I am an experienced Full stack Developer specializing in Java, Javascript and React. This is a broad skill set, and you quickly become aware of your strengths and weaknesses. This blog post is about my experience of using FreeCodeCamp as an experienced developer to address my weakness in CSS.
I first started experimenting with Html and writing web pages around 1993, and became pretty competent at it. Html was different then, and we regularly mixed content and styling, or used tables for positioning elements, and who can forget adding a rotating carousel to the top of a web page.
Time have moved on, and although I’m confident at making css tweaks, I’ve always been weary of doing large scale CSS changes. I decided to address this weakness and stumbled into www.freecodecamp.org
FreeCodeCamp is a resource that allows people to learn software development for free. Although you are encouraged to make a small donation if you can afford it. Quincy Larson’s email list is also worth joining as it always has interesting articles whatever your level.
FreeCodeCamp is structured around 6 certifications, which they estimate to take 300 hours each –
Within each course you can select an area to focus on, and I opted for the “Responsive Web Design” course.
I decided to start from the beginning, and although I knew a lot of the subjects it wasn’t time wasted as it was good to refresh my skills. The course didn’t take 300 hours, and the areas I learned the most were CSS FlexBox and CSS Grid.
To get the certification you need to complete the “Responsive Design Projects”, and I’ve not started these as I’m currently working on another site at present. I’ll try and get back to the exercises when I get time.
I have to say I enjoyed using FreeCodeCamp and would recommend it to newbies, and experienced developers. I will probably do a few more courses on the site, and make sure I donate to keep this excellent site running.