Commerce application from scratch — including production-grade authentication.

Get the course here

Learning React — the HOTTEST JavaScript Framework

Frameworks make your life easier by doing a lot of the heavy lifting for you. So once you’ve learnt enough JavaScript it’s time to learn React. React was created by Facebook and is the most widely used JavaScript framework.

It’s also in a lot of demand in the job market. So learning React with increase your employability and increase your chances of getting a job.

React Tutorial and Projects Course by John Smilga

Although this course is by a lesser known Udemy instructor, it does not disappoint. The instructor makes React concepts easy to understand. The course uses the latest method of declaring functional components. Some of the highlights of the course are:-

• Start from the very basics of React.
• Learn about functional components.
• Learn the various hooks such as useState, useEffect etc.
• Make a lot of projects to practice what you’ve learnt.
• Lots of repetition to make sure what you learn sticks.

Get the course here

Concluding Thoughts

The courses given above are a great starting point for someone looking to dive into the world of web development. As I’ve already said in my first blog post the secret to becoming a successful web developer are:-

• Practice what you learn — make your own mini projects to solidify your knowledge.
• Be consistent — take out time to practice coding everyday.
• Focus — pick a language or technology and stick with it. Don’t hop from one thing to another.
• Avoid distractions — switch off your phone or keep it in airplane mode.
• Take your time — don’t compare your progress with others.

So that’s it from me for today. I hope you’ll benefit from the courses that I’ve outlined above. See you guys soon.