This is a document of what materials and courses I used to learn to code at my own pace. I went through these courses throughout 2019. I'll list them out in the order that I went through them in case you'd like to do the same. It was a steady progression of difficulty and I learned a lot. I landed a role at Discourse in early 2020 as a designer, primarily working in stylesheets and handlebars files. As time went on, I found myself working more and more in the front-end as well using the EmberJS framework. All of the learning I did has definitely contributed and helped me in my roles at Discourse. It has not been without pretty difficult moments, but these initial courses I learned from helped solidify a lot of javascript and working with the DOM for me.

FreeCodeCamp

Javascript Algorithms and Data Structures Certification (Eq. 300 Hours)

1. Basic Javascript
2. ES6
3. Regular Expressions
4. Debugging
5. Basic Data Structures
6. Basic Algorithm Scripting
7. Functional Programming
8. Intermediate Algorithm Scripting
9. Javascript Algorithms and Data Structures Projects

This was the first online javascript course I went through. I have to say it was very basic in reference to the UI and interaction, BUT it definitely taught me some foundational javascript and coding basics that propelled me onto the next courses.

I looked over the html and css sections but I am proficient in those two 'languages' so I didn't spend too much time on it.

Codecademy (30 Hours)

To solidify the fundamentals of Javascript I also went through Codecademy's course on the introduction to javascript. It was basically a better presented version of what freecodecamp offered and it helped solidify what I learned there.

Watch and Code

Practical Javascript (30+ Hours) I felt like this was the BEST of the intermediate javascript courses I have taken. Gordon Zhu was an excellent teacher and went DEEP with each topic. The intro course was free and GREAT and led me to purchase a couple months of his premium course.

Watch and Code Premium (30-50+ Hours) This was the next step up from the free course Gordon offered. From day one, we were steeped in the importance of reading complex code in order to further our understanding of programming. I feel like this mindset has helped me a lot and caused me to WANT to engage with difficult code and sit their until I can understand what is going on.

His emphasis on not getting caught up in the latest framework and trends, and instead going deep with vanilla javascript has taught me a lot.

Throughout the course I learned how to create my own versions of array methods like map, find, filter, forEach, and reduce. We got under the hood of everything I learned in my other courses and I feel like this was the most beneficial course I have taken to date.

Udemy

This website has THOUSANDS of courses. It can be overwhelming, but I found a couple courses taught by teacher's I learned about through research and looking up boot camps.

The Advanced Web Developer Bootcamp (100+ Hours)

This course was ridiculous! I mean that in a good way. It covered SO MUCH that at times it was hard to keep up. I slowly went through 80% of the course (I stopped at the warbler back end section because I wasnt interested in it.)

I'll list out some of the things I learned here:

1. CSS Animations
2. CSS + Flexbox
3. Async Javascript + Requests
4. Testing w/ Jasmine
5. More recreating advanced array methods
6. OOP with javascript
7. Creating APIs with Express + MongoDB
8. ES6
9. Intermediate D3 (data vis)
10. Intermediate React
11. Very basic Redux knowledge

The Complete Node.js Developer Course

This course was amazing. The teacher balances out the tutorial/teaching with a good amount of letting the student figure things out on their own.

Throughout the process of the node course I found myself able to implement each section of knowledge on my own in my own apps. I was able to build my own APIs with node and express, learn how to use MongoDB for storage, and much more. This course solidified a lot of back-end processes for me and got me more and more interested in what goes on behind the scenes on the web.

Some of the things I learned and solidified were:

1. Asynchronus programming
2. Promises
3. MongoDB
4. REST APIs
5. Using Postman as an API testing program
6. Authenticating Users
7. Working with Heroku for app deployment

Eloquent Javascript (available for free!)

This book by far has been the most challenging aspect of my learning. In the beginning it helped solidify what I had already been learning elsewhere, but the further I go into it, the more I learn from the book itself.

I believe it is written from a computer science perspective and this has been beneficial for me. It goes more in depth with the underworkings of javascript and programming in general.

While difficult, I feel like was a great resource to challenge me and get deeper with what I had learned. It has also taught me to sit with difficult problems and focus my attention on the issue until I come to a place where it makes sense to me.

This was MOST evident in chapter 16, which focused on creating a platform game with vanilla js and the browser.