A short comparison of e-learning platforms from a frontend perspective
Now that the summer is here (at least in the Northern Hemisphere), it may be appropriate to think about reducing the sunscreen consumption. One way to do this might be to stay indoors and read a book or watch a course. Given that, I have compiled a short list of some of the many e-learning platforms here.
Frontend Masters
Frontend Master has great in-depth courses geared towards intermediate to advanced frontend developers. The courses are in the format of filmed workshops with a live audience. The lengths of the workshops often range from a day or two. Which can lead to that the courses can be quite lengthy. The instructors are industry-leading professionals working at companies such as Netflix, Microsoft, Gatsby, etc. You also have the ability to attend live online workshops.
Frontend Masters does not have as many courses as some of the other options on this list but as mentioned earlier they’re also more specifically focused on the frontend. And the courses hold a very high standard.
The service is subscription-based and cost $ 399/year. Or if you can gather a few people you could get a team subscription for 10 users (psst.. it’s actually for 11, they don’t count the team admin) for 1950$/year.
Udemy
Udemy has a plethora of courses ranging from music to development. The quality of the courses and instructors can vary quite a bit, as Udemy has no specific requirements for becoming an instructor as far as I know. But they do have a rating system and if you pick any of the higher-rated courses they’re usually of good quality.
Some of the advantages of Udemy are that they have a lot of courses on a wide array of topics and that they don’t have a subscription-based model (with the exception for Udemy for Business). You buy each course separately and keep them forever and ever until time ends or their servers crashes.. whichever comes first. Courses on new technologies and topics get added quite quickly because of the sheer number of people creating the courses.
The prices for the courses usually range from around 11€ to 200€. I wouldn’t buy anything for more than $11 which the courses usually cost when they’re on sale. And they have sales every other day as some sort of a system to make people buy more I guess.
Pluralsight
Pluralsight has a large and wide range of courses (+7500) with topics ranging from CGI to IT-ops and is relatively inexpensive compared to the others on the list if you disregard discounts and campaigns. Another good thing about Pluralsight is that you have the opportunity to do tests to test your knowledge and weaknesses. It’s been a while since I had a subscription on Pluralsight but I want to remember that the courses were of high quality with professional instructors. However, they tended to be a bit more focused on the backend then, and did not have a lot of material for the frontend and by the looks of it, it still looks like there is not a lot of new material for the frontend.
The price for an annual subscription is $299.
Egghead
Egghead is the newest addition of these services and sells both individual courses and has a subscription model. Like Pluralsight, Egghead is mostly focused on frontend and more specifically javascript frameworks, although they have some individual courses on eg. Rust and SQL. The main difference between Egghead and the other services is that their courses are very short and the lessons are usually 2–3 minutes long and the courses around 1 hour long. The courses are very concise and straightforward, which is an advantage if you want to get up and running with something quickly.
The price for an annual subscription is $350, but they, like many others, usually run a campaign once or twice a year where you can get a subscription for $150.
O’Reilly
Last but not least, we have O’Reilly which differs quite significantly from the others in this list, mostly because most of their content is in the form of books. O’Reilly also has video courses, but not to the same extent as the others, and the few video courses I have looked at did not have the same quality as the others. But their strength lies in the volume of books. According to the interwebz +35,000 books from O’Reilly and over 200 publishers such as Manning, Addison-Wesley Professional, and Packt to name a few. The most negative part of O’Reilly is that the second edition of @Johan Karlsson and @Daniel Hindrikes book Xamarin.Forms Projects isn’t available yet.
The price is a bit on the steep side with an annual subscription for $499. But deals can be found now and then for around $199.
Conclusion
Currently, I use all of these services except for Pluralsight. I mainly use Frontend Masters and O’Reilly for more in-depth knowledge. When I want to get started with something and get a quick idea of how it works, Egghead is often the best option. If there is a certain stack or something more project-based that you’re interested in, you can often find it on Udemy. Since all services have pros and cons with more or less different orientations and styles of teaching, I see them as a good complement to each other. But if I were forced to choose just one, I would probably choose Frontend Masters.
Have a great summer!
