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If you have ever considered delving into full stack JavaScript, there are a couple of different options for you. However, for the most part you’ve been pointed towards a few different sources. There’s always that pesky friend or professor that’ll swear by a certain book or course. But the common thread among all of them is they seem to recommend the Udacity Full Stack Nanodegreee course. And so many people pick it up based on these recommendations alone, but does it really live up to the hype? I had similar doubts too. This is why I’ve done a decent Udacity Full Stack Nanodegree review so you don’t have to go do all the hard work.
As soon as you open the Udacity Full Stack course page, you’re greeted with well-designed layout enticing you in. It starts off by listing what the course offers, and then goes into why this course would be beneficial for you. Some statistics are thrown around here and there and at the end you’re greeted by reviews and testimonials. There aren’t too many details of just exactly what the course offers. There are just brief points on what the course can help you out with it. To the average person, there’s no way to accurately gauge if the course can live up to its promise on the webpage alone. This is why so many people like myself have to turn to a Udacity Full Stack Web Developer Nanodegree review.
The course occurs several times throughout the year, but you have to join in before enrollments close. The course itself lasts a modest 4 months which should be plenty of time to get well versed. The cost is a bit steep at an even $1000; this in itself is enough incentive to read up on some Udacity full stack developer nanodegree reviews. It’s important to note here that I didn’t find any specific information on any hidden or cancellation charges.
So after I had paid the signup fee, I was greeted with a countdown to when the course session would begin. Once it started, I was learning new concepts and being tested on my abilities. The process was fairly straightforward and things kept going at a steady pace. I received weekly updates of my progress and the next steps to accomplish.
This wouldn’t be a fully-fledged Udacity Full Stack Nanodegree review if I didn’t actually review the contents. The course started with programming basics like Python, HTML and CSS. These were meant as refresher more than anything. It’s definitely recommended that you have a fair bit of knowledge about them before you dive into this course. After that the actual course started away focusing on back end, front end, deploying servers, and getting familiar with the tools.
These parts followed one after the other in timely fashion. You were expected to be well versed in the topics at the end. If you lagged behind, the course would continue with or without you, leaving you in the dust. This made it a little hard for me when I was preoccupied with other things in my life.
Every part was accompanied by projects that we had to complete. These included things like creating item catalogs, server configurations, portfolio sites, and many other things. These were designed to test out ability of applying the concepts we had grasped along the way. While some were challenging and fun to complete, others were simply too infuriating and didn’t factor in a majority of the course material.
If you’ve read my thoughts on the course, you probably think I found it helpful. And to a certain degree I did, but I simply cannot recommend this course to anyone as is. While there’s good material to be found here, it simply does not live up to its $1000 price tag when there are other alternatives available.
Instead, what I would recommend is signing up to the free trial of Pluralsight and learn your way to full stack mastery using this platform. Why do I reccomend this above Udacity? This is one of the most comprehensive course platforms available on the internet, and it definitely gives Udacity a run for its money.
With Udacity you are limited to just learning the degree you buy, and you can only learn full stack in the languages and frameworks that they provide for that individual nano-degree, where as with Pluralsight you can learn full stack with any language or platform that takes your fancy. If you're not sure what type of full stack developer you want to be come, I highly reccomend taking this course on the basics to intermeditate of full stack development in Javascript which is one of the most popular and career-friendly options. You can also easily skip any super basic stuff, if you're a bit experienced too.
The great thing about this course is that it follows very comprehensive learning material. You don’t have to go around looking for supplementary material like with other courses. Everything this course gives you is enough to get started without wasting your time, effort, or resources. The course follows a pattern with an easy to grasp learning curve. It slowly and steadily introduces core concepts and then adds something to build off it.
Udacity is very restricted in comparison, I would say in general it IS a good platform, but the price tag is just way too high compared to other options out there and it's not even a case of you get what you pay for. Pluralsight is just way better and cheaper.
Having used both firsthand, I can tell you the difference of experience is night and day between these two services. If you know someone that has found some use from Udacity’s course, more power to them. But if you seriously want to consider getting full stack down the right way, then I honestly can’t think of a better option than Pluralsight.
But you don’t have to put all your trust in me to make your decisions. As of now, Pluralsight offers a free trial for ALL of it's courses, even the Premium ones which come with an interactive code editor (If you can afford the slightly higher price tag, I really do reccomend it, especially if you are a type of learner that will benefit from immediate feedback on your code). Be sure to sign up and experience the service for yourself. I think you’ll find it’ll definitely be worth as much of your time as it was mine.
