Next Steps: A Personalized Guide to Learning Web Development
Written by Purvi Kanal.
Over the past 3 years, as a team we’ve reviewed over 1000 applications to our frontend development program and after wrapping up the 9th round I decided I want to share some learnings about applications to our frontend program. What I wanted to focus on is the folks who don’t end up getting into our program or receiving our technical test, why that is and what they can do to keep learning to get there.
Every time we open applications and inevitably have to say no to folks, I always think to myself that I want to reach out to the person whose application I’m reviewing and say something specific about how they are on the right track and with a few months more practice, they will be an ideal Bridge candidate. While I can’t reach out to all applicants individually, this post will aim to be the next best thing.
Below, I’ll point you towards the best online resources, almost all free, that you can use to guide your own learning. We receive applications from folks at all different points in their learning journey, so I’ve broken down some advice into the most common scenarios we’ve come across over the years. However, you may fall into an intersection of these categories. Also, note that some of the resources mentioned below are Toronto specific, so if you’re reading from elsewhere there are location-independent resources and likely similar organizations in your community.
I’m New to Web Development
Welcome! You’ve decided you want to try and pursue a career in web development and are looking for a safe place to get started with A+ resources. While Bridge is for folks who typically have been using JavaScript consistently for anywhere between 6 months and 2 years, there are lots of great resources available for you to take your first step.
Canada Learning Code has some really great hands-on workshops for folks looking to get started, we would recommend checking out their introduction to HTML & CSS and their introduction to JavaScript workshops, you can find information about their offerings here.
You can also begin your self guided learning online through freeCodeCamp and Codecademy. They both have free offerings of introduction to JavaScript, HTML and CSS courses. Working through these on your own is a great way to get started along with finding and attending any local workshops you are able to. Generally speaking, you can find local workshops on Meetup.com and you might want to get on Twitter if you haven’t already and start following local developers.
I’ve Started to Teach Myself Web Development
You’ve completed a couple of online courses yourself and/or attended some introductory workshops on HTML, CSS & JavaScript. That’s great! You’re probably wondering how you can focus your learning more so that you can start building things that are a bit bigger. Now is a great time to start thinking about learning ES6 and getting comfortable with it by building a website(you can try this for yourself by creating a personal website).
Here are some modern JavaScript resources, some of these options are free and some aren’t but are moderately priced:
- JavaScript 30 (30 day accountability challenge)
- ES6 for Everyone (Course by Wes Bos $)
- Exploring ES6 (Free HTML Book)
- Accelerated ES6 Javascript (Udemy Course $)
- Learning ECMAScript 6 (Lynda Course $)
- Introduction to ES6+ (Screencast)
- Javascript ES6 Cheatsheet (YouTube)
It’s also important to keep practicing your programming, here are some places where you can practice what you’ve learned so far:
As you get more comfortable with JavaScript, you can dive deeper with some more advanced courses and look into learning one of the more popular frameworks — we’d suggest React.
I’m in a Web Development Bootcamp
We really do believe in in-person hands on training and that’s exactly what bootcamps are for. Take advantage of being in the classroom and the expertise of your teachers and mentors while you are there, take the time to get to know and network with your peers. Work through assignments and projects together and get as much collaborative experience as you possibly can. You’ll likely come out of your bootcamp with a few projects that involve jQuery, React and maybe some Node or Ruby on Rails. It’s a lot of information to consume in a few short weeks especially if it’s the first time you’re seeing all of it. I’d recommend working at things on your own outside of your bootcamp curriculum if you have the time to and do a deep dive into JavaScript and React.
Since you’ll be pretty busy with things during your bootcamp, here are some reading and video resources that would prove helpful:
- React Documentation (Seriously! The docs are great, beginner friendly and involve tutorials)
- React for Beginners (Course by Wes Bos $)
- Learn ReactJS (Course on Codecademy)
- Intro to React (Course on freeCodeCamp)
I’ve Used JavaScript to Build a Few Projects
You might have recently completed a bootcamp, or maybe taught yourself through online resources or built a few wordpress sites. That’s awesome, and this is the time to start deepening that knowledge through practice! To build on the knowledge you’ve acquired here’s a few things I’d recommend:
If you’ve built a project with React, or any webpage, learn how to put it on the internet yourself. This might seem like obvious advice, but there’s a lot that goes into taking a project from localhost to hosted on a domain. Check out Netlify for easy and quick static site deployments, it's also totally free.
After you’re comfortable working with a framework like React and have built a couple of smaller projects, try to think of a larger project you can build to keep practicing your JavaScript skills. This should be a project that incorporates some data that you fetch from an API with typical features that a web app would have like logging in, displaying a gallery with multiple pages of data, accessibility features, forms, lazy loading images etc. You can find a list of good APIs to work with here. If you can’t come up with an idea of what to build for practice, try building a product that already exists in a read only format like GitHub or Reddit. Both of these products have APIs that are available to use.
The ideal way to practice writing code is by getting paid to do it. If you’re looking for a job focused on web development, it can be hard to get your foot in the door without prior experience, but right now the priority is to get your foot in that door. It may not be the ideal gig writing React apps every day but if you can get paid to write code everyday, this is one of the best options. You’ll still likely have to supplement your learning once you have that job (and this is where Bridge comes in!), but it’s a great start.
Another way to further your coding practice is with others. Communities are vital to keep you motivated and accountable so we highly recommend finding one! You can do this by going to meetups, local hack nights, workshops or even over the internet through platforms like Glitch.
We acknowledge that being able to attend things in off hours isn’t a solution for everyone and there are definitely other ways to keep up with coding and the community. The tech community is consistently producing blog posts and content that you can consume and this is a great way to keep up to date with your tech stack of choice. Some blogs we recommend checking out:
Also think about writing your own blog posts about the things you are currently learning, or your learning journey overall and the tools you’re using to practice web development regularly. The value of posts written by folks who are learning is huge, so don’t underestimate it. You’ll likely be helping someone in your position a few months down the line. It’s also a great way to cement your own understanding of topics and creating a platform for yourself in your community.
There are also some really useful podcasts out there, they’re a great way of learning especially if you have limited spare time. Some of our favourites:
I’m Comfortable with JavaScript and Received the Bridge Technical Test
If you’ve received the Bridge technical test in the past, chances are you’re quite comfortable with JavaScript and potentially even using it on a daily basis. A great option here is to dive deeper into how to use JavaScript in a modern way to do complex data transformations. Here are some resources for ES6, JavaScript and functional programming patterns:
- Javascript ES6 Cheatsheet
- Fun Fun Functions YouTube Channel
- Further Adventures of the Event Loop
- Modern React with Redux
On top of the specific technical skills, we’re also looking for your code to be readable. Simple code over complex one liners, clearly commented code, descriptive function and variable names are examples of things that we look for while marking technical tests. Go over your past Bridge technical tests and ask yourself whether your code is readable, refactor it to be more clear and readable.
I Have Other Programming Experience That Isn’t JavaScript
We see applications from folks who have programming experience in other areas for example with R, Python or MatLab for scientific programming, C/C++, Java and other backend technologies that are looking to learn web development. If you fall into this category, you probably have a lot of the base programming skills down and need to focus on really learning and applying JavaScript. Have a look at our first section “I’ve started to teach myself web development”, those resources can help you get familiar with JavaScript syntax. The next step would be to become familiar with the JavaScript runtime, this tends to be a huge difference since JavaScript is single threaded. Here are some more advanced JavaScript resources for when you have the syntax down:
I’m Getting Back into Programming After Leaving Development for a Few Years
Welcome back! Tech stacks change every year so it can definitely be daunting re-entering programming and wondering what skills to brush up on. If you happened to be a web developer earlier on, JavaScript has changed so much that it may feel like learning it all over again. If you’re already comfortable with JavaScript, make it a priority to become familiar with ES6/7 and all the new language features. We have links to these in the section “I’ve started to teach myself web development”. Once you’re comfortable with those, you can start looking into a front-end framework like React. We have links to resources for this the “I’m in a web development bootcamp” section.
If you’re re-entering programming and aren’t familiar with JavaScript, check out the section just above this that outlines how to get up to speed with JavaScript if you have other programming experience.
Closing Thoughts
Learning programming in a non-traditional way is tough, and even if you do have a traditional education most universities don’t have a web development course that is up to date so there’s a lot of learning to be done yourself. You might fall under one, many, or partially all of these categories — we know that there are many paths and learning isn’t linear. Take from this advice and list of resources what is the most relevant to you where you are at right now. Keep at it, keep learning, and we hope to see your application to Bridge for frontend development soon.
Written by Purvi Kanal.
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