Favourite Web Development Courses
I’m not one for taking loads of courses. It’s hard to find the time, and when it comes to learning I always feel that, for me, doing beats reading any day. That said, I’ve dipped into a few great courses recently that I’ve learned loads from, so I thought I’d share them with you fine folks here.
Three.js Journey
As someone who’s very comfortable in the DOM but not accustomed to writing spectacularly creative JS, I’ve always found WebGL a little intimidating. If you too have hesitated to take the plunge, I can’t recommend this course highly enough. Three.js Journey by Bruno Simon ticks all of my boxes: Every lesson is available in both video and written format, with multi-speed video playback options, and downloadable project files. All concepts are superbly well explained, with no prior assumptions about the user’s level of knowledge (an all too common problem). Bruno’s conversational style makes it easy to imagine how you might apply the ideas to projects of your own. And the course platform itself is beautifully designed and a pleasure to use.
The course is really good value too at under $100, especially for such high quality content. There are a lot of lessons, and Bruno has just added a few more. An absolute must for anyone wanting to get into Three.js.
Fullstack D3 and Data Visualization
You might recognise Amelia Wattenberger as the author behind several beautifully illustrated, interactive articles (such as this one on Scaling SVG Elements). She’s also a data visualisation expert, and has published a video course and accompanying book, Fullstack D3 and Data Visualization. As someone who learns better from written tutorials, I only bought the book, but the videos look fantastic too. The video course is broken down into bitesize lessons of no more than 15 minutes each, which I love, as it gives you the chance to really digest the teaching and explore the concepts on your own if you wish to. The book and video course come with downloadable code. This course wastes no time and aims to start you coding right away, whilst taking care to explain everything carefully, and unpacking some helpful tips to set you up for creating charts in the most robust way.
There’s also the option to “try before you buy” — the first few videos are available for free, so you can feel confident in your purchase.
Fullstack D3 and Data Visualization website ⟶
CSS For Javascript Developers
Confession: I haven’t actually taken this course, CSS For Javascript Developers by Josh W Comeau, but I’ve had a sneak peek. Knowing the quality of the articles Josh writes on his website, this course will be an absolute goldmine of CSS knowledge — it’s already attracting rave reviews. Josh is a great teacher, and doesn’t skimp on the design and real code examples either.
Whether you’re a JS dev who’s never quite got a handle on CSS fundamentals, a seasoned UI developer looking to up their game, or someone who’s ever thought to themselves “Why is CSS so weird?”, there will be plenty to take away from this course. I’m tempted to take it myself, and I consider myself someone with a fairly decent grasp of CSS. (Seriously. The only thing stopping me is the lack of hours in a day.) The price for the full package is a little higher than the other courses mentioned here, but there are different payment tiers available. And, in my humble opinion, that knowledge is absolutely worth forking out for.
CSS For Javascript Developers website ⟶
ES6 For Everyone
Although it’s a few years old now, this is a course that really helped me level up my JS, and is still super relevant. The ES6 For Everyone video course by Wes Bos is packed with knowledge, covering array methods, promises, async/await, modern tooling and more. Again, the videos are nice and short, and it’s easy to cherry pick the bits you need if you feel more confident in some areas than others.