Hi guys,
I’ve recently started a full stack developer career path and when I was doing some research literally everyone says it’s the best to start from basics of HTML and CSS however in this course the first thing to learn is JavaScript which is kind of confusing me. What are your thoughts on that?
Hi @maciejcybulski392417 and welcome to the forum!
Somewhere I read that Codecademy recently changed this order and explains that decision with the fact, that Javascript is harder to comprehend than HTML and CSS.
I learnt them in the classic order: Starting with HTML, CSS, then SASS (a preprocessor for CSS, which already contains the possibility of working with functions), then (not so classic) JQuery first and Javascript (still on it and will always be, I guess) second.
From my own experience I can confirm that Javascript is harder to understand than HTML and CSS. So their decision to start with Javascript (it’s more mixing it actually) in order not to dishearten the learner who dived into HTML and CSS fairly smoothly and then experiences a sudden and unpleasant slow down is comprehensible and makes sense, I think.
It depends on what you want to end up doing: You can build static websites with HTML and CSS only. Static meaning that there’s no user input or CMS (like Wordpress) involved – you can do pretty nice animations with CSS. And for a graphic designer applying for a job which mostly requires offline skills and just some additional webdesign knowledge, that’s fine. As a web developer, you don’t get far with that.
If you plan to become proficient in Javascript, too, I think following the provided path is a good idea in order to have some variety on your way in terms of difficulty level and topics.
You may want to start with the Front-End path instead, which starts with HTML, and see if that seems better. The beauty about all the paths and classes, is that many of sections in one path are at a later spot in another path. So, by starting the Front-End path, once you have completed the JavaScript modules in there, they will also be marked as complete in the Full Stack Path. That means you can start with the Front-End path, which (from what I can see) starts with HTML and CSS, then moves onto JavaScript either in the Front-End path, or move to the Full Stack path.
In addition, you could take separate courses in topics that interest you that are geared specifically to novices.
My advice: try these different approaches and find what works for you.