It’s not always easy to know what to learn next if you’re a programmer. Industry shifts can be subtle but they can sometimes be dramatic, making it incredibly important to stay on top of what’s happening both in your field and beyond.
No one person can make that decision for you. All the thought leadership and mentorship in the world isn’t going to be able to tell you what’s right for you when it comes to your career. But this list of videos, released last month, might give you a helping hand as to where to go next when it comes to your learning…
Apache Spark is carving out a big presence as the go-to software for big data. Two videos from February focus on Spark - Distributed Deep Learning with Apache Spark and Apache Spark in 7 Days. If you’re new to Spark and want a crash course on the tool, then clearly, our video aims to get you up and running quickly. However, Distributed Deep Learning with Apache Spark offers a deeper exploration that shows you how to develop end to end deep learning pipelines that can leverage the full potential of cutting edge deep learning techniques.
While we’re on the subject of machine learning, other choice video courses for March include TensorFlow 2.0 New Features (we’ve been eagerly awaiting it and it finally looks like we can see what it will be like), Hands On Machine Learning with JavaScript (yes, you can now do machine learning in the browser), and a handful of interesting videos on artificial intelligence and finance:
Elsewhere, a number of data visualization video courses prove that communicating and presenting data remains an urgent challenge for those in the data space. Tableau remains one of the definitive tools - you can learn the latest version with Tableau 2019.1 for Data Scientists and Data Visualization Recipes with Python and Matplotlib 3.
There are a wealth of video courses for web and app developers to choose from this month. True, Hands-on Machine Learning for JavaScript is well worth a look, but moving past the machine learning hype, there are a number of video courses that take a practical look at popular tools and new approaches to app and web development.
Angular’s death has been greatly exaggerated - it remains a pillar of the JavaScript world. While the project’s versioning has arguably been lacking some clarity, if you want to get up to speed with where the framework is today, try Angular 7: A Practical Guide. It’s a video that does exactly what it says on the proverbial tin - it shows off Angular 7 and demonstrates how to start using it in web projects.
We’ve also been seeing some uptake of Angular by ASP.NET developers, as it offers a nice complement to the Microsoft framework on the front end side. Our latest video on the combination, Hands-on Web Development with ASP.NET Core and Angular, is another practical look at an effective and increasingly popular approach to full-stack development.
Other picks for March include Building Mobile Apps with Ionic 4, a video that brings you right up to date with the recent update that launched in January (interestingly, the project is now backed by web components, not Angular), and a couple of Redux videos - Mastering Redux and Redux Recipes.
Redux is still relatively new. Essentially, it’s a JavaScript library that helps you manage application state - because it can be used with a range of different frameworks and libraries, including both Angular and React, it’s likely to go from strength to strength in 2019.
Node.js is becoming an important library for infrastructure and DevOps engineers. As we move to a cloud native world, it’s a great tool for developing lightweight and modular services.
That’s why we’re picking Learn Serverless App Development with Node.js and Azure Functions as one of our top videos for this month. Azure has been growing at a rapid rate over the last 12 months, and while it’s still some way behind AWS, Microsoft’s focus on developer experience is making Azure an increasingly popular platform with developers. For Node developers, this video is a great place to begin - it’s also useful for anyone who simply wants to find out what serverless development actually feels like.
Read next: Serverless computing wars: AWS Lambda vs. Azure Functions
A partner to this, for anyone beginning Node, is the new Node.js Design Patterns video. In particular, if Node.js is an important tool in your architecture, following design patterns is a robust method of ensuring reliability and resilience.
Elsewhere, we have Modern DevOps in Practice, cutting through the consultancy-speak to give you useful and applicable guidance on how to use DevOps thinking in your workflows and processes, and DevOps with Azure, another video that again demonstrates just how impressive Azure is.
For those not Azure-inclined, there’s AWS Certified Developer Associate - A Practical Guide, a video that takes you through everything you need to know to pass the AWS Developer Associate exam. There’s also a completely cloud-agnostic video course in the form of Creating a Continuous Deployment Pipeline for Cloud Platforms that’s essential for infrastructure and operations engineers getting to grips with cloud native development.
Finally, there are a number of new video courses that can help you get to grips with a new programming language. So, perfect if you’ve been putting off your new year’s resolution to learn a new language…
Java 11 in 7 Days is a new video that brings you bang up to date with everything in the latest version of Java, while Hands-on Functional Programming with Java will help you rethink and reevaluate the way you use Java. Together, the two videos are a great way for Java developers to kick start their learning and update their skill set.