Jakub AndrzejewskiWhen I first started learning programming, I was only using the YouTube tutorials. Back then, I really enjoyed watching video tutorials by NetNinja, and to be honest, I am looking at them periodically until today! The content there is simple, straightforward, and useful in many different scenarios. Few years ago, I thought that video tutorials are the only way to learn new programming languages, frameworks, and concepts but the reality is that it is only one of the few approaches you can take to both teach and learn about programming.
In this article, I would like to summarize my knowledge about different types of developer education so that you could choose the one that suits you best (or choose all of them which I highly recommend).
Picture of a cat learning 'advanced' maths just because I absolutely 💜 cats.
Source https://cattime.com/assets/uploads/2018/08/back-to-school-cats-1-1280x720.jpg
Articles
The first type of Developer Education Content that I have found recently really valuable are the articles or in other words blog posts (such as the one you are reading currently). I think they are especially efficient both for ones wanting to learn something and those wanting to share their knowledge and grow. Looking at solving certain problem, when I have a documentation website or an article, I always choose article as it is often shorter, covers the topic in a similar way as the docs, but sometimes also adds a bit of knowledge that can be useful for you if you would like to learn something more as well.
Source https://moderncat.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/adorable-animal-cat-1440387.jpg
I dont think that articles should replace docs (for sure not). I mean that they are a great addition to the step by step documentation. Take a look at some of my articles I wrote about Nuxt and Vue -> https://dev.to/jacobandrewsky/series/14657. They dont explain simple topics like what is Nuxt.js as it is explained really well in the docs. Instead, in my articles I focus on the topics that you wont find in the docus, while they can be used in many different projects, i.e. How to structure Nuxt app with Pinia and modules for better scallability and extendability.
Video
Video tutorials are great as they show you step by step visually what you have to do to fix certain problem, build a new application, or integrate service with another one. If you are just like me, you could learn programming by just watching these videos and start building your own applications after that.
Source https://64.media.tumblr.com/0a4186a0d4fb2d86f376e419403d2bef/tumblr_orr3m8gRRc1tlb56zo1_500.gifv
The best video tutorial series and the channels I can recommend, I am listing below for you to check out:
- https://www.youtube.com/c/TheNetNinja
- https://www.youtube.com/c/Fireship
- https://www.youtube.com/c/TraversyMedia
Documentation
In my recent article, I mentioned why I think good documentation really matters for developers. If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend you to check it out -> https://dev.to/jacobandrewsky/why-good-documentation-matters-for-developers-45be.
Source https://docs.nestjs.com/
Getting familiar with language/language/tool documentation should allow you to have a better understanding about the basic and advanced concepts used. In my opinion, the best documentation websites I know are:
- Nest.js -> https://docs.nestjs.com/
- Vue.js -> https://vuejs.org/
- Nuxt 3 -> https://v3.nuxtjs.org/
Courses
I don't have that much experience with courses as I was only participating in few of them as a teacher but never a student. I never liked all these programming bootcamps that were very expensive and the knowledge gained was not adequate to the costs. The course I participated in as a teacher was a course organized by my student scientific club called CodersCamp. In it, we were helping developers wannabe to start their path and learn a technology stack that should allow them to apply for internship/junior positions.
The stack was mainly React.js and Node.js so quite popular technologies that are used in many companies nowadays. During that course, participants have built 5 web applications, conducted several knowledge tests, and finally participated in the hackathon to win prizes as well. And all that for free!
Summary
What I wanted to achieve in this article is that there are multiple approaches to educate developers. It works both for you as someone who would like to teach others, and if you are the person wanting to learn something. Using all mentioned techniques for sure will require time and resources but based on my experience, it will be worth it :)
