The Importance of Continuous Learning
Getting your foot in the door as a professional web developer is hard today.
It’s highly competitive and you need to “prove” yourself before you feel like you can get a job. 6-week boot camps have flooded the market to where it’s almost impossible to get your career started.
This is on top of the fact that technology is always changing. The technology that was popular and new just 5 years ago is quickly becoming outdated.
You have to continuously work at your craft in order to be a successful web developer.
That’s why I 100% promote the concept of “Continuous Learning”.
I have grown to the top of the field as a 1% developer through the habit of learning everything that I can. This is the skill I’ve used to stay on top of the game and discover what works today but what will also be better tomorrow.
Keep subscriptions to learning platforms and systems.
This is what separates me from many other programmers. I don’t think I’m the smartest or best programmer. I don’t like algorithms. They make my brain hurt.
But I take the act of learning seriously.
In fact, we provide subscriptions to multiple platforms for all of our team members. We ask them to take a portion of their “paid” time to just spend time researching and growing their individual skills.
This isn’t only because we believe in helping and fostering a community of growth.. which we do.
But we also see the investment into continuous learning as a major competitive advantage.
Pluralsight: Master the Skills to Drive Your Career
And Pluralsight stands out as one of our favorites because it’s like Netflix for your web development career.
There are hundreds of really in-depth, informative, and just plain good courses that can help you in all areas of your career.
I’ve shown our team courses on from UX design to React development to backend, Laravel and AWS development. Whether you want to learn fundamentals and principles or something practical, Pluralsight has you covered.
Ok, without further ado. Here’s 5 courses I recommend for all web developers
Front-End Web Development: Get Started
This Front-End web development course is an excellent start for anyone looking to get started in the field. It combines both practical real-world examples with excellent theory. It covers topics such as the difference between front-end and back-end, popular libraries and frameworks and can get you deeper into CSS and browser-based javascript.
It’s an excellent start for anyone that enjoys designing and developing the visual side of websites.
Course Outline:
- Introduction
- Learning and solving problems
- HTML + CSS
- Javascript
- Interacting with servers & API
- Browser
- Javascript in the browser
- Libraries & tools
- Website performance
Click here to get started with front-end web development with a 10-day free trial
Building & Managing Your Career Plan
Do you know where you want to be in the next 5-10+ years? You may not know the details but you really should know the direction.
Web development is one of the few careers that can take you into many paths. You can become the CTO of a tech-startup, work as an architect or principal engineer, start your own business or work as a freelance consultant.
These are all rewarding and lucrative, but they all appeal to many different types of people.
It’s important to be open and know where you want to go.
I think this Pluralsight course on building your career plan is one of the most important for all web developers. It guides you through all of the options & teaches you how to make a plan without getting stuck.
Take this course so that you don’t find yourself “stuck” 10 years into your career without knowing how to switch gears.
Click here to get started on your career plan with the 10-day free trial
User Experience Tips and Tricks for Developers
Building great websites is more than the code. If you want to craft software that people actually use then it’s important to spend time learning the art of user experience. It is one of the most important skills that separate good programmers from successful engineers.
In other words, we build software for people to use. All programmers should invest time into learning how to make things better for people.
Table of Contents
- What is User Experience and Why You Should Care
- Alignment
- Proximity
- Consistency / Repetition
- Contrast
- Color
- Typography
- Visibility
- Understandability
- Simplicity
- Keeping Users Informed
- Wrapping Up
Click here to get started on UX design with the Pluralsight 10-day free trial
PHP Fundamentals
Ok, it’s time to switch gears and talk about the backbone of a good website — The server and business layer. We can create a pretty browser website all day but at some point, you will want to do something with it. It may be online payments, contact forms, user signups, or whatever.
You will need to process & save data.
This PHP Fundamentals course takes you deep inside this code level without being overwhelming. It’s an excellent start to for every newer developer who wants to quickly understand what PHP is and how to write good code.
Table of Contents
- Course Overview
- Introduction
- General Types
- Functions
- Strings
- Arrays
- Classes & Objects
- Control Structures
- Databases
- Web Programming
Click here to get started on PHP Fundamentals with Pluralsight 10-day free trial
Developing Your Personal Brand
I’ve ended this list with probably the most important one. It is vital to think of your career as a business. You may not ever want to moonlight with freelance work or be a full-time consultant. This is fine.
But it’s still important to treat your career as a business.
We see in the news every day where loyal 15 – 20 year employees are getting laid off without any notice and with no prospects ahead of them. Don’t let this be you.
Start networking and building a business of you today.
Table of Contents
- Course Overview
- What and how of personal branding
- Personal brand tactics
- Awesome personal brand examples
Click here to get started on personal branding with the 10-day Pluralsight free trial
PluralSight: Where You get to learn by doing
I hope that these course intros have encouraged you to take your professional development seriously. Whether or not you choose to use Pluralsight is secondary to the fact that you must always be learning or you will find yourself quickly falling behind.
Personally, I really love Pluralsight for a few reasons. It has hundreds of really high-quality video courses, skills, and learning paths. They teach you practical skills in ways that encourage learning by doing. This is important because it isn’t just superficial glossary content. It is content that gets you to act.
I am & I believe most programmers are kinesthetic learners. This means we learn by getting our hands dirty and doing. I have grown my career by just picking up technology and just using it. Pluralsight really helps me kick-start that process.
Anyway, these are just a small sample of really great courses available on Pluralsight. I recommend you check out all of their skills and just test-drive that 10-day free trial offer.
Click here to master the skills to drive your career with 10 free days of Pluralsight
