Udemy is a popular marketplace for affordable courses on a huge range of subjects. This includes high-quality options for anyone looking to learn web development.
However, with so much choice it can be difficult to know which course to go for. Well, we are here to help.
In this top 10 review round-up, we have carefully selected 10 of the best web development courses currently running on Udemy in 2022.
Whether you are an expert looking to develop your skills further, or a beginner wanting to learn the basics (and other needs in between) you will find something here to suit you.
For our top choice web development courses at a glance, just head to the table below. For an in-depth review of each of the selected courses, keep on reading.
Table of Contents
Best Web Development Courses on Udemy
COURSE | TITLE | DETAILS | OUR RATING | |
BEST BEGINNER COURSE The Complete 2021 Web Development Bootcamp | 54.5hrs of video 80 Articles | |||
The Web Developer Bootcamp 2021 | 63hrs of Video 47 Articles | |||
The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 | 30.5hrs of video 143 Articles | |||
Introduction to Web Development | 1.5hrs of video 1 Articles 10 Resources | |||
The Complete Web Developer in 2021: Zero to Mastery | 35.5hrs of video 142 Articles | |||
BEST FOR INTERMEDIATES Complete Junior to Senior Web Developer Roadmap for 2021 | 35.5hrs of video 137 Articles Lifetime Access | |||
The Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp | 34.5hrs of video 121 Resources | |||
Web Development w/ Google’s Go (golang) Programming Language | 19hrs of video | |||
BEST EXPERT LEVEL Web Developer Toolbox | 2.5hrs of video 1 Articles | |||
Advanced Backend Web Development | 1hrs of video Lifetime Access |
The Reviews
The following reviews focus on 10 of the best web development courses that are currently being offered on Udemy.
Best Web Development Courses for Beginners
1. BEST FOR BEGINNERS: Complete 2021 Web Development Bootcamp
This a popular and comprehensive full-stack web development course that covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript ES6, Node.JS, React framework, MongoDB database, Unix, and Version Control.
It also covers the API, SQL, Mongoose, jQuery, Bootstrap 4, and Express.JS, as well as Authentication and Security as they relate to web applications.
There are also practical exercises, including building two games – the Dice and Simone games, in addition to building 2 websites, of which one is a blog.
It is evident that this course covers sufficient frontend and backend topics that can transform the student from a beginner web developer into a junior web developer who can build both websites and web applications.
Moreover, the student creates websites which (s)he can add to his/her portfolio so that potential employers can see his/her works. This is the best web development course for beginners in this review.
This 56-hour long course is divided into 35 sections that cover 440 lectures. The course contents are 54.5 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures, and 8 coding exercises, in addition to 80 articles and 21 downloadable resources.
It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course. Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion.
Until now, more than 388,000 learners have taken it, with 125,997 of them giving it an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. This course was last updated in January 2021.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn web programming and website development.
- Course Type: Tutorials with coding exercises.
- Rating: 4.7 following 125,997 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English, German, and Italian subtitles.
The Tutor
Dr. Angela Yu is a full-stack web developer and software engineer who works as a lead instructor at London App Brewery, which is a programming Bootcamp based in London.
Requirements
- Internet-connected PC.
- Atom code editor.
Contents
- HTML5.
- CSS3.
- Bootstrap 4 CSS framework.
- JavaScript using ECMAScript with JavaScript ES6.
- Document Object Model (DOM) manipulation.
- JavaScript library of jQuery.
- Node.JS runtime environment.
- JavaScript frameworks of React and Express.JS.
- MongoDB, SQL, and Firebase databases.
- Unix and Bash Command Line.
- Version Control using Git.
- Static hosting using Github and Heroku.
- Mongoose web server.
- REST.
- APIs.
- Authentication and Security of websites and web applications.
- Building of the following apps – Dicee Game app, Simon Game app.
- Development of 2 full websites.
- Deployment of websites.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
2. Web Developer Bootcamp 2021
In Udemy, Colt Steele and Dr. Angela Yu are considered as some of the best instructors for web development Bootcamp courses.
The afore-reviewed course was created by Dr.Angela Yu, and this course was created by Colt Steel who last updated it on April 2021.
In fact, this course is considered the second-best web development course for beginners in this review even though it does not cover the React framework. However, it covers web security comprehensively.
This a popular and comprehensive full-stack web development course that covers HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Node.JS, MongoDB database, Unix, and Version Control.
It also covers the API, SQL, Mongoose, Bootstrap 5, and Express.JS, as well as web-app Authentication and Security. There are also practical coding exercises.
Just like the above-reviewed course, this course covers sufficient frontend and backend topics to make the learner a competent junior web developer who can build both websites and web applications.
This 63.5 hour-long course is divided into 60 sections that cover 614 lectures. The course contents are 63 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures, and 62 coding exercises, in addition to 47 articles and 122 downloadable resources.
It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course. Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion.
Until now, more than 662,200 learners have taken it, with 201,888 of them giving it an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. This course was last updated in April 2021.
Below are other key highlights of this web development course.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn web programming and website development.
- Course Type: Tutorials with coding exercises.
- Rating: 4.7 following 201,888 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English, German, French, Italian, Spanish, Polish, and Portuguese subtitles.
The Tutor
Colt Steele is a full-stack web developer and software engineer who works as a lead instructor at Galvanize, a programming Bootcamp.
Requirements
- Internet-connected PC.
- Code editor.
Contents
- HTML5.
- CSS3.
- Bootstrap 4, Bulma, and Bootstrap 5 CSS framework.
- Flexbox and Responsive Design.
- Semantic UI.
- JavaScript using ECMAScript with JavaScript ES6 and ES2018.
- Single Page Application (SPA) and AJAX.
- Asynchronous JavaScript.
- DOM manipulation.
- JavaScript library of jQuery.
- Installation of NPM package manager.
- Node.JS runtime environment.
- JavaScript frameworks of React and Express.JS.
- MongoDB and SQL databases.
- Schema Design.
- Cloud databases.
- Web security vulnerabilities including Cross-site scripting (XSS) and SQL Injection.
- Unix and Bash Command-Line.
- Version Control using Git.
- Static hosting using Github.
- Mongoose web server.
- REST.
- APIs.
- Authentication and Security of websites and web applications.
- Deployment of websites.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
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3. Complete Web Developer Course 2.0
This is another popular and comprehensive full-stack web development course that covers HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, WordPress, Bootstrap 4, MySQL database, jQuery, and Python, along with web apps.
It also includes lessons on how to use the model-view-controller architecture when building mobile web apps, including the Twitter clone that the student is required to develop during the course.
It also covers the API and the CMS. As is evident, it does not place much emphasis on either JavaScript Frameworks or non-relational databases such as MongoDB, and is thus shorter than either of the 2 above-reviewed courses.
Nonetheless, it covers sufficient frontend and backend topics to make the learner a competent junior web developer who can build both websites and web applications.
This 31-hour long course is divided into 15 sections that cover 308 lectures. The course contents are 30.5 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures and 143 articles.
It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course. Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion.
Until now, more than 285,600 learners have taken it, with 66,331 of them giving it an average rating of 4.6 out of 5. This course was last updated in March 2021.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn web programming and website development.
- Course Type: Tutorials with coding exercises.
- Rating: 4.6 following 66,331 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English, Japanese, Romanian, Italian, Spanish, Polish, Portuguese, and Indonesian subtitles.
The Tutor
Rob Percival is a full-stack web developer with a Mathematics degree who created Codestars to train the next generation of programmers (coders).
Requirements
- Internet-connected PC.
- Code editor.
Contents
- HTML5.
- CSS3.
- Bootstrap 4.
- WordPress.
- JavaScript.
- DOM manipulation.
- JavaScript library of jQuery.
- Server-side programming language of PHP.
- MySQL databases.
- Schema Design.
- Python programming language.
- APIs.
- Deployment of websites.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
4. Introduction to Web Development
This is an introductory course to web development that covers the basic building blocks of HTML, CSS, and introductory JavaScript.
It is relatively short at only 2 hours, but it provides an adequate introduction to what web development is, and what the student can expect to learn in a full web development course.
In covers the box model of CSS, as well as teaches the student how JavaScript forms are created. The HTML lessons allow the student to build a full web page with colored page elements.
This 2-hour long course is divided into 4 sections that cover 15 lectures. The course contents are an article, 10 downloadable resources, and 1.5 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures.
It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course. Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion.
Until now, more than 20,100 learners have taken it, with 836 of them giving it an average rating of 4.3 out of 5. This course was last updated in October 2020, which designates it as a web development course for 2020.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn web programming and website development.
- Course Type: Tutorials with coding exercises.
- Rating: 4.3 following 836 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English subtitles.
The Tutor
This course is developed by Mark Lassoff and Framework Television Incorporated.
Mark Lassoff is a software developer who has published courses in Udemy.com, and Framework Television Incorporated is a provider of television content that posts course videos and allows people to use SmartTV to view these videos.
Requirements
- Internet-connected PC.
- Brackets code editor.
Contents
- HTML.
- CSS.
- JavaScript.
- Adding images to web pages.
- CSS box model.
- Creating a JavaScript form.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
5. Complete Web Developer – Zero to Mastery
This is a popular and comprehensive full-stack web development course that covers HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, Node.JS, React framework, Redux, and the relational databases of PostgreSQL and SQL; as well as Machine Learning with online databases.
This course provides a strong foundation of the history of web development with lessons dedicated to explaining how the web came about, and how the internet works.
It also covers the CSS Grid, Advanced JavaScript, Static hosting, version control, APIs, and Asynchronous JavaScript. As expected, there are practical exercises during the lessons.
This course covers sufficient frontend and backend topics to make the learner a competent junior web developer who can build both websites and web applications.
This 37-hour long course is divided into 34 sections that cover 373 lectures. The course contents are 35.5 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures and 142 articles.
There are also 46 downloadable resources and a coding exercise. It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course.
Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion. Until now, more than 157,000 learners have taken it, with 46,304 of them giving it an average rating of 4.7 out of 5.
This course was last updated in April 2021.
- Target Audience: Beginners who want to learn web programming and website development.
- Course Type: Tutorials with coding exercises.
- Rating: 4.7 following 46,304 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese subtitles.
The Tutor
Andrei Neagoie is a software engineer and full-stack web developer who has founded zerotomastery.io that allows him to teach students how to code.
Requirements
- Internet-connected PC.
- Code editor.
Contents
- History of the Internet and the Web.
- HTML5.
- CSS3.
- Bootstrap.
- JavaScript.
- DOM manipulation.
- Installation of NPM package manager.
- Node.JS runtime environment.
- JavaScript frameworks of React and Express.JS.
- AJAX.
- Asynchronous JavaScript.
- Git.
- GitHub.
- Machine learning.
- APIs.
- Deployment of websites.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
Best Web Development Courses for Intermediate-Level Students
6. BEST FOR INTERMEDIATES: Complete Junior to Senior Web Developer Roadmap for 2021
This is a comprehensive full-stack web development course designed for intermediate-level web programmers, and it covers advanced HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript, along with advanced React framework and Redux.
It also introduces module bundling and encryption using the secure shell (SSH) protocol, as well as performance testing.
As expected, it introduces the student to unit tests, integration tests, and the end-to-end test, as well as how to use the testing toolkits of Jest and Enzyme.
It also teaches the student how to perform code analysis, and how to work with tokens, sessions, and JSON Web Tokens (JWT).
This makes this course a suitable continuation to the Complete Web Developer – Zero to Mastery course provided by the same instructor, who is Andrei Neagoie.
This course also covers TypeScript programming language, which is a superset of JavaScript that can be transcompiled into JavaScript code.
TypeScript programming is covered in 31 lessons, which ensures that the student gains adequate foundational knowledge on how to use TypeScript in web programming projects, including projects that involve machine learning.
Also, this course covers server-side rendering (SSR) and single-page applications (SPA), as well as web security including protection against XSS, SQL injections, and cross-site request forgery (CSRF).
There are also lessons covering Amazon Web Services, Docker, and Redis. Moreover, there are lessons on continuous deployment (CD) and continuous integration (CI).
These lessons, practical exercises, and apt delivery of lessons make this the best web development course in this review for intermediate-level students.
This 37-hour long course is divided into 21 sections that cover 424 lectures. The course contents are 35.5 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures and 136 articles.
There are also 6 downloadable resources and a coding exercise. It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course.
Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion. Until now, more than 55,400 learners have taken it, with 6,225 of them giving it an average rating of 4.7 out of 5.
This course was last updated in April 2021.
- Target Audience: Junior web developers who want to acquire advanced web programming to make them senior web developers.
- Course Type: Tutorials with coding exercises.
- Rating: 4.7 following 6,225 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English and Polish subtitles.
The Tutor
Andrei Neagoie is a software engineer and full-stack web developer who has founded zerotomastery.io that allows him to teach students how to code.
Requirements
- Basic understanding of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
- Internet-connected PC.
- Code editor.
Contents
- Advanced React and Redux.
- Module bundling.
- SSH.
- Performance testing – unit test, integration test, and the end-to-end test
- Testing toolkits of Jest and Enzyme
- Code analysis
- Tokens, sessions, and JWT.
- TypeScript programming language.
- SSR.
- SPA
- Web security – XSS, CSRF, and SQL injections.
- APIs.
- Deployment of websites.
- AWS.
- Docker.
- Redis
- CD and CI.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
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7. Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp
This is a comprehensive full-stack web development course designed for intermediate-level web programmers, and it covers advanced React 16 framework, Redux, Advanced AJAX, and Performance Testing.
It also teaches the learner how to build dynamic visualizations using SVG and D3, as well as covers advanced CSS Flexbox and JavaScript ES2015-ES2017.
There are also lessons on how to work with TopoJSON and GeoJSON for map visualization, besides using asynchronous JavaScript code with Queue, Heap, and Stack.
There are also lessons on how to secure web apps and databases using bcrypt and JWT. Additionally, there are coding exercises and assignments.
This 35-hour long course is divided into 37 sections that cover 391 lectures. The course contents are 34 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures and 9 articles.
There are also 121 downloadable resources and 18 coding exercises, as well as assignments. It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course.
Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion. Until now, more than 70,900 learners have taken it, with 8,578 of them giving it an average rating of 4.5 out of 5.
This course was last updated in April 2018.
- Target Audience: Junior web developers who want to acquire advanced web programming to make them senior web developers.
- Course Type: Tutorials with coding exercises.
- Rating: 4.5 following 8,578 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English, Italian, Spanish, Japanese, and Portuguese subtitles.
The Tutor
This course is developed by Colt Steele, Matt Lane, Tim Garcia, and Elie Schoppik. Colt Steele is a full-stack web developer and software engineer.
Matt Lane is a lead instructor at Rithm School, which he co-founded. Tim Garcia is a software developer who co-founded Rithm school along with Matt Lane and Elie Schoppik. Elie Schoppik is an instructor at Rithm school.
Requirements
- Basic understanding of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
- Internet-connected PC.
- Code editor.
Contents
- Advanced React 16 Framework.
- React Router.
- Redux.
- Performance testing – unit test, integration test, and the end-to-end test.
- Advanced AJAX
- Dynamic visualizations using SVG and D3,
- Advanced CSS Flexbox.
- JavaScript ES2015-ES2017.
- Map Visualization with TopoJSON and GeoJSON.
- Asynchronous JavaScript
- Database security with bcrypt and JWT.
- Advanced array methods.
- APIs.
- Deployment of websites.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
8. Web Development with Google’s Go
This is a specialist web development course that trains the student to use the Golang Programming Language for web programming.
It is developed and provided by Professor Todd McLeod, who has taught computer science for over a decade, and it focuses much on back-end web development.
This course covers server-side programming using Google’s Go(lang) language and the development of server-side applications that can work directly with web applications (without requiring third-party frameworks).
It also teaches the student how to build dynamically scalable apps. Likewise, it covers file servers, AJAX, cookies, JSON, universally unique identifier (UUID), and HTTP methods, as well as HTTP response codes.
This is the best GoLang web programming course in this review. Even so, one must know how to code with GoLang before taking this course.
This 19.5 hour-long course is divided into 18 sections that cover 171 lectures. The course contents are 19 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures.
It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course. Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion.
Until now, more than 41,800 learners have taken it, with 5,839 of them giving it an average rating of 4.6 out of 5. This course was last updated in June 2017.
- Target Audience: Junior web developers who want to acquire advanced web programming to make them senior web developers.
- Course Type: Tutorials with practicals.
- Rating: 4.6 following 5,839 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English, Italian, Spanish, Indonesian, Thai, Polish, Romanian, and Portuguese subtitles.
The Tutor
Todd McLeod is a professor of computer science who has taught for over 15 years.
Requirements
- Basic understanding of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
- Basic understanding of GoLang programming language.
- Internet-connected PC.
- Code editor.
Contents
- Review of GoLang.
- Templates.
- Building a server.
- Serving files.
- State creation.
- NET/HTTP Package.
- Routing.
- Session creation.
- AWS.
- Relational databases including PostgreSQL.
- WebDev toolkit.
- MongoDB.
- Docker.
- Deployment of websites.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
Best Web Development Courses for Expert Web Developers
9. BEST FOR EXPERTS: Web Developer Toolbox
This is an expert-level web development course with a bias to front-end development, though its covers some full-stack topics such as Webpack2 module bundler, NPM package manager, and Linting editor extension.
It covers the essentials of current front-end web development needs, including front-end libraries, ReactJS, Redux, and CSS Flexbox, along with complex dependency management.
As expected, it teaches the student how to style web applications, and easily format their codebases for ease of maintainability. In this review, this is the best web development course for expert web developers.
This 3-hour long course is divided into 5 sections that cover 22 lectures. The course contents are a downloadable resource and 2.5 hours of on-demand and subtitled video lectures.
It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course. Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion.
Until now, more than 35 learners have taken it, with 4 of them giving it an average rating of 4.7 out of 5. This course was last updated in January 2018.
- Target Audience: Senior web developers who want to acquire advanced web programming skills.
- Course Type: Tutorials with practicals.
- Rating: 4.7 following 4 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English subtitles.
The Tutor
This course is developed by Packt Publishing, a publishing firm that has been publishing programming and computer science books since 2004.
Requirements
- Basic understanding of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
- Basic understanding of Java or Python programming language.
- Internet-connected PC.
- Code editor.
Contents
- NPM.
- Node.JS.
- Dependency management.
- Babel.
- Webpack.
- SCSS.
- Neutrino.
- SSR.
- Front-end libraries.
- Flexbox.
- App styling.
- Linting CSS.
- Linting JavaScript.
- Auto-formatting JavaScript.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
10. Advanced Backend Web Development with CoffeeScript
This is a specialist web development course that trains the student to use CoffeeScript for web programming. It introduces CoffeeScript and relates it to JavaScript, and shows how it can be used to quickly write powerful and efficient JavaScript codes.
It also trains the learner on how to use preprocessors and task runners to enhance developer productivity. It also covers the use of sockets for real-time client-server bidirectional communication, as well as how to use Grunt for task automation.
This is the best specialist CoffeScript web development course in this review.
This 1-hour long course is divided into 5 sections that cover 16 lectures. The course contents are 3 downloadable resources and an hour of on-demand and subtitled video lectures.
It also provides full lifetime access to course contents, even after one has completed the course. Course completion allows one to earn a certificate of completion.
Until now, more than 360 learners have taken it, with 14 of them giving it an average rating of 4.0 out of 5. This course was last updated in November 2015.
- Target Audience: Senior web developers who want to acquire advanced web programming skills.
- Course Type: Tutorials with practicals.
- Rating: 4.0 following 14 ratings.
- Language: English with video lectures featuring auto-generated English subtitles.
The Tutor
This course is developed by RefactorU LLC, an education company that provides training courses to programmers and scientists.
Requirements
- Basic understanding of HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript.
- Understanding of JavaScript programming language and Node.JS.
- Internet-connected PC.
- Code editor.
Contents
- NPM.
- Node.JS.
- Grunt.
- Introduction to CoffeeScript.
- Sockets.
- Advanced CoffeeScript, including Loops, Interpolation, and Ternary.
This course can be accessed via an internet-enabled PC, smartphone, internet-enabled mobile device, or Smart TV.
A Short Guide to Web Development
The collective processes and tasks of building a functional website are collectively designated as web development. Web development is broadly divided into 3 main types, which are explained below.
Frontend Development
This focuses on how the website is presented to the user by the web browser, and it prioritizes user interface (UI) design, which usually impacts user experience (UX). The person who does frontend development is called a frontend developer.
The main work done by a front-end developer in terms of UI design is setting the visual hierarchy of page elements in order of their importance, scaling the elements in the web-page, setting the typography (including font, size, and typefaces) of text, and setting the color and contrast of the web-pages to ensure text is readable.
The developer also uses white space to provide spacing between elements and text paragraphs.
The developer also works with JavaScript for client-side programming. JavaScript allows the developer to manipulate the document object model (DOM), and work with JavaScript Object Notation (JSON), as well as handle HTTP requests used for Fetch API (Application Programming Interface).
Another important work of the front-end developer is to deploy the website. The main methods of deployment are Git, Secure Shell (SSH), and the slower FTP (File Transfer Protocol).
This deployment allows the website to go live so that viewers can interact with it. As expected, this requires the website to be hosted, and hosting can be done in 2 ways:
- Static Hosting using Netlify, Heroku, and GitHub Pages among others;
- and CPanel Hosting using BlueHost, Hostgator, and InMotion among others.
Other related tasks are setting up Domain Names, Email Hosting, and SSL (Secure Socket Layer) certificates.
Relatedly, the developer must be able to test his/her frontend code and functionalities. There are testing toolkits available to perform this testing.
The 3 main types of tests that the developer must be able to perform are the unit test, integration test, and the end-to-end test.
After becoming a foundational front-end developer, one can decide to advance to learning frontend frameworks such as Angular, ReactJS, Svelte, and VueJS; as well as learning about server-side rendering (SSR) and SSR frameworks such as Next.JS, Sapper, Nuxt.JS, and Angular Universal.
One can also learn about Static Site Generators such as Gatsby, Jekyll, 11ty, Hugo, and Gridsome.
Additionally, one can learn about Headless Content Management System (CMS) that can be used along with the static site generators. Headless CMS includes Sanity.io, Prismic, Strapi, WordPress, and Contentful.
A professional front-end developer can work with the JamStack which is a web architecture based on MarkUp, API, and JavaScript; and can be used to build secure, scalable, and high-performance websites at a minimal cost.
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Backend Development
This involves working with the server that provides, as well as stores, data that is used by the website. This server also handles HTTP requests and responses, as well as manages data modeling.
The person who does backend development is called a backend developer.
To begin with, the backend developer must learn a server-side language such as PHP, Java, Python, Kotlin, GoLang, C#, Ruby, or Deno.
This provides a good foundation for learning backend frameworks such as Express, Django, Laravel, Javalin, Nest, ASP.NET, Sinatra, Loopback, Symfony, KTor, Slim, Flask, Koa, Ruby on Rails, and Spring Model-View-Controller (MVC).
The backend developer works with databases such as MongoDB, Firebase, PostgresSQL, MySQL, ElasticSearch, and MS SQL Server.
Likewise, the developer can work with object-relational mappers (ORM) or object data mappers (ODM) such as Mongoose, Sequelize, Eloquent, Doctrine, and SQLAlchemy.
The developer also needs to be familiar with the query language called GraphQL. GraphQL is used with APIs and clients such as Apollo.
GraphQL is to API what SQL is to a relational database, that is (i.e) both are query languages for databases.
The developer can then advance to learn how to use real-time technologies.
Real-time technologies use web sockets such as Socket.io to allow a client computer to have constant open-door access to the server, which allows for bidirectional real-time communication with the server thus enabling messaging apps such as chat and instant messaging apps to function.
As the developer advances in his/her skillset, (s)he is set to learn about development operations for web apps and websites, including production, containerization, virtualization, and deployment of web apps.
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This requires one to learn how to use a:
- Hosting platforms such as Heroku, Azure, Digital Ocean, and Amazon Web Services.
- A container such as Vagrant or Docker-Kubernetes.
- A web server such as Apache and NGINX.
- Continuous deployment and integration tools such as Jenkins and Travis.
Full Stack Development
This involves building frontend UI and managing backend tasks. Basically, the full-stack developer can do what both frontend and backend developers can do.
This means that the developer must have the know-how of the tasks and skills required for frontend and backend web development.
Apart from the basic tools listed below, the full-stack developer will need other tools including:
- Version Control tools like Subversion and Git.
- Package Manager like Yarn, Composer (for PHP), and NPM for Node.JS.
- Repo Manager like GitLab, Bitbucket, and GitHub.
- Module Bundler for front-end development. This includes Webpack and Parcel for bundling JavaScript codes into modules. Another important bundler is Rollup.
- Browser Developer Tools for working with the browser. The developer should be able to use the browser Console for basic tasks like logging errors. Likewise, one must be able to use the Network tab to show server-client communications, i.e requests made to the server, and their resulting response. One must also be able to work with local storage in the browser, usually via the application tab.
- Editor extensions such as Linting for locating errors, Prettier for formatting the code, and Live Server for working with static files.
Basic Tools
- Operating System (OS) running in a Personal Computer (PC) or Workstation. The operating system can be MacOS, Windows 10 (or Windows 8.1 and rarely Windows 7), or a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu or CentOS.
- Text Editor such as Visual Studio Code (which is a lightweight integrated development environment[IDE]), Atom, Geany, Vim, Brackets, and Sublime Text.
- Web browsers such as Google Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
- A terminal that provides the command-line interface (CLI). The default terminal in the OS is normally adequate for the task, but one can choose to use Powershell, Hyper, or Git Bash.
- Design software for creating quick mock-ups of the website user interface (UI) during the preliminary stages of web design. The main software that can be used is Adobe XD, Sketch, Photoshop, and Figma (a web-based software).
Building Blocks
The 4 basic building blocks of web development are HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and Database.
HyperText Markup Language (HTML)
This is used to format the web page so as to differentiate the text from other web page content. On the web page, there is a code written using markup language which instructs the web browser on how to display the web page, and which content to display to the user.
This markup language enables the browser to distinguish between text and media files to be displayed on the web page and the code that formats the displayed web page and differentiates the page elements from one another.
This code based on markup language is called the HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and it uses semantic tags to define the structure of the web page.
During web development, HTML is used along with the styling technology called CSS, and the scripting language called JavaScript.
Cascading Style Sheet (CSS)
This is the style sheet language used to express how a structured HTML document is to be presented by a web browser.
CSS is used to define how the HTML web pages are to be presented to the viewer. It also allows the web developer to define styling rules for different web pages on the website.
These styling rules can then be prioritized so that dominance can be identified. The style sheet is the set of styling rules, and the prioritization of specific styling rules over others creates a cascade of rules.
Thus, this styling technology is best described as a cascading style sheet (CSS).
CSS uses selectors for setting values for positioning and padding page elements, as well as executing animations and transitions. CSS is also used to build responsive design and perform media queries.
There are CSS layout modules that can be used for web development, such as FlexBox and CSS Grid which are suitable for setting alignment in web pages.
CSS coding can be improved upon using a practical preprocessor scripting language such as SASS which can be compiled into CSS.
Syntactically Awesome Style Sheet (SASS) is a CSS preprocessor scripting language that adds functionalities like mixins, nesting, and variables to web-page styling.
A CSS Framework provides a set of UI designing tools that allow a front-end developer to easily and quickly design a website.
The main CSS Frameworks include the popular Bootstrap 5 framework, Tailwind CSS (a utility-first framework), Materialize that is based on Material Design, and the lightweight and modular Bulma.
JavaScript
JavaScript is a client-side high-level programming language used to code dynamic elements of the website and its webpages, as well as build web applications. JavaScript codes are used to introduce interactivity in a website.
Database
The database is used to store data belonging to the website.
Online Courses
The aforementioned information provides an overview of what web development is, and its core technologies and building blocks.
So, where can one learn web development online? One of the best online EdTech platforms for learning web development is Udemy. And as we have seen with the 10 courses reviewed above, there are a lot of great options available.
References
- “Systematic literature review on self-regulated learning in massive open online courses”, Lee, D., Watson, S. L., & Watson, W. R. (2019). DOI: https://doi.org/10.14742/ajet.3749
- “Computer programming learning: how to apply gamification on online courses?”, Piteira, M. Costa, C. Aparicio, M. (2018). DOI: 10.20897/jisem.201811
- “UDEMY: A CASE STUDY IN ONLINE EDUCATION AND TRAINING”, Iuliana Cetina, Dumitru Goldbach, Natalia Manea (2018); [PDF Link]
- “A COLLABORATIVE BLENDED LEARNING APPROACH FOR LEARNING WEB PROGRAMMING”, Wing Shui Ng & Gary Cheng (2018); [PDF Link]