Frontend Masters Review - Should You Try It?
Disclaimer: I am not affiliated with Frontend Masters or anyone mentioned within this post. Opinions stated within this review are solely my own.
Introduction
As you may know, I have decided to quit my part-time job and focus on my studies this summer in preparation of my last semester of university. My desire to improve my skills has led me on a hunt to find a solid platform for teaching myself software development. This hunt has led me to the renowned website Frontend Masters.
Frontend Masters is an online technology training website that has a focus on Web Development. The main attraction of Frontend Masters is that they recruit actual professionals from within the field at companies such as Microsoft, Netflix, LinkedIn, and Adobe to teach their specialties, similar to that of Masterclass, only for software development.
After completing roughly a dozen courses, here is my take on Frontend Masters.
What They Offer
Frontend Masters offers dozens if not hundreds of courses broken up into different "learning paths". As stated before, each class is taught by a different professional in the field. For example, if you take a course on CSS, you will most likely run into Jen Kramer, while if you take a course in Javascript, you will almost certainly run into Kyle Simpson.
You will undoubtedly be able to find yourself a course on nearly any topic within Web Development. Courses range all the way from the typical ones you might expect: Javascript and Javascript frameworks such as React and Vue, HTML & CSS, Node.js, etc., to site design, accessiblity, python, databases, GraphQL, and more. If you are interested in learning something new, you will almost certainly never be bored on Frontend Masters, that's for sure.
On the topic of learning paths, I believe they offer a level of satisfaction once you complete them. However, I don't believe that they have any real significance. One course on the beginner path titled JavaScript: From Fundamentals to Functional JS, v2 by Bianca Gandolfo to be extremely difficult, especially considering the previous course was Getting Started with JavaScript, v2. It may be because of how Bianca taught - which is a topic I will get to later - or it was simply not meant to be difficult, I don't know for sure. However, I know that in the next learning path Professional, there were much easier courses that definitely felt like a good "next step" compared to Bianca's course, which felt like a leap instead of a step.
Thus, while the learning paths are a cool feature, the courses inside will definitely vary in difficulty. Completing these learning paths will almost certainly not make you a "professional" or a "master" in any case. However, they definitley motivate me to take more courses and learn more, so that's still a win for me. 😁
Well, what about when the tecnology evolves and these courses become outdated, what happens then?
A really cool feature about Frontend Masters is that they know that such a question is a problem and, as a result, they frequently update courses. Ontop of that, they also generally broadcast these courses as a live workshop before they record and edit the footage and upload it as a course on the website. As a paid member, you are free to join these courses and interact directly with the instructor - how awesome!
But Are They Good Though?
Something that may have caught your eye is that the courses are generally recorded live, edited, and then put onto the website as a course. These courses are broken up into segments that make it easy to know when new topics are going to be introduced. Frontend Masters also has a solid video player with all of the features you need, including closed captions, and more importantly, a speed option (you may need it!).
Typically, each course also comes with some resources, such as a website with all of the course content on it or on a github repository. These resources are free, open, and available to those who find them. While I don't think some of these materials would ever have any usefulness to those who don't attend the lecture, I believe it's good to save it and use it for review at later points in time.
Despite the editing and resources, the courses are still just live recorded classes, which isn't so atypical. For some people this may be a wonderful thing. For others who may like a course that is "listen up and pause if you need to," that will not be what you get. In the majority of the classes, the teachers will engage with the audience routinely, they will be asked questions, and they will often create exercises for the class (and you) to participate in.
Does it work? It depends, primarily on you.
Teaching Method
You might be one of the ones saying "Sign me up!" Well, hold on a minute. Like I said, each of these classes are taught by a different person, and each person has a wildly different teaching method. A pretty obvious statement, and I would agree, however, I believe it is extremely important. You will simply not receive the same and/or adequate content from course to course. The knowledge you will retain from each course will differ. The methods that they employ will differ. The level of interaction with the students will also, undoubtedly, differ.
The best example I can give is the difference between Bianca Gandolfo (Sorry I'm picking on you again!) in JavaScript: From Fundamentals to Functional JS, v2 and Will Sentance in his Javascript: The Hard Parts series. Bianca, in her course, takes the class on an adventure, albeit a rather confusing one, to try and figure out a murderer in a clue game by teaching us functional Javascript. She uses a lot of tests that isn't quite well explained, and assumes that we already know a good deal about some methods. She also just says what a certain function does, rather than explaining why. She also constantly called on the class pretty often, and they seemed just as confused as I was at times. Sometimes it felt like it was more of a Q&A than a lecture, and while I had learned a lot, it was extremely difficult to follow along.
And then there is Will. Let me say this right now: Will Sentance is the best programming teacher I have ever had the pleasure of learning from.
Will Sentance is what made me truly believe that Frontend Masters is worth it. He is the only lecturer I have met to truly explain the why of programming. I have grasped everything he had taught and I thoroughly loved it. He actively engaged the class and walked them through everything, making sure they all were exercising the ability of technical communication. Not only have I learned in and out many of the core features of Javascript better than I had ever have before, he also taught me how to communicate my knowledge well. I wish this was how all programming courses were taught. It is what I crave. It is difficult for me to work and create something when I don't even know how I really created it!
Will used a whiteboard and marker to communicate code, something I thought I would hate, but I ended up loving! He did not simply quiz his students, he instead engaged them in a way that would help further their understanding. He was also extremely funny, engaging, and had a knack for delivering. If it weren't for its high cost, I would almost certainly would attend Codesmith, his coding school, if it meant I could learn more from him.
But let me be clear, while these are things I have observed, they are still my own opinions. In fact, I guarantee many people will absolutely hate how Will teaches but loves how Bianca teaches. Maybe they will love how Brian Holt teaches which is much less interaction with the audience and more "telling what is happening." I will let you decide if you like how Brian teaches as you can take his and Jen Kramer's free bootcamp. As Brian teaches a great number of the classes at Frontend Masters, you will be seeing him a lot.
Another difference concerning the teaching methods is the outcome you will receive. Many of the courses will only result in more notes and knowledge, while others will leave you with a fully fleshed out project. I am currently finding Jem Young's Fullstack course to be fun and engaging. You will finish this course with your own server hosted on Digital Ocean, how cool!
So, Should you try it out?
Yes, definitely. If you can spare the ~$40 for a month membership, or if you have access to the Github Student Developer pack, then I don't see any reason to not try it out if you want to learn more about Frontend Development. There are simply too many courses, topics, and professionals found on Frontend Masters to allow someone to walk away without learning anything.
Frontend Masters will be worth it to you only if you find at least one person who you feel like you have learned a lot from, like Will Sentance for me. You should be able to get a few weeks of learning out of one person which should be enough to cover a month's membership. Frontend Masters will only continue to be worth it to you if you find value in other courses as well and want to continually explore more courses on new topics. Once you feel satisfied, however, I think it would be in your best interest to cancel until new courses come around, which is an event that happens approximately only once or twice a month.
Try Frontend Masters for free
Frontend Masters offers a free bootcamp that contains over 20 hours of content for free. I would whole-heartedly recommend you run through this bootcamp before purchasing so that you can get a feel of what to expect from the rest of Frontend Masters. While this bootcamp has only two professionals teaching it, both Jen Kramer and Brian Holt make up a lot of the courses offered on Frontend Masters. Thus, if you aren't pleased with their teaching style as mentioned before, it may be best for you to look elsewhere.
There is also a 6 month trial available for students via the Github Student Developer Pack.