Let’s be honest, keeping up with or learning Front End Development can be tough sometimes. But, with a constant and growing list of resources, you can find plenty of help and have fun along the way! I started my journey almost 3 years ago and used many free resources from blogs to practice sites along the way and see it as only fair that I give back to the community. As you should too when you feel ready in your own journey!
Below I will share with you resources that can help make yourself a better developer for those thirsty for knowledge. These is a small list of resources that stayed with me out of the many out there. I hope this you can find something in this list that can add to your own growing collection or can just provide you with an alternative from your normal routine.
1. FreeCodeCamp — HTML/CSS/JS Full Course
2. Smashing Magazine — Blog
3. Codepen — CSS Showcase Platform
4. David Walsh Blog — Blog
5. Codewars — JS Game Platform
6. Front End Happy Hour — Podcast
- FreeCodeCamp. FCC is a full HTML, CSS, and JS course and is my foundation to front end development since I am self taught. They do a great job with keeping you on a track with the difficulty between each module being on a manageable level. They don’t give you too much or too little but you still have to work for the answer. They also have a YouTube series, discord and many write-ups written by others that you can look at when you are stuck. Overall it’s a great experience and if you have never touched HTML, CSS or JS then it’s one of the best places to start.
2. Smashing Magazine. None other than Rachel Andrew, Editor in Chief, and an amazing woman in tech, is the face of this blog. This blog is updated constantly by incredible Web and CSS developers who keep up to date with the latest trends standards. Need to know about the difference between display block or inline? Need to know how flex or grid really works? Look here. They also have a great UX/UI to their sight which makes using it just that much more pleasurable.
3. Codepen. As you learn, its extremely important that you do 2 things, practice and read code. When in it comes to CSS, Code pen is the place to do it. Code pen is simply a site to showcase visual projects that you have created with HTML, CSS and JS. And you can really go down the rabbit hole with this one looking at projects! The projects that others create here are amazing, take a look at this one — https://codepen.io/lynnandtonic/pen/NWWmzjr If there are CSS gods out there, you will find them here.
4. David Walsh Blog. This blog was created and is maintained by a Firefox developer by the name of…drum roll please….David Walsh. He has great content and makes tutorials and his readings very developer friendly. This may be more useful to you as you get more comfortable with JS but you are sure to find gold nuggets of information here regardless of skill level.
5. Codewars. Now Codewars is unique as its a game platform for learning programming languages. As you complete challenges, you earn Kata which is like Codewars version of exp. points and it’s how you level up and add points to the your teams side.(You’re able to select a global team to be a part of at the start of sign up.) You can also compete against others as well as check out code written by others once you complete a challenge. With a great UX/UI to go along with it, you can have a ton of fun learning as a beginner and even more fun competing as your skill level increases.
6. Front End Happy Hour. This puts a spin on normal podcasts as they have keywords and as the conversation goes, a drink of their favorite alcoholic beverage has to be taken when any participants say this word. Can you imagine having to drink every time someone says the word “speed” when talking about performance and optimization or a website? Don’t worry, its one of the shows that you can check out. Overall its hosted by individuals working at the big tech companies and is worth a listen.
As I mentioned before this is just a small list, and my own personal list of what has really helped me or inspired me to want to learn more. For those just starting out: No matter what you choose to do, remember that you can not use only 1 resource. Your success will come from many combined resources and from hours of putting in the work. But I believe in you. The journey is long and hard simply because you will need to walk your own path. But there are many tools to help you carve the trail.
Happy coding!
PS: I am not affiliated with any of these but I give credit where it is due. :)
