Introduction to the Course
Welcome to an intro to web development. I'm really excited to teach you a bit about how to become a web developer. In this course we assume you know absolutely nothing about writing code. We do assume that you have a basic grasp of how to operate your computer: how to browse the Internet, how to operate your operating system, how to use a keyboard and mouse, etc.
You should be able to skip lessons you know. However the review can be helpful.
Tips to Succeed In This Course
Contrary to what many people believe, you do not have to be a wizard with math to write code. The two subjects share some overlap but also are quite different. Many artists, lawyers, historians, linguists, and others have great success learning how to code. Don't let those preconceived notions hold you back at all.
Also keep in mind that this is hard. Learning how to code is hard. It's similar to learning a foreign language where you have to learn a lot of small pieces of information to be able to make sense of the larger picture. It's easy to feel discouraged, especially when you feel like you should get something but don't. Keep your head up and keep trying. Walk away from the problem and come back later. Try explaining your problem to someone / your dog / a rubber ducky (seriously, it works.)
Never feel afraid to Google anything. Every programmer you know, from the top person in the field to the newest student is Googling things constantly. This isn't cheating; it's a skill. It's a requirement. There is so much information coming at you that cannot possibly remember it all. Copy and paste code. Look at StackOverflow. Ask dumb questions. You get better by repeatedly exposing yourself to information. Each time a bit more will sink in.
Don't try to understand every piece all at once. There are times where it's okay to just trust that something works and come back later to understand how. It's a tough balance because you do want to try to understand what's going on. I'll try to signal to you what's worth diving into and what's worth leaving for another day but just know you don't have to understand it all at once.
Lastly, this isn't a get-rich-quick scheme. Learning to code is hard and requires a lot of hard work. While entry-level jobs are out there and you can get them with months of work, I guarantee you you'll have to work hard for them.
Who Am I?
My name is Brian Holt. I'm presently (as of writing) a cloud developer advocate at Microsoft. That means I talk to people why I think Azure is a pretty cool place to deploy your code. I write a lot of code demos and help with some open source libraries. I've taught a lot of lessons on Frontend Masters and used to be on the frontend development podcast Front End Happy Hour. Previous to that, I was a senior or staff JavaScript and Node engineer at LinkedIn, Netflix, Reddit, Needle, KSL.com, and NuSkin.
My biggest passions in life are people and experiences. I hope by going through this course that it can improve your life in some meaningful way and that you in turn can improve someone else's life. My beautiful wife and I live in Seattle, Washington in the United States of America with our cute little Havanese dog Luna. I'd almost always rather be traveling and have been fortunate to see over thirty countries in the past five years.
Please catch up with me on social media, would love to chat:
Why was this course created?
I love to teach. It's a challenging task that forces you to peel back all the knowledge you've gained so you can approach someone who lacks the same experience and terminology you have. It forces you to take amorphous concepts floating in your brain and crystalize them into solid concepts that you can describe. It forces you to acknowledge your gaps in knowledge because you'll begin to question things you know others will question. For me to ever master a concept, I have to teach it to someone else.
Unfortunately life gets in the way. These courses take dozens of hours to prepare and to get right. While I'd love to just create content all day, I have a (awesome) day job at Microsoft that demands and deserves my full attention. However I'm grateful to the team at Frontend Masters for giving me deadlines and incentive to create these courses and then allowing and encouraging me to open source the materials. Not everyone has the money to pay for these courses which is why these materials are and will be forever open source for you to reference and share. I think the video content is pretty good too and so I'd encourage you to take a look at the videos on Frontend Masters too if that's in the cards for you.