I am considering creating an online course that would teach web development, from novice to employable. It would use videos, screencasts and texts. More than anything, I'd like to make it free.<p>Why? I have been a developer for the past 15 years. I started as a junior coder and arrived to an IT manager position in a large corporation. The twist here is that I never sat a single day of my life in a CS course. I am entirely self-taught, like many in the field. Over the years, I noticed that I have a passion for coaching and teaching developers.<p>At a high level, here's what the course should teach: HTML -> CSS -> Programming basics -> JavaScript -> Ruby -> Rails -> Advices on how to land a web developer's job. I'd intend this course to be a comprehensive set of skills needed to be able to apply for a junior dev position.<p>In order to build this course, I would need to take 3 months of unpaid leave. I would also need some trivial resources like some software licenses, a good microphone, etc. My idea is to start a crowdfunding campaign to first see if there's an interest for such a course and of course, to have the resources to work full time on it.<p>What do you think? How would you tackle this and spread the word about the crowdfunding project (no, I don't have a large following on Twitter and the likes)? Is the idea completely stupid, and why?<p>Thanks for your input! Before jumping in, I'm interested in getting some feedback.
Not a bad idea, I'm sure you will get funded if you put this on kickstarter my only thing is don't go with Ruby on Rails or is that your main skill?. Ruby on Rails is not something a beginner will understand it really just seems like magic as opposed to PHP and MySQL. I definitely recommend you try PHP since that will give beginners a great opportunity to understand and follow along it also gives a high level overview of what is really going on under the hood of server-side scripting.
Thanks for the feedback!<p>In order to answer the various questions raised on all the outlets where I asked 'what about this idea?', I created a faq here: <a href="http://howtocode.io" rel="nofollow">http://howtocode.io</a><p>Let me know what you think (I know it's ugly but the purpose is served)!
you should sign up for your competitor's online bootcamps. See what they do, how they approach teaching the subject matter, etc... 2 years ago, michael hartl owned the marketshare for learning rails. Now, theres dozens of online courses teaching rails.<p>source: myself...I am an expert at "Learning Ruby/Rails"