Is Udacity's CS253 course any good for learning web application development?

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Michael Bock

Yes. 100% yes!

I took this class last year after knowing programming and Python, but not Web Development, and now I can confidently maneuver the entire web stack. Taking this class had a very direct impact on my landing a Software Engineering role working with web APIs and my winning $1500 at PennApps Fall 2013.

I'll outline the class below.

Prerequisites:

• Comfortable with Python, enough that you know how to use classes and functions
• Some knowledge of HTML could be helpful, although you'll learn more in class. Codecademy's Web Fundamentals would be a good place to quickly learn this.

What you'll learn (or at least get an introduction to):

• HTTP requests and how the internet generally works
• Basic HTML and some jinja templating
• Python for web development
• How to use Google App Engine and the webapp2 framework
• User input and managing signup/login, including cookies
• Databases
• APIs
• Scaling a website
• A little about managing an online community and some Reddit (website) history

What you won't learn (but may want to pursue learning after taking the class):

• CSS (or how to make your websites pretty)
• JavaScript

All in all, if you want to learn web development, Udacity's CS 253 is possibly the single best resource on the internet.

[Disclaimer: As of May 2014, I work as a Software Engineering Intern at Udacity, but at the time of writing this answer (October 2013) I had no affiliation with Udacity aside from taking classes.]

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Anthony Arroyo

Unqualified yes. I am one of those fabled people who found my dream job (I design educational web applications) thanks to Udacity and I can thank Steve for a lot of that. There were complaints in the forums about the assignments being too open-ended (they tend to be: "make a login system for your blog"). But that is exactly how professional web application development is. Best class ever.

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