Fundamentals of Backend Engineering Course Review
A resource for any engineer!
I recently completed the Fundamentals of Backend Engineering course on Udemy and shared this accomplishment on LinkedIn!
Let’s look at the course from a high level and find out how I think it went. 🤔
We’ll cover:
💻 Overall Content
🎯 Who is the Best Audience?
🛠️ Are the Skills Real World Applicable?
⏳ Time Commitment
💸 Value
🎬 Instructor
👉 Conclusion
💻 Overall Content
🎯 Who is the Best Audience?
Any engineer can leverage knowledge of backend engineering. So, pretty much any active developer could take this course!
Admittedly, a backend engineer will likely get more from the course as it is geared toward this group. But I can see some situations, too, where a frontend engineer can benefit from a basic understanding of these concepts.
That said, this isn’t as ideal for a brand-new engineer with little experience. I’m not saying, “Don’t take it,” if you fall into that category, but I would recommend some self-guided digging into how the internet works and getting a nice base level of knowledge before taking the course. Nothing too thorough; he covers some basics. Having a point of reference for some terms would be useful.
🛠️ Are the Skills Real World Applicable?
A resounding yes!
While working on a current project to build a greenfield API, I found that learning more about polling and long polling, TLS, TCP, WebSockets, and Stateful vs. Stateless were all timely and helpful.
These concepts directly aided my understanding of the full scope of the project and how certain services were currently interacting together and planned future interactions.
It was helpful for me, and I could see any of these areas being helpful for another developer in the right project or scenario.
⏳ Time Commitment
The course holds 55 lectures with 16 hours of content.
It’s one of the biggest Udemy courses I’ve taken to completion! I spent about 4.5 months working on this course.
Often, it feels good to finish quickly. But I took my time watching a lecture every few days. I did this intentionally to absorb the content fully; I was committed to forming a solid foundation for the future.
💸 Value
The currently listed cost of this course is $94.99 USD.
Udemy often runs sales. I purchased this course through one of the bigger sales at $15.70 USD in October 2023.
If you are lucky enough for your company to have a deal with Udemy to provide you with free or reduced-cost course access, that’s even better!
Considering all of the in-depth content, I find this course to be very affordable. Of course, it’s even more affordable when purchased through a Udemy sale. Having been through the content, I feel the full price would be worth the investment.
🎬 Instructor
Hussein Nasser is an Engineer with about 25 years of experience, which is apparent during his lectures. As he dove into a lecture or a concept, his excitement encouraged my desire to learn more!
At times, the excitement made the concepts difficult to understand. He does a pretty good job of keeping the jargon low-key or taking the time to explain what he’s talking about, but there were a few areas where I had to relisten/rewatch or do some extra digging to get a better understanding.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing! It also encourages self-discovery and promotes curiosity to some degree.
The lectures are a collection of videos; some are from other courses by Hussein. In some ways, I admire his ability to create videos that can be used to help scale and bring more understanding to multiple courses.
Finally, if interested, there is a repo you can reference alongside the code examples. It was cool to see a small chat service and how that might work locally, for example!
👉 Conclusion
All things considered, this course was useful, engaging, and valuable to me. I highly recommend it to developers with a base level of knowledge who want to learn more about how things work “under the hood!”
Any developer can benefit from this course, but I recommend forming a solid base of the internet and common terms to grasp the concepts better.
With about 16 hours of content, it’s best absorbed in small doses over time!
This course has so much usable content. I used it more than once in my day-to-day role. As mentioned, I feel the content fulfills the value offered even at full price.
Hussein Nasser brings a wealth of knowledge and experience. Come prepared for energetic and informative lectures with plenty of visual aids!
🥸 Proof of completion, just for fun:
👉 Bonus:
I was looking for new Podcasts to listen to during the course. I poked around a bit and found that Hussein Nasser has one if you want to listen! | Backend Engineering
For more stuff from me, find me on LinkedIn / YouTube or catch what else I'm up to at mindi.omg.lol
Thanks for reading! Did I miss anything, or would you like to add anything? Let me know! I appreciate constructive feedback so we can all learn together. 🙌