I've never been an enthusiast of learning from videos. From my perspective, it's quite slow - I can't skip easily the parts which I already know about, and need to rewind multiple times for the things I do not understand on the first try.
Text tutorials are much better for me - they don't have disadvantages of learning from videos. But there is still something that can be added to make it more fun, make it eye-catching... That's what I can definitely say about interactive tutorials.
We have various interactive tutorials - some of them allow you to try and play with your new skills in a console, while others are games actually!
Let's have a look at a few examples of interactive tutorials:
Web.dev - web development courses by Google
This is actually a set of interactive courses, with some additional articles/tutorials about web development.
We can choose from:
- Learn CSS
- Learn Responsive Design
- Learn PWA
- Learn Forms
The whole project is provided by Google, so with a big brand behind those tutorials, wo don't have to worry about the quality of the courses. For each of them we have an online tool provided to see how a particular topic looks in practice.
I can highly recommend them to people interested in Web development. It will definitely help you kickstart your career.
URL: https://web.dev/learn/
SQL Bolt
The other one focuses on a different topic. While Google courses are mostly about fronted skills, this one is pure for dealing with databases. The name is self explanatory - it teaches you how to use SQL - the most demanded language, due to the latest IEEE report.
For each section of the course you have a console available which you can use your new skills to execute any database queries. Also table content is displayed to make it easier for you to understand, what's the database content.
SQL it's usually not a language you think about when you're about to start your software engineering career, but it's a great addition to your Resume, and it will definitely help you in your future job, even if you plan to do only frontend(trust me!).
AWS Cloud Quest
This one is pure fun. It's a role-playing game, which helps you to build practical AWS Cloud Skills. The Cloud Practitioner course is available for free, and it's actually the place you should start as a beginner in the software engineering world.
In this game, your aim is to help the citizens of a virtual city. It helps you to learn in an interactive, engaging way.
As you can see in the image above, it's really a game! To achieve your goal you have to complete some quests, which are actually a set of AWS config tasks.
The Practitioner course matches the AWS Practitioner Certification, which is the most basic one. It develops a fundamental understanding of cloud concepts and provides some guidelines to start building solutions. You can get hands-on experience with compute, networking, database, and security services during this course.
Summary
We are living in a great times. We have a lot of excellent resources available for free. What's more they are entertaining, and often backed up by well-known known companies. If you want to learn something you, only your will and some time is required. Enjoy!
