Reddit reviews Learning from jQuery

First year comp. science student here! I'm also maintain and write for my own website, am currently in part-time employment as a front-end developer for a start-up in London, and have written a book.

Even if you're taught anything about web development at university, it will most likely be wrong. Here's a slide from one of my lectures a while back. The HTML is invalid in multiple ways, there's a syntax error, and he's not separating his HTML and PHP, which is bad practice. In later lectures, he has given us code examples with major vulnerabilities (CSRF, XSS, SQL injection), and we're nearing the end of the module.

I made a complaint and was told that it's probably not worth it because it would take a couple years to change the course. That pretty much sums up why I don't think university is a good place to learn web development—in two years, even stuff that was best practice two years ago might not be relevant any more.


Teach yourself! If you get good enough, you don't need a degree (although it might be different outside the UK). I talk to plenty of people who want me to drop out of university and work for them. Having a degree doesn't mean shit to a decent employer, especially with courses being as bad as they are. You won't be able to learn JavaScript through a university, because it is continually changing. The last version of the language, containing some pretty big changes, was released three years ago, and there's another version on its way out right now.

You mentioned you know HTML and CSS. Now, learn JavaScript! Check out Speaking JavaScript, which is available for free online, and is very good.