Udemy explodes with "experts" teaching online

The Next Web reports that Udemy, a marketplace connecting experts with paying students, has signed on 15,000 new experts during January and February of this year. That's a lot of experts.

Although I feel like this press release devalues the term "expert", I am very intrigued at what it might mean for online education. If Udemy is able to find students for all those experts, then we'll see the tide toward online education shift even further.

Codecademy offers project lessons with real APIs

Working with APIs is becoming a standard aspect of web development. I built a "simple" web app late last year that pulls photos from Instagram and Facebook. Working with their respective APIs was a learning curve I didn't expect. I had to learn about HTTP requests, how to read their documentation, and how to build my own app to accept the information their APIs returned.

3 smart people you should follow

Every once in a while, I'll list three smart people worth following on the Internet. They will invariably relate to web development or independent learning.

Eric Weinstein works at Codecademy. His title is Content Architect. I could surmise what that means, but all I really know is that his Ruby course on Codecademy is the best I've encountered anywhere. He also has a personal site.

Ryan Carson is the founder of Treehouse. He also founded Carsonified, blogs excellently on his personal site, and founded a collection of incredibly popular conferences on web design. He's a beast.

Chris Coyier is a web developer and blogger behind CSS-Tricks. He co-founded Codepen.io, which I'm a big fan of. He also does a podcast and stuff like that.

Making the jump from salary to freelance

Learn better by cycling your intensity

When learning web development I found a special trick that worked well for me and still works today. It improves my retention of lessons, reduces fatigue, removes the risk of burnout, and doesn't sacrifice momentum. I started cycling my intensity.

Doing it wrong

When I first started learning web development, I tried to stuff it all in my head as fast as possible. I joined Treehouse and went through a ton of lessons. I read a book on HTML and CSS like it was a textbook. I read a book on Ruby from cover to cover and highlighted half the text. I joined a developer bootcamp called Bloc to learn even faster. I did Codecademy lessons and read as much online as my eyes could stand.

Choosing a winning color palette

I suck at building color palettes from scratch. I've read a dozen tutorials and watched a handful of videos and if you asked me to put together 5 colors that look great together I couldn't. I think building great color palettes is a genetic predisposition, like drawing or writing good poetry or liking mushrooms. If you're not born with it, you won't have it.

That said, the Internet does a great job at augmenting our deficiencies. You don't have to be a color aficionado to choose a great color palette. All you need is a basic understanding of the effect of color on emotion, a little good taste, and a tool like COLOURlovers or Kuler by Adobe.

Treehouse is amazing for aspiring web developers

I dislike reviews that don't tell you the verdict until the end. I won't do that. You'll get my verdict in the very beginning, every time.

Treehouse is an online technology school and it's amazing. Anytime someone asks me the best way to learn the basics of web development, I point them to Treehouse first. It's reliable, fun, incredibly high quality, and they're always adding new content.

What you can learn

With Treehouse, you can learn web development, web design, iOS programming, Android programming, and how to start a business. The "web development" category has the most content. You can learn HTML/CSS, JavaScript/jQuery, Ruby on Rails, PHP, and even Wordpress, all through tidy packages called Learning Adventures.