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Udacity Nanodegrees are geared toward "post-beginners looking to specialize" (my words, not theirs).

https://www.udacity.com/nanodegree

For example, the Android nanodegree assumes you're already familiar with Java and OOP, but not with Android.

The "Full Stack Web Developer Nanodegree" suggests you have "Beginner-level experience in Python." (direct quote) https://www.udacity.com/course/full-stack-web-developer-nano...

These courses are not cheap, they take a lot of time, but if you have the time and money, they are absolutely worth it IMO.

⬐ parthdesai

If you are at intermediate level, you can always just follow video lectures/assignments for free and try to improve on your own. That's what i do.

The "full-stack developer" nanodegree mentioned in the article appears on Udacity's list of nanodegrees but, when you click through, it takes you to a page entitled "Full Stack Web Developer Nanodegree".

The curriculum seems decent enough[0] but it's focused on a particular skill set (building and deploying server-rendered web apps and the APIs to support front-end code). It doesn't cover front-end development (e.g. JavaScript or specific frameworks like Angular/React), and so it falls short of 'full stack web', and further short of 'full stack' in the original sense.

[0] https://www.udacity.com/course/full-stack-web-developer-nano...

⬐ gaius

The "full stack" starts with electrical signals a thousand miles away and ends with glowing pixels in front of you. Javascript is a teeny tiny sliver of the "stack".

⬐ rahimnathwani

That's what I meant, but I could have worded it more clearly:

- The lack of JS/front-end means it's not really 'full stack web development'

- The lack of lower-level stuff means it's definitely not 'full stack development'

I'm not sure, though, that you and I would draw the 'full stack development' line in the same place. For me, the lowest level would be OS kernels. For you, perhaps it would be CPU microcode or even deeper.

If someone could write an OS from scratch (running on an off-the-shelf hardware) and make that thing respond to HTTP requests, that would be sufficient to call them a 'full stack developer', right?

⬐ gaius

Well, and render what was returned from that request onto a screen :-) But a lineprinter would do, I'm old-skool like that.