When learning a new programming language, do you need to pick a course, that actually teaches you how to create a gigantic application like Facebook or is it better to pick a course that teaches you or focuses more on teaching you the fundamentals? Let's talk about the differences between the two approaches today.
Today, we are talking about courses that actually have a huge app that they build versus a course that doesn't have a specific app but more focuses on smaller apps.
Now, there is a reason for me coming up with this topic and it's based on questions that I often get from students who are basically looking for courses that teach you how to create the next Facebook. They basically want a course that teaches them how to create a better code like that.
Well firstly, creating a huge app like that isn't practical. Now, the reason is that Facebook and applications of that nature had probably had hundreds, if not thousands, of developers working on them and thousands or tens of thousands of man years to evolve to the point where they are at now. So, it isn't practical to learn that from scratch as a beginning programmer. Now, you may not know that because you're new to programming and that's fine but the reality is, if you are looking for a course to teach you how to create an app of that nature in one course, it's not gonna happen.
You need to build your skills up first and foremost, this is the important thing. Learn your skills first and then from there, sure you can start creating that course and building up to that. But look, these things take time. If every person was able to go through and do one course and create the next Facebook, then we would have tens of thousands of versions of Facebook. The reality is that that's not really possible to do, it's very hard at least to do. Nothing is impossible, but it's very improbable that you are able to do that.
Personally, and this is the way I focus my courses, is I teach how things work under the hood. I actually teach how to do something so if you go right through the course, by the end of it you would have learnt all the concepts to put the big application together. So, I don't actually show you how to create the big application because it's more important for you to understand the technology, understand how to put those things together, understand the building blocks to put these big applications together.
Now the other thing to check out though (also being completely blunt here), with a lot of courses, you'll find that the ones that do say that you gotta create a WhatsApp or a Facebook or a Twitter, and I actually suggest perhaps in the description, that that's the type of app you are going to build, you'll find that the version you create in the course, because I've already mentioned it takes so long to create an application like that, isn't going to be what you thought it was anyways. It's gonna be cut down, feature-empty version of an app, I should say. So, it'll have very few, really small amounts of functionality, and it won't be really useful to learn.
So I think when you're learning, and it's whether it's with my courses or any other courses, make sure that you've picked a course that teaches you the programming languages and the technology. That's where you should be focusing your skills. Don't get caught up in the marketing spin of which app is gonna be created in a particular course or enabled. Focus on learning the technology. Once you understand the technology, you're then able to apply that technology and look, you can then go ahead and create the next big Facebook, or whatever you are trying to do.
Bottom line is, learn the core skills first, learn how things work under the hood, and you'll be skilled up and able to create you're own next version of Whatsapp, or Facebook. All right, so I hope that helped. If you've got any questions, feel free to leave a comment, and I'll get back to you.