Learning JS - recommendations wanted 🙏 (React and Node)

I'm a software developer with 17 years of coding experience working on small and big companies. My recommendation is: learn to code and gain practice just with vanilla javascript without using any framework (ok, use node if you want to build a server-side app), but don't use any other framework. That means no react, no jquery, no vue, etc.

Learn to code first with just javascript, once you master that, any framework (React, Vue, etc) you want to learn will take you a couple of days of reading docs and done.

So try to build a small app using only javascript without any framework. It will take you longer but the skills you will acquire will suffice you for any framework you pick to work with in the future. If instead, you learn a framework, once the framework is over (which happens quite often in javascript), you will have to start all over again with your learnings.

You should check Free Code Camp it's a very great source!

Also, The Odin Project is a great source! They get into advanced topics, but you should still check them out.

Start those first two as they are free, then if you need more help I really liked Codecademy. They have a nice curriculum and many other courses that you can take with them. Their yearly membership is well priced for how well they present their courses and the many types of courses they have.

This last one most of the resources or courses will refer back to this resource Mozilla as they always mention if you need more information please use it as a reference. It's similar to W3schools but more detailed.

Hope these help you, and wish you all the best!

Hey Landon, I wrote a book for O'Reilly for exactly your audience: folks who know some JavaScript and are looking to turn that knowledge into building products. In the book, I cover how to build an API (with Node) and then use that API to build web, desktop, and mobile UIs. You can learn more https://www.jseverywhere.io/

I highly recommend Eloquent Javascript https://eloquentjavascript.net/

Hey Landon,

Best advice I can give is to pick a project and try and build it – best way to learn practical experience. You'll end up Googling a tonne of questions in the process and learning.

Something like a todo list would be a great starting project.

Also, learn how Model-View-Controller works, it'll make your life so much easier.

I'm sure when you're done you could share the code and some of us on here could give you some feedback and advice if you wanted 🙂

Hey Landon, check out Learn JavaScript and React Tutorial they're interactive courses that come with flashcards

To be totally honest, I didn't even go through the W3schools tutorial when I was first starting out. I think the most helpful resource for me was Traversy Media on YouTube. I'm someone who learns best by building projects, and he has a few example projects he goes through and explains on his channel. Definitely check out his videos if you haven't already.

Hi Landon!

I work as Frontend Engineer (React) in a very well known company in gaming/streaming. You can check stephen grider and maximilian schwarzmüller react and node course on udemy it really helped me a lot.

However, these courses can become very boring in the middle. If you're confident enough, try to create a very basic app and apply what you have learned so far.

I think Udemy has some really good courses on both topics
Just pick one that speaks most to you

And:
Start a fun project something including your hobby to actually build from.

Also I'm writing daily dev tips :
https://daily-dev-tips.com/

Spend more time building stuff and less time doing courses and tutorials.

Find a project—literally anything that seems interesting—and try to build it. Don’t worry about making money at this point...so cloning a site like Indiehackers Or Hackernews can be a good learning exercise.

Stick to a small set of technologies for a while to get the basics of programming and software down. Eg, learn React and Node (maybe Express for your server). Don’t switch To other languages or tools or frameworks until you feel really productive in those.

There’s a lot to learn out there—and people will always suggest learning this or that thing that they like, but when you’re starting out it’s way better to stick to a few things and learn the fundamentals well.

Focus on learning JavaScript fundamentals while you’re trying to build stuff. Learn how JavaScript works and it’s quirks (eg figure out the event loop and how single-threaded stuff works, prototypal inheritance, first-class functions, etc etc).

I learnt React from scratch with this guy: https://www.udemy.com/share/101WcYAkMcdlhRRnw=/
The courses are really great, his React Native course is great too.

I recently launched an eBook that goes into the nitty-gritty of web development technologies.

HTML to ReactJS: The Ultimate Guide

It contains straight to the point explanations with simple, concise, and fun examples.

This eBook is a comprehensive study guide that will teach you all the necessary bits from HTML to ReactJS whilst prepping you for the Web Developer interview alongside.

Disclaimer: That's my eBook and it's paid.

This video made React 'click' for me :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9T6YkEDkMo&t=60s

Learned mostly on freecodecamp.com as some others have mentioned. A year later and no schooling, got a full-time dev job. A year after that I got my first client at $100/hr. Definitely doable! Keep chugging on through the hard times! It’s worth it

Hi Landon!,

In my opinion Free Code Camp is one of the best free resources for learning JavaScript. I've been recommending it for years. Another good resource is Egghead. It has free tutorials but also a premium subscription with more tutorials.

If you have already started with W3school, I think the next step is keeping learning with Free Code Camp. I would maybe buy some books like "JavaScript The Good parts" and "Eloquent JavaScript".

I hope this can help you :)

Hey! I learned the basics from this (https://www.udemy.com/course/mern-stack-front-to-back/) Udemy course and went from there.
I have also written some boilerplate code for anyone starting out with Node/Express, maybe it'll be helpful to you: https://github.com/robot-house/node-express-boilerplate

You might want to know about Vue JS too. It's alternative to React and Angular.

From my experience, it's more easy and faster to learn than others.

You may want to read more about that on google.

Have a look at codeschool or any similar online resource with a live editor. That makes learning easier. With codeschool you work on some little project, it's kinda close of a real-life project.
Then, when you are done with schools try to find an opensource project with "beginners issues" it is also a good way to learn best practices & project management (if you need it)

Check out Ranktutorials.com for tutorials on React :)

Disclosure: It's my website