YouTube Course Review: Full Stack Web Development for Beginners
One social media platform that I really like is YouTube because it has lots of educational videos that I can view to learn new things. In fact, the majority of the data science principles that I have learned have been through watching YouTube videos on the subjects that I have found of interest.
I was considering taking a free course in web development but decided instead to learn the technology by taking free online courses and watching YouTube videos. Therefore, when I saw the video titled, “Full Stack Web Development for Beginners”, I thought that I would have to watch the video and give it a try.
The video I watched covered the following topics:-
- HTML
- CSS
- Javascript
- Node.js
- MongoDB
HTML
Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is a standardised system for tagging text files to achieve font, colour, graphic, and hyperlink effects on web pages.
The HTML section of the video is, in my opinion, suitable for beginners because it went through many of the tags that are necessary to create a webpage.
CSS
Cascading style sheets (CSS) is used to define styles for web pages, including the design, layout and variations in display for different devices and screen sizes.
The section on CSS was also suitable for beginners because it went through the code necessary to format a HTML file.
Javascript
Javascript is an object-oriented computer programming language commonly used to create interactive effects within web browsers.
The Javascript module, in my opinion, is not suitable for beginners. The objective of the module was to create a dragon slaying game, which in my opinion is too advanced a task for a beginner. The course creator, Beau, did provide the code to the game, so I was able to watch the video and follow along with it.
In addition to the dragon slaying game, the next module in the video was to make a movie review app, which again, I feel is too advanced for a beginner. The code to the app was provided, so I was able to follow along whilst watching the video.
Node.js
Node.js is a cross-platform, open-source JavaScript runtime environment that can run on Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS, and more. Node.js runs on the V8 JavaScript engine, and executes JavaScript code outside a web browser.
Node.js lets developers use JavaScript to write command line tools and for server-side scripting. The ability to run JavaScript code on the server is often used to generate dynamic web page content before the page is sent to the user’s web browser. Consequently, Node.js represents a “JavaScript everywhere” paradigm, unifying web-application development around a single programming language, as opposed to using different languages for the server- versus client-side programming.
Node.js has an event-driven architecture capable of asynchronous I/O. These design choices aim to optimise throughput and scalability in web applications with many input/output operations, as well as for real-time Web applications (e.g., real-time communication programs and browser games).
I personally felt that the Node.js module of the video was too intense for a beginner because one needs to learn the basics of Javascript before using Node.js.
MongoDB
MongoDB is an open-source document-oriented database that is designed to store a large scale of data and also allows you to work with that data very efficiently. It is categorised under the NoSQL (Not only SQL) database because the storage and retrieval of data in the MongoDB are not in the form of tables.
I feel that this part of the video was too advanced for a beginner because the basics of Javascript, along with the opportunity to make a small website, was not made available to the viewer.
Summary
I found the video to be quite long and, aside from the first two modules of it, I personally don’t find it suitable for beginners.
One simple web page that I developed as a result of viewing the video and looking at other tutorials can be found here:- https://tracyrenee61.medium.com/make-your-own-website-coding-in-html-fd71668c59c0
I have committed myself to making a website for a friend, but I am not sure what direction I want my programming studies to take. This is something that I will have to think long and hard about because I’m not sure that I can become an expert at all of the topics involved in computing.