Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#1

Post by antoko » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:04 AM UTC

My stepson (19, no college) is going to explore web development and design. He doesn't have any prior experience. I'm looking for free online resources for him to get some exposure. I was thinking html,css,jQuery on codecademy to start with, and then introducing JavaScript. What else is out there? Is there anything similar for the design side of things?

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#2

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:05 AM UTC

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#3

Post by AJAr » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:15 AM UTC

You can check out Treehouse. It's not free, but a great value for the money since you get access to their full library.

http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#4

Post by antoko » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:29 AM UTC

AJAr wrote: post #3

You can check out Treehouse. It's not free, but a great value for the money since you get access to their full library. http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks

Thanks, this looks good, and it is close enough to free, I was just trying to avoid 12 week immersion code schools for $1000s. That may be an option later but just testing the waters first.

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#5

Post by lollipop25 » Thu, May 14, 2015, 2:43 AM UTC

A good place for documentation is MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web. They have extensive documentation with regards to web technologies. I suggest he read up about HTML first, getting the first few basic elements on the page. Then he can move on to CSS to style up the page.

At this point, you can practically build basic webpages with just HTML and CSS. From here, you can take 2 paths: A graphics designer or a front-end developer.

A graphics designer leans more to design rather than building apps. This requires a basic of jQuery, but mastery of Photoshop. A good place to learn is reading articles from Smashing Magazine http://www.smashingmagazine.com/

A front-end developer leans more to app-building rather than design. This requires knowledge of JavaScript libraries and best practices. For this, select your basic set of frameworks and master them. Suggestions range from jQuery, Bootstrap, to full-fledged frameworks like Ember and Angular.

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#6

Post by antoko » Thu, May 14, 2015, 3:09 AM UTC

lollipop25 wrote: post #5

A good place for documentation is MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web . They have extensive documentation with regards to web technologies. I suggest he read up about HTML first, getting the first few basic elements on the page. Then he can move on to CSS to style up the page. At this point, you can practically build basic webpages with just HTML and CSS. From here, you can ta…

Thanks for the smashing magazine link, should be worth exploring. While the MDN resources are great I was looking for more interactive tutorials. I'm hoping the gameification format used by codecademy will pull him in. Experince tells me his enthusiasm is inversely proportional to my own, so I'm hoping he can catch the bug without me having to walk through it with him.

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#7

Post by briandrum » Thu, May 14, 2015, 4:18 AM UTC

For a free, high quality introduction to HTML and CSS, take a look at http://learn.shayhowe.com.

A few others I’m aware of but less familiar with:

http://tutorials.codebar.io http://howtocodeinhtml.com http://learnlayout.com

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#8

Post by joshschreuder » Thu, May 14, 2015, 4:35 AM UTC

antoko wrote: post #4

AJAr wrote: post #3

You can check out Treehouse. It's not free, but a great value for the money since you get access to their full library. http://teamtreehouse.com/tracks

Thanks, this looks good, and it is close enough to free, I was just trying to avoid 12 week immersion code schools for $1000s. That may be an option later but just testing the waters first.

CodeSchool (http://codeschool.com/) is another similar one to Team Treehouse.

Their HTML / CSS ones are paid, but they have a free Javascript intro one: https://www.codeschool.com/courses/javascript-road-trip-part...

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#9

Post by antoko » Thu, May 14, 2015, 4:42 AM UTC

briandrum wrote: post #7

For a free, high quality introduction to HTML and CSS, take a look at http://learn.shayhowe.com . A few others I’m aware of but less familiar with: http://tutorials.codebar.io http://howtocodeinhtml.com http://learnlayout.com

Thanks, some nice additional resources, the advanced shayhowe lessons look good for explaining the concepts around bootstrap which will be useful for a novice rather than just diving straight into it.

Re: Ask HN: Online resources for beginner web dev/design

#10

Post by antoko » Thu, May 14, 2015, 4:53 AM UTC

joshschreuder wrote: post #8

antoko wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks, this looks good, and it is close enough to free, I was just trying to avoid 12 week immersion code schools for $1000s. That may be an option later but just testing the waters first.

CodeSchool ( http://codeschool.com/ ) is another similar one to Team Treehouse. Their HTML / CSS ones are paid, but they have a free Javascript intro one: https://www.codeschool.com/courses/javascript-road-trip-part...

Thanks, this looks pretty similar to codecademy, have you done the courses? Any reason in particular to choose this over codecademy? I guess he can try the free ones and see if he finds additional value.