As a Self Taught Web Developer myself, I found it hard to learn due to bad resources, or just not understanding resources at all. So this time, I will share with you my personal choice of five different methods to learn Web Development.
I would also advise you to not just stick to one choice, but through your career, try and use all of these, as there will be the time when one of these will help you much more than the other, but also that same one in different situations won’t even give you a grasp of knowledge.
Now, don’t forget that you can also watch a full video on this topic, just click the link below.
Watch Video → Learning Methods for Self Taught Web Developers
Courses
I would like to start this list of five with courses. I don’t just think courses that we buy on Udemy or watch on SkillShare or any other similar platform. I am also thinking of all courses, tutorials, and snippets that you could find on the web.
Learning through courses is good, as mostly we are creating real-life projects through courses. Usually, courses would start with lessons for beginners, but as we progress, it will pick up the pace.
Developing real-life projects could give you a really good sense of organization, dedication, you will see all that good work that should be put into a project and even think out of the box a bit.
You should also keep in mind that there is a consequence from learning through courses. So, don’t get used to code through the course, but use course content as guidance, or a reference. Make sure to code on your own, as there will be specific issues and blockades that the course could not solve for you.
Written and Audio Material
This one would be a really good and almost harmless way of learning. Learning through written material means that you would mostly learn through books. So, it should be easy. Get out, buy the book for specific technology and just keep your head in it.
Books will hold each little piece of information for technology that you need. So this should be a good way of learning. But, what about those who are not in a friendly relationship with books?
Audio material is also one way of learning, as you can listen to audiobooks, audio materials for a specific technology, and as usual, podcasts. This is also a great way to catch up on something, learn something new and even expand your knowledge.
As an example, I use this platform called CodePen, where I post my code from time to time. CodePen also has its Podcast and from time to time, I make sure to listen to a bit of it and you can do that too. With their podcast, I learned a lot in fields that I usually lack, like DevOps in general, servers, deployment, and much much more.
As you can see, this can be a nice way to learn and catch up on technology. Also, you can see obvious holes here, as you won’t mostly catch the whole podcast, or you won’t understand audiobooks fully, and the book itself is a hard way to keep a reference from. So keep that in mind.
Other People
Okay, to be honest, this one will put you in fifth gear. It is great to learn with other people, like your colleagues, team members, coworkers, partners, and so on.
This is probably the fastest and most reliable technique of learning to go with. As working and learning with others will allow you to learn new technology, implement complex features, solve hard problems. Also, most importantly… It motivates you!
There is just something in seeing others doing a better job than you. You will go into a competitive mode where you will make sure to learn and work even harder.
As with everything, this one also has its catch. If you are a self taught web developer and you are on top of that a freelancer, well you won’t be around people with the same interest. Which means that you won’t have people to learn from.
Also if you are in a big team of people, or even a smaller one surrounded by grumpy people. In the same way, you won’t have people to learn from, or those that could pass knowledge to you, simply… won’t.
Code Itself
Living in this era is great for this. As we are kind of surrounded by code and you can simply learn how to code just by looking at it.
To give you some examples, where we do have quite a lot of resources now online, we also have whole platforms with code examples, technologies today have their documentations and of course, read your code, from your projects.
One thing that we lack here would be an explanation. This doesn’t mean that people that are writing those code examples, documentation, and blogs are not doing their job properly. It is just that… we cannot feel it properly, as we would feel it from a person telling us on live sessions, courses, and even in real life.
Create
Finally, one of my favorites. Create, build… just work on something.
This is a little bit advanced technique, as it requires you to know at least the basics of technology that you wish to properly learn.
Through work, through code, you will feel probably mixed emotions. Like if you are doing good, then you will be at the top of the mountain, but if you are doing bad, well, you are at the very bottom.
You should know that this shouldn’t bother you. We all as web developers have our ups and downs and even senior web developers tend to be stuck on even simple things. It is just the nature of our work, so adjust and overcome.
Conclusion
This list of five could help you and to some, it will probably, but don’t forget to be consistent. You need to put in the work every day, no matter if you are just starting your journey as a Web Developer. Code at least one hour per day and make sure to enjoy your journey.
If you wish to see the video format of this blog post, make sure to click the link down below.
Watch Video → Learning Methods for Self Taught Web Developers
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