I’ve been a professional web developer for approximately 1 year and 6 months. The biggest challenge, I feel, has been how quickly and dramatically the build tools, application frameworks, and the language of JavaScript changed over that time. For my first 3 or 4 months, we were still writing AngularJS applications in ECMAScript 5. Then, at my suggestion, we jumped to Angular 2 beta and TypeScript (and RxJS and @ngrx/store and Yarn). In a certain sense, it feels like I took my first 4 months and threw it away.
But I don’t want this all to sound too negative. I enjoy being a web developer, and I code for fun even when I’m not working. I’m just trying to come up with some kind of segue before I start listing my favorite podcasts.
The Shop Talk Show is my favorite podcast for general front-end development trends and news. The format tends to alternate between a “rapid fire” question and answer episode, and a “deep dive” with guests specializing in a specific topic. It’s hosted by Dave Rupert and Chris Coyier.
The Front End Happy Hour podcast focuses on one topic per episode, with a panel having a free-form conversation. I think the core founders of the podcast work at Netflix. Other regular panel members work at Evernote, LinkedIn, and Atlassian. They frequently have guests from other large, Silicon Valley based tech companies.
I like the podcast because the panel members aren’t “developer advocates” or professional tutorial creators; they work as front-end developers for money and have a conversation about work-related topics while drinking, and record it for fun. As an employee of a four person start-up in Bloomington, Indiana, this podcast provides a peak into the “mythical” Silicon Valley, and lets me compare our practices to those of larger organizations.
The Adventures in Angular podcast tends to alternate formats between an in-depth interview with an Angular developer about his or her background (“My Angular Story”), and a topic-focused episode featuring a panel of regulars with an expert guest. I wouldn’t recommend the podcast to someone who doesn’t work with Angular. I would highly recommend the podcast to someone who does.
CSS-Tricks started as a front-end focused blog by Chris Coyier. Though it still retains a blog-like feel, there are more contributors than just Chris, and it tends towards a tutorial focus. I think I’ve heard Chris say (on the Shop Talk Show) that he’d like the site to serve as an almanac for all things CSS.
I regularly bookmark and reference various pieces from the site, such as the flexbox guide.
Jeremiah Shoaf posts one site nearly every day of the week that features good typography. I keep a spreadsheet with links to websites that I feel are well designed, and nearly all of them were featured on Typewolf. It also has various useful guides and lists, such as the Top 40 Google Fonts.
A List Apart feels like “The New Yorker” of web design (or something). They post a new article approximately once a week. I also really like their book series, A Book Apart. Each book I buy always seems expensive (or else I’d read all of them), but the quality always seems high.
Todd Motto posts a new article about once a week or two or three. They’re typically focused on Angular, though some posts cover broader JavaScript topics. Todd Motto also creates paid Angular tutorials, and delivers in-person talks and on-site training.
Egghead is the only tutorial website that I currently subscribe to. It’s $199 per year, but if you go the website and create a free account, they’ll likely email you with an offer for a discount.
However, I think it’s worth the $16.67 per month — if you’re a front-end developer who works with “bleeding edge” JavaScript technologies. Egghead focuses on short video series that get you familiar with a given framework or front-end tool as quickly as possible. In my opinion, it’s frequently “short” on providing conceptual explanations. However, it lurred me away from Treehouse because of its coverage of JavaScript topics.
Treehouse was one of the most important pieces in my career change to web development (along with a local program called Bloomington Code School that has since been discontinued). I was a subscriber for probably a year and a half, until I got my first job as a front-end developer. I switched over to Egghead because it’s a bit cheaper ($16.67 compared to $25 per month), and because Egghead, as a service, focuses on JavaScript development, whereas Treehouse covers all things web development with offerings of JavaScript tracks and courses.
Treehouse is not a replacement for a bachelor’s in computer science. Treehouse is more like a cutting edge trade school. While trying to change careers, I completed an associate’s degree in computer science. If I were to do it over again, I’d probably skip community college and focus on Treehouse, Bloomington Code School, and building websites in my spare time. However, a bachelor’s degree is “a different beast.”
I mostly just check Codepen for fun. Occasionally, I’ll search a design or CSS related term, either for inspiration or to see related code. I’ll also make pens to quickly try something out.
I hardly ever intentionally visit Stack Overflow, except for maybe when they put out that recent — it’s just always at the top of my Google searches.
Mattias Petter Johansson (“MPJ”) releases a new video on his YouTube channel every Monday morning. Over time, he’ll occasionally create a compilation on a given subject, like his series on Functional Programming in JavaScript: