7 Best Courses to Learn Coding and Refactoring in Java in 2024
My favorite online courses to learn refactoring and best practices to improve your coding skills and become a better programmer.
“Any fool can write code that a computer can understand. Good programmers write code that humans can understand.” — Martin Fowler
Hello guys, if you want to improve your coding skills, learn to refactor, and other coding best practices to become a better developer and looking for the best online courses to improve your coding skills, refactoring, and other best practices then you have come to the right place.
Earlier, I have shared the best design pattern courses and best Data Structure and Algorithms courses, and today, I am going to share the best online courses you can join to improve your coding and programming skills to become a better programmer.
Coding skill is one of the most important differentiators when it comes to getting a programming job. It’s simple, if you can’t code, you can’t go up the ladder and you can’t get better jobs.
Good coding skills are also important for people involved in creating mission-critical applications in finance, health, defense, space, medical, and other critical sectors where a simple mistake can have a disastrous result.
Becuase of that programmers are always looking to improve their coding skills and I am also one of them. It actually gives you pleasure if you write code that is easy to read and flexible enough to accommodate any future changes.
At the same time, it’s not easy to improve your coding without guidance. How do you know whether you are writing good code or bad code? How do you know whether your code can be improved? Well, working with great developers and GitHub reviews can help here and that’s probably the way most people have improved their coding skills.
Nowadays most companies use Github as their code repository and branch-based approach for development, which means new code is written into feature branch and they are merged into master for release.
At that time developer raise a pull request (PR) which is reviewed by another developer in the time, mostly a senior developer or tech lead which provides constructive feedback to improve your code.
This is trusted but a long and hard way to improve coding skills. It also depends whether you are in good hands or not, that’s why I also recommend people to spend some time joining online courses or reading books to learn common techniques or writing better code.
In the past, I have shared the best books to improve coding skills and now I have come with the best online courses to learn clean code, refactoring, and solid principles in Java, C#, JavaScript, and other programming languages to improve your coding skills. You can join them to see in action how one can improve their code and learn important lessons along the way.
7 Best Online Courses to improve Coding skills and Refactoring for Programmers in 2024
Without wasting any more of your time, here are my favorite online courses to learn refactoring, design principles, design patterns, TDD, and overall improve your coding and programming skills.
While this is a general skill and most of the tricks you will learn here can be applied to any programming language like JavaScript and Python, these courses focus on Java and C# examples.
1. Pyramid of Refactoring (Java) — Clean Code Gradually
This is another great course to learn the Clean Code and how to use design patterns in your code. This course is created by Wlodek Krakowski, a technical instructor and refactoring expert.
This is the first course on a series called “Pyramid of Refactoring” dedicated to achieving a Clean Code. In this module, the Instructor uses common refactoring techniques to make code more readable, flexible, and easier to change and test.
In this part, you will learn how to use Interpreter Design Pattern as a goal of your refactoring journey. The Interpreter Pattern is accompanied by two creational design patterns — Factory Method and Fluent Builder and along the way, you will learn the following common refactoring techniques:
- Replace Loop with Stream
- How to Extract Delegate / Class
- How to Extract Interface
- How to Extract Parameter Object
- How to Replace Method with Method Object
- How to Extract Method / Variable
- How to Move Method
- How to Inline Method / Variable
The best thing about this course is that you will see live how to convert a bad code to good code by applying the above refactoring techniques and best practices.
The instructor makes all the changes live and also gives you the opportunity to follow along by downloading the source code and performs all the changes together with the trainer — step by step.
Here is the link to join this course — Pyramid of Refactoring (Java) — Clean Code Gradually
Overall, a great course for both intermediate and experienced Java developers. If you are looking for a hands-on, point-to-point online course to learn clean code, refactoring, and design Patterns like Interpreter, Fluent Builder, Factory Methods then this course is for you.
2. Clean Code with Java: Learn Simple Design, Refactoring & TDD
This is one of the best courses to learn the Clean Code for Java developers. Ranga Karnam doesn’t need any introduction, he is one of the best Udemy instructors when it comes to Java and Spring technology.
There is a good chance that you might have already attended his Spring Boot and Microservice courses.
What I like most about Ranga’s course is a step-by-step guide and focusing on 20% important things which are used 80% of the time and this code is no exception.
If you watch the introduction and previews, which I highly suggest you will know how a good code and a bad code look and that’s where you learn. For example, take a look at this code:
and now, take a look at this code which is an improved version of the above code:
Ranga will first show you how a bad code looks like and why it’s difficult to maintain and then step by step you will convert that code into a good, production-quality code and learn refactoring, design principles, and useful techniques to write clean code.
If you are looking for and hands-on cours with lots of examples on clean code, refactoring, and test-driven development, then this course is for you. I highly recommend this course to both beginners and experienced Java developer who wants to improve themselves and grow in their career.
Here is the link to join this course — Clean Code with Java: Learn Simple Design, Refactoring & TDD
3. Pyramid of Refactoring (Java) — Clean Code into Chain [Udemy]
This is the second course in the series of Pyramid of refactoring where you will learn how to replace nested & messed-up if-else statements with Chain of Responsibility design patterns using Refactoring Pyramid and Clean Code rules.
The goal of the course is to untangle the codebase from a set of deeply nested conditional if/else statements which is hard to read and maintain. It is a very common coding problem and if it is left for a long time then it leads to a very complex legacy code after subsequent code changes.
The instructor will use refactoring techniques and perform all the changes live to show you how to get rid of the messy if-else block and come up with cleaner methods that make your logic more obvious.
You can also download the source code and perform all the changes together with the trainer — step by step.
Here is the link to join this course — Pyramid of Refactoring (Java) — Clean Code into Chain
4. Refactoring to Design Patterns by Example [Udemy Course]
This is another fantastic udemy course to learn about how to improve the internal design of an existing application with refactoring techniques and design patterns in C#.
Yes, this course is not in Java but C# which is very similar to Java, hence it’s equally useful for both C# and Java developers.
This course begins with an examination of a realistic application, which is poorly factored in and doesn’t incorporate design patterns. The demo application converts text into subtitles for videos, which makes it quite useful in practice.
Yet, it is nearly impossible to maintain and develop this application further, due to its poor structure and design.
That’s where the course starts and shows you step by step how to improve this code which is easier to change and maintain. You will use refactoring to improve code quality and learn along the way. During refactoring, many design patterns will fit into place almost without effort.
By the end of the course, you will know how to do code refactoring and design patterns — one coding practice and one design practice — can operate together and help each other create great design.
Overall a very practical course and the live examples make it much easier to relate. I suggest you do the refactoring along with the session to understand the concept much better as active learning pushes your brain and it much easier to retain the knowledge when you actually apply it.
Sometimes I just pause the course and go backward to revisit what I have done and why I have done it, this also helps me to learn better, you can do the same too. I highly recommend it to all kinds of Java and C# developers.
Here is the link to join this course — Refactoring to Design Patterns by Example
5. Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions
This is its kind course which is mainly created to prepare you for a coding interview but I really find it useful to also improve your coding skills. It’s based upon general ideas of learning patterns and then using them to solve multiple problems.
You will learn several useful patterns like two pointers, fast and slow pointers, sliding windows, merge interval patterns, etc.
Just knowing those patterns and using them to solve different coding problems will build the coding sense and expand your knowledge about how to solve problems in general.
And, because you will be applying patterns you will gradually learn how to write better code while solving a similar category of problems.
Whether you are preparing for coding interviews or not, I highly recommend you check out this course to give your coding skill and problem-solving skill a boost.
Here is the link to join this course — Grokking the Coding Interview: Patterns for Coding Questions
On the same note, Educative has many great courses that can help you to become a better programmer like their system design course which is again created for coding interviews but provides very useful lessons to all kinds of programmers. You can get an Educative Subscription to access all of their courses for just $14.99 per month (70% discount now).
6. Clean Code: Skyrocket Your Programming Career in 7 Days
This is another awesome course on Udemy for Java Programmers to learn how to write Clean Code. In this Udemy online course, you will learn important software practices to write clean code in a practical, easy-to-follow way.
Here are the main things you will learn in this course:
- Software practices that every developer should know
- How to write clean code
- How to write easy to read code
- How to write code that is easy to extend
- How to write better names for classes, methods, and variables
- How to decouple code
This course will help you become a better professional software developer and it will set you on the right path to becoming a programmer superstar.
If you are already a professional software developer this course will give you the toolset to become an even better programmer and it will set you apart from your colleagues.
Here is the link to join this course — Clean Code: Skyrocket Your Programming Career in 7 Days
7. Clean Code by Maximillian Schwarzmuller [AcadMind]
If you are a JavaScript developer and looking for an online course to learn how to write Clean Code in JavaScript then this course is for you. I bought this course just becuase Max has created it and having attended his React Complete Guide, and other courses, I was sure this will be excellent and I wasn’t disappointed at all.
In this 6.5 hour, long course you will learn how to write readable, understandable, and therefore maintainable code — step by step, in an example-driven way.
That’s the key becuase unless you see examples and do practice you are not going to learn. It has short, focused examples which don’t use a particular programming style or paradigm.
In this course, you’ll learn what exactly clean code is and, more importantly, how you can write clean code. Because if your code is written in a clean way, it’s easier to read and understand and therefore easier to maintain.
You will also learn about common coding patterns, best practices, principles, and rules related to writing clean code. It also covers broad concepts, rules, ideas, thoughts, and principles to keep in mind when it comes to writing clean code.
If you are serious about improving your coding skill in JavaScript, I highly recommend this course to you.
Here is the link to join this course — Clean Code by Maximillian Schwarzmuller
That’s all about the best online courses you can join to improve your coding skills. These courses are great for Java developers who want to improve their coding and programming skills and grow in their careers.
As I said before, coding skill is one of the most important assets for a programmer and it will serve you for a long time.
It’s also independent of a programming language as writing good code is a general skill and whether you are a python developer or Java developer you will benefit from learning common techniques, design principles, and patterns to write good code.
Other Programming Articles and Tutorials you may like
- The Complete Java Developer RoadMap
- 5 Websites for Coding Interview Preparation
- 10 Tools Every Java Developer Should Know
- 10 Websites to learn Git and Github for FREE
- 5 Websites to learn Data Structure and Algorithms for FREE
- 10 Reasons to Learn Java Programming languages
- 5 Websites to learn Python for FREE
- 10 Frameworks Java and Web Developer should learn
- 5 Websites to learn SQL Online for FREE
- 10 Tips to become a better Java Developer
- 21 Websites to Learn Coding Online for FREE
- 10 Programming languages You can Learn
- The Complete DevOps Engineer RoadMap
- 50+ Data Structure Interview Questions for Programmers
Thanks for reading this article so far. If you find these advanced java courses useful in improving your coding and refactoring skills then please share them with your friends and colleagues. If you have any questions or feedback, please drop a note.
P. S. — If you prefer reading books and looking for the best books to improve your coding skill then you can also check out the Clean Code by Uncle Bob, Robert C. Martin, one of the must-read books for Java Programmers.
