I’m honestly thankful for Colt Steele’s Udemy Web Developer Bootcamp course revamp. I’ve been putting off going through the new course material, since I have been focusing a lot on getting adjusted to my new career and environment, but this past weekend I went ahead and got right into it.

I really do like it so far. I skipped ahead to the YelpCamp section, and I appreciate that Colt explains things without alienating the audience. He reassures us that he will explore a topic later, and actually does that. I have had other Udemy instructors who are otherwise good, but fail to return to a previous topic that they promised to explore more in-depth.

Right now I’m on a section that discusses creating a route that will allow users of the YelpCamp app to edit the campground that was inserted into the Mongo database. First, you’ve got to create a route that finds one of the campgrounds by the id it is associated with, and then create a page that will allow you to change the text or any other content associated with that campground. Then, the next step is to use method-override to PUT request the edits you made and update that campground’s details in the database. 

The more I work through this course, the more I feel like I’m walking away with some valuable skills. Honestly, I sometimes don’t like tutorials because they can feel so passive and disengaging when those giving these tutorials are speeding through code without much explanation. Colt Steele’s approach really helps, especially for someone like me who doesn’t have an extensive background in the tech field, yet. He takes it step-by-step so that someone viewing the course can at least see the progression of one line of code to all of the others. Then, when I have an issue, I can always ask a question based on the corresponding lecture, and get a response in a reasonable amount of time, given the vast amount of people who purchased the course and also have questions.

It’s great to find ways to keep your skills updated, given the rapid pace at which technology evolves. I’ll keep devoting time to this course as a way to target my skill development in a structured environment, while I experiment, get messy, and make mistakes with my own personal projects.