Hi Laura, thanks for this insightful article about the Full Stack Open, I'm planning to take the course this year. I'm a Web Designer who knows very well html 5, css, sass, but struggling with modern development tools like node, react etc. so, what prerequisites you'll think someone needs in order to be ready for taking the course? and one last question: how many hours a week should I dedicate to the course? Thanks!
Hello Javier! In my opinion, the most important pre-requisite is "Participants are expected to have good programming skills". So you should have a solid understanding of fundamentals of programming with some language (booleans, if-else, for loops, handling lists, and dictionaries, methods, objects, and data types).
Participants are not expected to have prior knowledge related to the React/Node/MongoDB stack. And also more "fancy algorithms" (such as arrow functions and functional JS arrow methods) are introduced in the course.
I prepared for the course by studying JavaScript syntax and concepts (from the book Eloquent JavaScript), but because of your background, you most probably know already enough JS. And most definitely you understand enough about how browser apps work!
And about study time: course itself does not have any schedule to follow (expect the final deadline) and some of the exercises are optional. So you can very well adjust the schedule. If you complete all modules, do all exercises and study also documentation and other resources beyond the course material, it is realistic to spend 17.5 hours for one ETCS credit, which means it is 17.5*8 =140 hours. And if you study for 6 months, it will be around 6 hours a week (but as said, you can proceed also in less time).
Hi Laura, thanks for this insightful article about the Full Stack Open, I'm planning to take the course this year. I'm a Web Designer who knows very well html 5, css, sass, but struggling with modern development tools like node, react etc. so, what prerequisites you'll think someone needs in order to be ready for taking the course? and one last question: how many hours a week should I dedicate to the course? Thanks!
Hello Javier! In my opinion, the most important pre-requisite is "Participants are expected to have good programming skills". So you should have a solid understanding of fundamentals of programming with some language (booleans, if-else, for loops, handling lists, and dictionaries, methods, objects, and data types).
Participants are not expected to have prior knowledge related to the React/Node/MongoDB stack. And also more "fancy algorithms" (such as arrow functions and functional JS arrow methods) are introduced in the course.
I prepared for the course by studying JavaScript syntax and concepts (from the book Eloquent JavaScript), but because of your background, you most probably know already enough JS. And most definitely you understand enough about how browser apps work!
And about study time: course itself does not have any schedule to follow (expect the final deadline) and some of the exercises are optional. So you can very well adjust the schedule. If you complete all modules, do all exercises and study also documentation and other resources beyond the course material, it is realistic to spend 17.5 hours for one ETCS credit, which means it is 17.5*8 =140 hours. And if you study for 6 months, it will be around 6 hours a week (but as said, you can proceed also in less time).
Thanks for your reply Laura! Can't wait to start the course!