My HONEST Review of Scrimba's Frontend Developer Career Path

I ran 8 students through an experimental frontend cohort for 6 months. We used Scrimba's Frontend Developer Career Path for the curriculum. I went through it myself, with my students, and here are my honest thoughts about Scrimba's program. If you're a self-taught developer and have come across Scrimba, but haven't decided if it's worth it, this honest review is for you.

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Transcript

Don Hansen: 0:13

Today I'm going to be reviewing Scrimba's front-end developer path. Now, this is going to be a very honest review and, as most of you know, I'm very critical with my reviews, so I will not hold back. So I want you to keep in mind when I tell you this Scrimba just for full transparency did pay me to do this review and I am an affiliate partner with Scrimpa, right, I have a affiliate link in the description where you get a little discount and I get a commission if you sign up and then switch to a paid plan, right? So feel free to take what I say with a grain of salt, but I really want to stress this and I think Per would attest to this very clear that they would have no control over what I say in this video. So this is going to be a very honest review. And why should you care about me doing this review? Because this is kind of a very personalized usually invite guests on and have them share their opinions, but I am taking this review personally because I ran eight people through an experimental front end cohort that I hosted for six months, where we used Scrimba's front-end developer career path curriculum to basically try to prepare them as well as they could be for front-end jobs in this market the curriculum myself, and so I have my own opinions and my own feedback, and I got feedback from the students that went through it as well, and so I feel like I am very equipped to do this review.

Don Hansen: 1:45

So, without further ado, let's jump in. So I want to start with the strengths. I really love the instruction with Scrimba. I think Per, who is the CEO or co-founder or something similar to Scrimba, and I've been in talks with him but I think he's an amazing instructor. I think the way I think his pace, the cadence of him just teaching things and then allowing people to tackle a challenge that reinforces the concepts that he just taught. I think it's perfect. It's really really good, and I found that I was comparing a lot of the other instructors to Per. I just I like the pacing that he does and I like the amount of challenges that are introduced, and it's very frequent some courses you don't get enough challenges to reinforce that and they gamify it and you get little icons and rewards and pop-ups and confetti and all these bells and whistles. Well, you're not really coding and reinforcing the concepts and doing challenges outside of just reading it and listening to videos because you can feel like you're progressing. You can feel like you're learning these concepts as a programmer and you're really not. And I think that's where a lot of people, when they break out into project work, that's where they truly struggle and they realize wow, I didn't retain as much as I thought. So I think Scrimba's program overall does a really good job with that and reinforcing the concepts. But overall I would say most of the instructors I really enjoyed. The students that I ran through really enjoyed them. Overall it was just fantastic.

Don Hansen: 3:35

So I really like their focus on HTML and CSS, even with coding bootcamps. With coding bootcamps you usually get a heavy focus on JavaScript. If it's a JavaScript-focused coding bootcamp and they lack HTML and CSS, you try to get someone that comes out of a coding bootcamp to build out an entire page and a layout and be comfortable with css and doing that and kind of like have some depth of knowledge with css and be able to debug weird css quirks that might happen in different browsers and basically just come out of the coding boot camp and be comfortable with css. You're not going to see that in a lot of coding bootcamps. Scrimpa phenomenal job with teaching HTML and CSS and they recently got a partnership with MDN. Apparently, mdn is recommending Scrimpa as their course partner, which is amazing. Like a lot of us use MDN, a lot of professional developers use MDN and we often will recommend developers look up MDN documentation. If you're stuck, look it up. Mdn is well known throughout the developer community and I think it's fantastic that Scrumbo has partnered with them. That does sound promising and there seems to be a heavy focus on really making sure that accessibility is important and there was an entire course as well as additional modules and other courses like heavily focusing on accessibility.

Don Hansen: 5:05

Um, keep in mind um, accessibility allows users that do have certain disabilities to be able to still use your website and keep in mind that's still revenue, that's still legitimate users where you um you can actually still solve their problems with the app that you're building, you their your website can still provide some value to that user and um, I think a lot of people kind of dismiss that type of user because you know it's a minority, but I I don't know how else to say this I I appreciate scrimba having empathy for people that um still can use their product and still find a use case for their product and it doesn't. If you build accessibility in from the beginning, it doesn't take that long to implement that in your web pages. A lot of people think it does, because you know you have companies that haven't focused on it for months or years and now they want to start bringing accessibility into their app. That can take a while to start kind of falling back and making sure that each of your pages are actually accessible in the way that they should be right, and even just providing a proper html structure is important, and a lot of this just is lacking in coding boot camps. A lot of coding boot camps don't focus on this.

Don Hansen: 6:34

You got to keep in mind and even if you want to convince your company, your team, to care about accessibility accessibility brings in revenue. It's not just bringing in people that are disabled that can use your product, it's search engines. Search engines love proper html structure and proper accessibility. Search engines love and search engines and organic traffic, because so when they send a crawler, they send a bot to your web page and they read through this web page. You got to understand that they're not. There are advancements being made, but there are limitations with how that bot crawls your web page and that bot depends on a very accessible page to gather the right elements and label them properly and account for that in their search algorithm, and when you care about that and you put time into that, that really helps boost your rankings in organic search, which brings in customers, which brings in revenue businesses like revenue.

Don Hansen: 7:40

Anyways, I've gone on long enough. Accessibility is really important and I think it's awesome that they are highly focused on this and their CSS depth of knowledge as well is phenomenal in Scrimpa Again, way better than a lot of coding bootcamps that. I've seen a lot of coding bootcamp graduates and they come out a lot of times. Their CSS is just terrible. It just is. I don't know why coding boot camps continue to neglect this over and over and over. It's important for a front-end position and Scribd does this well. They do this really well.

Don Hansen: 8:14

So a couple other things that I liked. They have a browser extension course where you essentially learn that you could build a browser extension really easily. I've never built a browser extension before. I thought that was really cool and I didn't realize how easy it was and I thought it would take this like incredibly complicated config to be able to do it and I'm like. So it kind of just shows you another way to use your front end skills that might not be traditionally front end development focused Still front end kind of like. You're still building out this browser extension with the fundamentals that you're going to be using for traditional front end developer position, but you know you can go into things like you know, becoming an email developer, you could take these skills, become like a Shopify developer or that. There are other kind of like coding adjacent positions that might use what you're learning here and I think in this market you should be open to other coding adjacent positions and things that aren't that traditional front end path and some of these can be used as a stepping stone as long as you continue accelerating your skills and growing and building projects outside of it. So I thought the browser extension course is really cool. In the ux course, really awesome.

Don Hansen: 9:27

Front-end developers need to care about ux and I think a lot of front-end developers get tripped up over. Uh, just they don't finish their projects because they think they look ugly and no user is going to want to use my project and this is embarrassing to put on my portfolio and a lot of developers think they can't build good front-end projects because they're not a good web designer. You don't need to be a good web designer to build a good front-end project. As a front-end developer, you need to care about UX. You need to care about the user's experience, which is not web design heavy user's experience, which is not web design heavy.

Don Hansen: 10:01

Good web designs are not like web designers don't just jump into these like high fidelity mock-ups and just amazing designs and they could just spit it out in these beautiful patterns that are just perfect for this type of website. Uh, right away they they start with understanding the user. They come up with user stories and they come up with um like what, how can this app actually solve, uh, this user's problem in the the easiest way possible and understanding the psychology of users and how they react to certain colors and and themes and how they um can best be, or how the content architecture can highly influence whether you're going to get conversions or you're going to solve the customer's problem and um, and there are like just fundamental ux principles in just your placement and alignment of different items and you are fully capable of understanding this as a front-end developer. I feel like a lot of people get scared. A lot of aspiring front-end developers get scared of ux. It's not that scary. Web design is scary for web designers. You, you guys are doing amazing things. I don't think I will ever be a good web designer. You guys are amazing. I suck with it, but I can kind of get okay with it, uh, and I can kind of build an okay looking design that is functional and it's a good user experience when I care about user experience fundamentals and I care about the user's experience using my website and getting feedback and iterating on that feedback.

Don Hansen: 11:25

But I think the fundamental course that they went over with the UX, I think it's phenomenal. It'll give aspiring front end developers confidence in spitting out front end projects, which I think holds a lot of people back from building up that portfolio. Don't neglect that course. So I also like that they focused on Firebase Realtime Database. I'm kind of confused why they didn't go with the Firestore specifically Realtime Database. I think the use case for it. I wondering. I'm just kind of curious. I'd be very open to uh per's opinion on that. But they focused on a third-party database that's hosted externally, where you don't have to set up your own database um locally and you don't have to or even like have it hosted on a complicated hosting solution, like you could just create a database on firebase very, very quickly and just add a few lines to hook it up to your application and be able to interact with that database. That gives front-end developers power to be able to build real full applications, which is what front end developers need to build impressive projects.

Don Hansen: 12:41

Right, I think a lot of front end developers they're given this advice that you have to dive into back end. You have to learn back end to be competitive with being or landing a front end position. That just isn't true. There's so much depth in front end and especially like front end focus roles and we're going to go over this and what I'm recommending you supplement after this but there's so much depth and avenues you can go down as a front end developer. Make the back end easy if you want to build a full-fledged application. Make the back end easy so you can continue diving deeper into front end.

Don Hansen: 13:15

And I've stressed this with scrimpa too, and I hope they don't start building a bunch of backend courses. I've really stressed this because they have the potential to be the best front end curriculum for self-taught developers that I've seen so far. So I like that they pair it with a third party database, and there's excellent interview prep as well. They went to quite a bit of depth, especially with a lot of javascript challenges, and their react like just the react interview questions actually helped me refresh how I articulate how some of these concepts work. So it's kind of like a course at the end of their curriculum that gives you a lot of interview prep and prepares you for front-end interviews, and I think it's fantastic. They did a great job with that. And then I think the JavaScript was very well taught, but there's not enough depth. So I think this is where we're going to start going into some of the weaknesses of Scrimba and, like I said, listen, they have no control over what I say. I'm going to be very honest about these weaknesses.

Don Hansen: 14:31

Um, now they switched to version two. They called it like version two. I went through version one with my cohort, just to be very clear. So if there are any changes because I, their version two is a bit buggy and they're probably continuing to iterate on it so if there are any changes that have been fixed or anything like that, please let me know in the comments. You know, just keep people up to date with that. But I did get a chance to go over version two. I spent several hours in it looking at some of the changes and the new client. I think version two fixed about 5% of their problems. That's the reality. I don't think it fixed a lot, but it did iterate on a couple of things that I was concerned on which I'm really happy about. I'll go into the new client as well because it's a bit different than their old client with version one. So basically their playground and their platform to be able to learn to code and practice code on scrimba. But yeah, so some of the weaknesses.

Don Hansen: 15:30

Um, there are still some old videos with third-party tools or like hosting solutions like netlify, where the ui has changed. I know that's frustrating, ui's changed and you're like, oh, I gotta create another course to with third-party tools or like hosting solutions like Netlify, where the UI has changed. I know that's frustrating, ui's changed and you're like, oh, I got to create another course to reflect into UI. But that can be confusing to new developers. If you don't show the exact UI to developers you got to realize they haven't. A lot of them haven't really developed a critical thinking skills and problem solving skills to navigate these apps that they're not used to, to find what they're trying to do and the terminology is so fresh in their mind. Redo these videos right, and if there are already replacements for these types of videos, fantastic. But I found that was a big complaint in my cohort where some of these videos were just a bit older and so I had to help them navigate these tools.

Don Hansen: 16:19

Outside of it, there were inconsistent conventions across lessons. So when you jump from javascript to like a javascript to css course, the conventions of css were. They were different and arguably worse. The css instructors, no CSS. They did a really good job teaching CSS. I find that some of the conventions were a bit hacky when you would jump to JavaScript and then that JavaScript developer would you know, build out CSS, because I was part of the course and it had some relevance to the challenge at hand. So the inconsistent conventions they're going to happen when you have different instructors and scrimba is kind of like a. They just compile a bunch of different taught courses together and they fit fairly nicely. But this is one of the problems with that is, you have inconsistency with conventions and that created some frustrations with my cohort, understandably.

Don Hansen: 17:18

So another frustration was there were a lot of instances where you would download the local files and you would get errors right away and more so like configuration errors. And I remember I just tested this again with their version two and I went to a React section where their Vite was misconfigured and I think it was looking for JSX files where they had JS files. That configuration wasn't flexible with both JS and JSX files to be able to convert that properly right. So you'd do an NPM install and immediately when you would do like an NPM run dev, you'd get some errors and I had a lot of complaints from students that there were several instances of that. So downloading local files to be able to run on your local environment is awesome. You could experiment with it, you could play around with it, you get a little bit more comfortable with editing code locally and you download your favorite code editor and you play around with it. That eventually needs to happen as you're going through your front end course and that was a frustrating experience more often than it needed to be, and I think that's also kind of indicative of a major flaw of Scrimba it's buggy.

Don Hansen: 18:38

They iterate quickly from what it seems like and there are a lot of small bugs that I think scrum has been around for a while, have they not? Maybe they're fairly new, but I I feel like they're iterating too quickly and not cleaning up and creating a good user experience. Uh, with their client and even with their search I I remember I could with their new client. I remember trying to search for something that didn't exist so it would blackout or it would basically make the contrast really poor for all of their courses and all of their sections, and then it was difficult for me to reset the search to be able to get those courses to light up again and then search for a new term and I got into a state where it was stuck, everything was just faded and that wasn't a good user experience. I feel like they're pushing out a lot of changes with their client and I think they really need to spend some more dev time or really develop a better quality control process to push out something that feels a bit more professional, because the platform and client itself is fun and it's engaging, but it is buggy and I think they need to spend a lot more time improving that and I had multiple complaints from the students about and I'd apologize again and again it's like yep, scrim is down again.

Don Hansen: 19:57

Yep, scrim is down again. Sorry, um, hold off. And you know my curriculum, my cohort was very fast paced and I had to keep pushing that curriculum and figure out ways that we can kind of shortcut certain things. So we kept on pace, but every time Scrimba went down it was so frustrating and I'm hoping they've figured out those hosting solutions. But there are also several bugs that caused these frustrations and prevented people from making meaningful progress. Um, so I'm hoping V2 fixes some of that. And you know, let me know. If you've encountered bugs like, feel free to leave them in the comments, please do. You know? I feel like Scrimba is pretty open to feedback and they need to know this stuff.

Don Hansen: 20:40

But the Firebase Realtime Database course in the version one was awful. It just was. It wasn't introduced at the right time. And you have this library, this SDK, where you are connecting to this random third-party database with this random library and whatever all of that means to a brand new developer, and you are just calling these methods that you got to trust just work, but you don't really like. I found that my students really didn't understand the asynchronous behavior happening and I felt like it was just introduced way too early. There was a part in scribba's curriculum where there was a library that was uh set up a test mock server. I think they need to implement that first before they dive into the firebase stuff. Because when you start introducing these abstractions into quickly into the curriculum when students aren't incredibly comfortable with asynchronous behavior, I feel like it just is overwhelming and you're going to get students that want to know how this works and that's a blocker for some. And they did replace this entire section with a new firebase uh course, which is awesome and I bet you it probably is better and you let me know if you've gone through it. Let me know in the comments, but I have not gone through it myself, but I have a feeling it's still introduced too early in the curriculum and I'm worried about that. So I'd love to hear feedback about that if you've gone through it.

Don Hansen: 22:25

Another section I did not like was a CSS grid in V1. I think like in the middle of V1 transitioning into V2, they switched out their CSS grid course in the front end program and the CSS grid course Um, I'm not going to call the instructor out, but it was. There's a lot of information. Css grid has a bit of a learning curve and beginners can learn it. It's going to take time and you need a lot of practice, and there was not a lot of practice with the old CSS grid course, so I did see that they replaced it and I'm hoping it's better. They probably got feedback to replace it. But for CSS grid, you need to challenge students a lot more. You need, like there's so much information. Stop compiling all this information, expecting people to remember it and then doing one long challenge or doing like just a challenge that touches it doesn't reinforce those concepts enough. Like CSS Grid, I think it does have a learning learning curve and you need a lot more practice. Almost every student came out of that confused by CSS Grid, and so we had to spend extra time going through some of those concepts and practicing it a bit more. And I would say, hey, in this challenge, I want you to actually use CSS Grid to again reinforce these concepts and we're going to go over it. But I'm hoping the new course is a lot better and I'm guessing you know it was replaced for a reason. So check out that new CSS grid course and let me know.

Don Hansen: 23:54

One other complaint I have is and listen like. If you watch my videos, you know that I'm very I've been helping developers land, uh, their first job. For what? Seven years now? Um, I was a professional developer and I highly focused on it. Um, at my first dev job I don't remember how long ago that was, but I started a meetup in chicago mentoring junior developers. I've been doing this for a very long time. I've hyper focused on it since I built a business out of it, right, I very much think that coding bootcamp, career service courses like so in coding bootcamps you would get like a career services course that would kind of prep you with, like, what do you put on your resume, what do you put in your cover letter, how do you do proper company research and how do you tackle the job market and build your networking.

Don Hansen: 24:45

And maybe it's because I've been doing this for so long, but I have not seen a single company do this the right way, and I think scrimp buzz job search strategy is also lacking in that sense. And I think there's a lot to build on, like self branding and how to engage on LinkedIn and how to have a content strategy and like how to actually network and interact with developers and build your connections and build meaningful connections in the dev industry, which, in this market, is needed. There's so many paths you can go down to building up your job search strategy and I feel like scrimp, as prep was like, mainly focused on hey, you know, go to meetups. Hey, here's what you do with your resume and you know there's. And how do we like follow up with companies after we apply, like what are ineffective cover letters that are a waste of time and what are effective cover letters? Give me an example of where you do proper company research and then align that company with your custom cover letter.

Don Hansen: 25:48

I think there was some generic advice that was given. That was OK. It's not that the advice was bad. There's just one bad piece of advice. They recommended or not recommended. They introduced a shotgun approach of just applying for a bunch of different jobs very quickly and they also introduced like a warm lead approach as well. But the shotgun approach just does not work anymore. It's very rare that that works for someone. It's meaningful to spend your time thoroughly building connections in the industry, getting involved in the dev industry in the industry, getting involved in the dev industry, doing proper cover letters and doing proper company research and following up with that company Like a meaningful and a targeted job search approach should be like 80% of what you do while you continue applying and kind of spitting out your applications to like 20% of other companies. While you continue applying and kind of spitting out your applications to like 20% of other companies. A targeted approach is way more effective in this market than the shotgun approach, and so I would be much more critical of that strategy. But again, I think the problem with their job search strategy at the end it was just lacking. There's so much more you can do to prepare and stand out, but you know, this is me doing this for seven years straight and so obviously I'm going to be much more critical of this section.

Don Hansen: 27:09

Um, whereas it, you know, compared to some other self-taught programs it was, it was okay. So let's talk about their new client, right? So it seems like you know per and uh scrimpBud, they're pretty excited about their new client and it looks neat. They went with a dark theme and they added some bells and whistles. I like their. They have kind of like a GitHub-style code history feature where you can save previous, like if you make code edits, you can go back to previous iterations of those code edits, because sometimes new developers get lost in like changing so much code and then they're in a broken state and they're like what do I do now? And they're having trouble like undoing some of the changes because it's still broken and it's still broken and it's still broken. So that's a nice feature, but I think there's a lesson to be learned about being a new developer and making all these changes to get into a very broken state, and that lesson is don't do it.

Don Hansen: 28:18

And this version control actually reinforces a bad habit of oh yeah, just keep making changes over and over and over without testing and that's okay, you know, like we'll get you back to wherever you need to be, where I think developers could really learn the hard way. And that's going to be an effective way to reinforce like test thoroughly, test often, console log everything that you need to, and like each line of code at some point, like if this is a complicated thing that you're building, test, test, test, test, console log this, console log this. And I feel like I I don't know, I'm kind of on the fence with their version control, with the code iterations, and I'm wondering if that's going to teach bad habits. But it is convenient. But you know, scripta, the new client, is a bit buggy again. We we talked about it. I think they iterate a little bit too quickly.

Don Hansen: 29:05

So I'll just give an example of one bug. Like I would click the X to stop it from progressing to the next video when one video ends, and then I would click the. It would be stuck right. So I stopped it and then I would click the forward button to try to advance. That forward button would do nothing, but then I would click it three more times. Then would click the forward button to try to advance. That forward button would do nothing, but then I would click it three more times. Then it would work. Then it would go to the next lesson.

Don Hansen: 29:31

Um, there were mistakes in the captions that were introduced. Um, I, they're probably using ai to transcribe to audio and produce captions and there are mistakes there. Um, and then there's a new feature that uh will pause for challenges. But I noticed and I'm wondering if this is in other courses as well but like with the JavaScript interview challenges section, at the end it doesn't pause on some of the challenges. So I don't think that has been tested thoroughly, but it seemed to pause on most challenges, but I still think that's a bit buggy. The client doesn't seem to have an autosave mode. I still think that's a bit buggy. The client doesn't seem to have an autosave mode.

Don Hansen: 30:07

There were frustrations with their curriculum, where you get to participate in their playground, you get to create code and test it and it should autosave. So many times my students complained like hey, I spent like a half an hour, an hour working on this code and I went back to the section I couldn't even read the code, like just autosave, don't have them. Or assume that they're going to remember to manually save, autosave that for them. I don't know if you chose not to autosave because you're trying to prevent all this data from being stored. Maybe it's an expense thing, I don't know. Autosave there's no reason not to autosave. I found that was a complaint quite a bit. It was a big frustration. You spend like an hour working on something. You assume it's going to autosave. Sometimes it does, but when you go back into that section a while back, sometimes it doesn't.

Don Hansen: 31:04

Now this was a client one thing, right, I don't know if they fixed this was client two. So please thoroughly test this. But I thought I did like click a refresh and it doesn't auto save. You actually have to approve of it, but correct me if I'm wrong. Also, they have like a commit and discard, like if you want to save this or discard this change when you're working on code. It seems to like mimic this git, like version control, but I would actually focus on terminology that's a little bit more ux friendly, like change, commit to save, right you're, you're just saving this change, like committing, like I think you're trying to be a little bit too creative, scrimpa with, uh, recreating this like git tree. And if that's what you're trying to do and use the word commit, I think you're trying to be creative. Just save, I think, is a better user experience and it makes more sense, it's more clear. And then if you're going to have a discard button, which you do, you have a commit and discard button. That discard, I think, implies that it's going to auto save, because otherwise it's just going to discard anyways. Right, why do you have a discard button? So if you're going to have a discard button, just auto save. I think that's going to I.

Don Hansen: 32:17

I really would want to know anyone that's going through this curriculum if you have experienced this frustration, because I feel like a lot of students would really appreciate an autosave um throughout the lifetime of their use of scrimba um. And also there were some errors in code that wouldn't be caught properly. I don't know how they're interpreting what you're writing and guarding against it breaking their platform, but I find that there are just some errors that just completely break it. You have to refresh. I think you should build a platform to be able to catch that um properly so I can then make code changes and it's not frozen, right, and I I can update the ui. So I break something and then I change it and fix it and then I see the UI change. No, the UI is frozen because I broke your platform and that happened a lot very often in V2. So I think a little bit more work should be done with fixing that, because that just creates a frustrating experience. So I think that's all the negatives I have and positives.

Don Hansen: 33:25

So their strengths and weaknesses again, I'm just going to quickly summarize. Like the focus on HTML and CSS is fantastic. Accessibility that's awesome. I think they're a little bit weaker with JavaScript and I'll talk about what to supplement afterwards because we're going to go into that but I like their focus on using a third party database. You don't have to dive deep in a back end to be a good front end developer and I don't think you should, because there's so much depth in front end but the instruction overall is just fantastic, and I think they are very open to feedback. With courses where the instruction isn't as great, I think they're open to replacing those courses, from what I've seen. So that's fantastic.

Don Hansen: 34:04

So here's the problem with Scribble. Here's a big problem you guys don't go into depth enough with JavaScript. There are plenty of coding boot camps that will produce developers that are better with JavaScript than people coming out of this curriculum, and that's a problem. You should be better with JavaScript than you are with CSS. As a front-end developer. I think the skills with JavaScript are going to be tested more thoroughly in the interviews, and you have a big focus on HTML and CSS, and that's awesome. That's lacking in a lot of programs, but you need to open up your curriculum a little bit more. So I've actually gone ahead and looked up different Scrimba courses, and so my assessment is that the front end path and all the courses within that front end path are not enough to prepare developers for this market, and so I went through Scrimpa and I looked up other courses that I'm very surprised are not in the front end path. So these are available on Scrimpa as of the date of this recording, so July 14th.

Don Hansen: 35:14

The JavaScript deep dive is fantastic. It goes over quite a bit. So if you look up JavaScript deep dive in their search, you'll. It's a pretty long course, but I'm going to specify these specific modules that you should supplement the front end path with functions, objects and maps, arrays and sets, classes and essential concepts. I I think you can skip the other modules that I looked up, but I actually built my own curriculum with Scrimpa that went into more depth in the front-end program so that I could properly prepare students and give them a heads up on what they need to continue studying, and so that's what we're diving into right now and we're going to keep going.

Don Hansen: 36:02

So introduction to unit testing is a course with Scrimpa and I at the time when I looked it up I didn't find a React testing library, but I think that is going to be one of your most common ways to test your React components and it's very uh, behavior driven, uh, very user centric, and I think that's a fantastic way to test your react application. So supplementing outside of scrimba with react testing library, um, and then I couldn't find this in scrim. But these two things JavaScript event loop is something you need to more thoroughly understand and um linked list is another thing that you might be tested on in interviews. Scrimba has learn binary search in JavaScript. I think you should go through that as well. Learn merge sort in JavaScript that is also on Scrimba. And then I could not find a Scrimba course about recursion. Maybe there is one. Again, if I'm saying I couldn't find one, please leave it in the comments if you found one within Scrimpa. But Recursion, I think, is going to be tested enough with front-end interviews where you should learn that.

Don Hansen: 37:08

And definitely TypeScript. Typescript has become very prevalent in jobs today. I'm very surprised that wasn't in the front-end path. Learn TypeScript is a course on Scrimpa. I highly recommend you take it. There might be I don't know how many TypeScript courses they have on Scrimpa, but I think getting some exposure with TypeScript is going to be really important for you.

Don Hansen: 37:32

I could not find an SCSS or a SAS course and I think going over what SAS supplements, which is not as much nowadays but SAS is still widely used throughout front end positions. I highly recommend you get comfortable with SAS. So finding an external SAS course or articles to get you a little bit more comfortable with what SAS can do, I think is really beneficial. And then getting some exposure to styled components I think they're popular enough where, like when you're working in your project so like getting some exposure to sass, getting some exposure to styled components and react and then picking one, I think is really beneficial. But I do think sass is going to be make you more marketable and that's just because so many companies use it. And then an external resource that teaches you redux would be really helpful. I don't think scrimba does that and I think redux is still used in enough applications on the front end where just experimenting or learning a different data flow is going to be incredibly important.

Don Hansen: 38:42

I'm not here to argue like the benefits or cons of using Redux. You can just look those up. A lot of apps don't need Redux and a lot of companies just hopped on the Redux train and now they have it stuck in their code base and they don't even need it. But I would recommend that you get comfortable with redux and be able to build that into a personal project and then here's the thing we're going to talk about next next js. So next js is in a minority of front-end positions or full stack positions. I don't really consider next js full stack positions. I don't really consider Nextjs full stack, necessarily, but that's a whole other conversation.

Don Hansen: 39:24

Nextjs allows front-end developers to build full stack applications and it's common enough where, if you see it in your local tech market, you should learn Nextjs after you go through learning React, after you go through learning React Router, coming up with your own messy convention on how to set up the routing system with React and not Nextjs. Way too many people dive into Nextjs way too quickly. Nextjs is not a good beginner tool and I think it teaches. It doesn't really help you teach what is React and I think a lot of people get confused on what's unique to Next and what's unique to React. And it also enforces very strict conventions, especially with routing, and I don't think that's a great way to initially learn React and routing.

Don Hansen: 40:17

I'm a big believer in building applications and as you grow as a developer, you form your own conventional opinions based off of your crappy organization, your frustration with your own apps, and allow that to influence the direction that you want to go as a developer and the opinions that you want to form as a developer and the opinions that you want to form on your own and critically think about and thoroughly think about. I gotta stop bumping my mic, and I think a lot of new developers lack that when they just jump into nextjs and everything is just again, in a minority of positions, everything is just like laid out for them and how they should organize things. I think that's a terrible thing to do as a new developer. So next js, if it's marketable in your local area, if is something you might want to supplement at the very end. So build projects. Um, so, build projects before you dive into react. So, so build your own personal project.

Don Hansen: 41:21

You go through their curriculum, you do a tutorial-based project and it's pretty open-ended. But build that personal project of your own before React, reinforcing all the skills that you just learned. Then dive into React and React Router and build a personal project after you get done with all the React stuff your own right, and then go on to build, and those two projects are meant to reinforce concepts. Then go on. When you're done with this entire curriculum, go on to build your own personal project and solve the problem that you want to solve. I would just interject a couple of personal projects within this curriculum and I think, given what I mentioned a supplement and going through the actual entire front-end development path this is probably the best front-end program you will find. As a self-taught developer, you don't need to spend a lot of money on a coding boot camp. If you're able to get through this and be resourceful enough to kind of supplement your own stuff and build up your own curriculum and be able to analyze and assess your own past progress, this by far is going to be one of the best front-end curriculums you will find in the world.

Don Hansen: 42:43

From what I've seen I've reviewed a lot of programs. Maybe I'm being hyperbolic, but for self-taught developers it is fantastic. I think you're gonna have to supplement a bit, but there's a reason why I partnered with scrimba and honestly, it isn't even the values. Right, I like the values of scrimpa, but it isn't even the values. I have been searching through so many programs to find a really excellent curriculum, taught in the right way, where students actually come out of it with these concepts reinforced. They come out of it with critical thinking skills. They come out of it as resourceful developers, as developers that care about their progress as developers, that are optimistic about growing as a developer. And you know you're always going to get especially in this market doomsdayers. But you know scrimba.

Don Hansen: 43:31

I guess one thing I do like about scrimba is they really focus a lot on positivity, which I think is really needed in this market. But the reason really focus a lot on positivity, which I think is really needed in this market but the reason I finally decided to become an affiliate partner with Scrimpa is because their curriculum overall is really good. It might sound like it has a lot of holes, but that's just because I would do this with any program I went through and I called out those holes, especially some of the lack of courses that need to be introduced because they're on scrimba purchase needs to bring them into the front end path, um, but I I really think this is a program A lot of people should consider and I know a lot of you don't have money right now and, um, I know the market's rough and I know a lot of you are transitioning jobs and you're trying to do this part-time and I feel like I finally found a curriculum that actually produces students that remember what they're learning and that can build decent projects and continue iterating on those projects and growing. I've reviewed so many coding boot camps and there are just the students coming out of these coding boot camps just don't continue diving deeper and they they haven't even developed like the positivity and the, the ambition and the energy and the fire in them to keep going. And I feel like Scrimpa gets people excited enough to like culturally, like I think they do a really good job with just producing developers that love to code and that if you dive a little bit deeper into the front end, you are going to be very competitive. I don't think you realize how many really bad aspiring front end developers are out there, and they're really bad front end developers because they they don't continue learning, because they take long breaks, they don't build personal projects, they go through courses that aren't good at reinforcing these concepts. You are competing with a lot of people that will never make it as a front-end developer and so hopefully this review and if you do decide to use scrimpa, will allow you and empower you to do that, because again, I'm not lying this is one of the best front-end programs that I've found so far.

Don Hansen: 45:45

Um, and yeah, that's all I really have to say so any students. If you're watching this um, please comment below. Let me know what you thought of it. Um and um feel free to challenge any of my opinions on this. If you um find more holes in scrimba or you think there are more positive things or v2 is fixes, feel free to leave it in the comments.

Don Hansen: 46:07

I would like the comment section to be an update on any changes that are done with scrimba, because I know a lot of people will jump to the comments and see what people are talking about. So that's my honest review of scrimba. Um, again, take take this with a grain of salt. You know they did pay me to do this review, but I was able to do a very honest review. They had no control over what I said and no matter what program you choose, I truly wish you the best of luck and I hope everyone that truly wants a front end developer position and you are willing to put the energy and time into it and you don't stop, regardless of the doomsayers. I wish you nothing but luck in.