#65 overall
Web Development
Udacity
7 recommenders · 7 threads · recommended in 5 years, 2012–2021 · score 7.7
A free introductory web development course taught by Steve Huffman (Reddit co-founder) on Udacity, built around Google App Engine and Python so students learn how a website works while building one.
Commenters call it a fantastic, well-paced introduction to web infrastructure that gives a solid mental model before adding frameworks and tooling.
Web & Mobile Developmentbeginnerfreeinteractive MOOC#web development#google app engine#python#huffman#udacity
Recommendations by year
20062026
Steve Huffman's web development course was excellent on Udacity.
I can relate to your sentiment. But note that your problems have very little to do with learning how to program, and everything to do with needing to navigate the high buy-in tax of learning all of this tooling before first building a simple site.
I HIGHLY, HIGHLY, HIGHLY recommend you give Steve Huffman's course on "Introduction to Web Development" at Udacity at shot. Unlike virtually every single resource I have found, Steve does a great job of explaining the basics of the infrastructure of how a website works while you are implementing it at the same time. Also, since he does it on Google App Engine, 100% of the "tooling" you will need will simply be installing the app engine runtime. I've found that it is a fantastic introduction to programming for the web. It will give you a solid understanding of the basic infrastructure, and you will then have a good mental model onto which you can slowly graft the many other tools that developers use when making a site.
I felt exactly like you did - and in my case, I had even programmed some in college but found it hopeless when trying to make a "real" product. Today I weave between backend and frontend technologies, preprocessors for my styling, grunt, etc. -- all of the stuff that I was put off by at first. And I'm confident it wouldn't have happened if I hadn't taken that course first.
I second this recommendation. The Web Dev course on Udacity formed the start of what eventually became a full-time job programming for me. The course has just the right mix of breadth and depth for a beginner that moving on to any larger MVC framework will be easy.
For php and web development in general I highly recommend Laraccasts. https://laracasts.com/series
Also for web development in general take free course at udacity, taught by reddit founder.
Also on codacadmy and codeschool have some qualified free screencasts to teach professional web development to beginners.
I'm a big fan of uDacity, which only appears once in that list.
For a novice, their 'Intro to Computer Science' course is fantastic, as is the follow-on 'Web Development' course, led by Steve Huffman.
I would take Udacity's CS101 course instead and then the Web Development Course they provide. This will give you a very good foundation for getting started. I have taken both and I highly recommend them.
The language you will use will be Python, but what is important are the fundamentals you will learn in these courses. You can then apply them to any language and framework you want to work with.
I took the Web Development course at Udacity too. It was probably more work than some were expecting (especially for a 2xx-level course), but Steve's knowledge and enthusiasm made for a great, challenging course.