Top Web Development Bundle: Django, Ruby on Rails, Node

I’ll try to update my review as I go through the course. At each point, I’ll add more info and a new rating, but keep the old rating so you can see how I felt about this course as it progressed. *: 5.0 Just getting started. Moves along nicely. Got Python & Django environment set up and am ready to code. *: 3.5 I’m at 50%. Finished Section 3, Lecture 63. I’m done with the first section which was Python + Django. Of the tree languages, I only know Python, and I’m starting to worry. I don’t believe this course is for beginners. It is mostly a watch me code style course with decent explanations along the way. I don’t believe it’s good for absolute beginners, and this is not a teaching style that is fastest for me. I prefer the reference type approach with quick descriptions plus homework and quizzes along the way. So far, I have kind of an idea how Django works, but it’s very cursory. I wouldn’t be able to build a Django+Python app without doing a lot of Django features and capabilities research. I’m done with Git and Ruby installation and did the API part of the Ruby on Rails section. Things are moving along, but I’m worried that at the end I’ll be able to monkey type the stuff and make things work without having a significant understanding of Ruby. So far, I’ve had to do quite a bit of my own research to figure out how to make things work. It took me three days to get here, and I’ve been working pretty hard. *: 4.0 at 77%. Finished Section 3, Lesson 93. I increased my rating a little. I think the course doesn’t teach language details and isn’t for beginners. It does however give you a good idea how the pieces fit together. So although I know very little about Ruby, I did get a lot of useful info about working with CRUD, Git, Devise, Heroku, & Bootstrap. I doubt I could write a Ruby on Rails app with blazing speed, but with a language reference manual in hand, I’d probably be able to get through it. All of the above technologies are a course in themselves, but I feel I know enough to muddle my way through finding what I need. The biggest plus is that now I know what those buzzwords mean and can add them to my resume. One other thing this course does well is hold your hand through the installation of all the various frameworks and tools like: Node, Django, Bootstrap, Git, Ruby, Devise, etc. If I tried this on my own, it would take a long time and have many errors & re tries. John makes all of this pretty painless. *: 3.5 at 100%. I downgraded my rating from 4.0 after finishing the last section. I don’t know if I’m an unreasonably hard grader or not. I thought the last section on Javascript and Node.js was very thin. It made up 23% of the total 3 subject course, and the Git, Bootstrap, Node and Heroku lessons were repeats of the prior section. The Ruby on Rails section was by far the best and most extensive. I doubt I’d be able to do much with Node.js if I was asked. The installation and configuration of Node, Express, Nodemon, and Handlebars was good, and I could probably do that. But in the end I’m left with a lot of questions about how to actually do some more complex things with Javascript like error handling. The API call to iexcloud.io was shown, and that was about it. A model or database was never used so I don’t even know how to do any CRUD in Node. Also, the instructor occasionally pasted some Javascript lines of code that were not well explained. For example, > arrow and callback functions were used without much overview. At least I was able to figure out those concepts because they were shown and I could Google them. But use of a database wasn’t shown and I don’t have a clue. What was covered was good, but I’m hesitant to make any mention of my Node.js knowledge because someone might actually ask me to do something with Node. *: 4.0 I came back a few days after taking the course and raised my rating back to 4 stars. The reason is because I think it was intended to be a fast paced course, and that’s what it was. The Ruby on Rails part was especially strong, though the NodeJs part was somewhat weak. The strongest aspect of this course is that it quickly gets you through installing all of the software needed to work with Python, Ruby & Node web programming.