Udemy
The Complete JavaScript Course 2025 — Honest Analysis of 22 Learner Opinions
Jonas Schmedtmann's Complete JavaScript Course is the closest thing to a consensus gold standard for learning JavaScript from scratch in the online learning market. Across 22 independent opinions collected from blogs, course-discovery platforms, and Reddit aggregators, the course earns superlative praise from 18 of 22 reviewers, with the two negative opinions focused narrowly on pace for absolute beginners rather than on content quality. With a 4.7/5 platform rating across 228,000+ reviews and over 1 million enrolled students, the statistical base also distinguishes it from any competitor. The core strength is Jonas's teaching philosophy: he does not just show you what to type, he shows you what JavaScript is doing when you type it. Concepts like the call stack, the event loop, prototypal inheritance, and closure are explained with diagrams and analogies that reviewers describe as the clearest they have encountered anywhere. This depth is the reason students who previously struggled with other JavaScript courses report finally understanding the language after taking this one. The six portfolio projects — particularly the MVC-architected Forkify capstone — translate theoretical knowledge into demonstrable, employer-visible work. Multiple reviewers credit the course directly with landing their first developer job, which is the most concrete measure of real-world applicability available. The honest reservations are worth stating plainly. At 70+ hours this is a marathon, not a sprint, and the dropout risk is real without sustained discipline. Absolute beginners may find the pace challenging in the advanced sections. And the course ends at vanilla JavaScript — React, Vue, and TypeScript are out of scope, meaning most students will need at least one follow-up course before entering the job market. None of these are flaws in the content; they are scope decisions. Within its stated scope, this course is essentially unrivalled.
Final score
from 22 analysed opinions
Published AI-researched, editor-audited
Distribution of opinions
Per-criterion scores
Reviewers consistently cite the course as the most thorough JavaScript resource available on any platform. Coverage spans from absolute fundamentals (variables, data types, control flow) through advanced topics including closures, prototypal inheritance, OOP with ES6 classes, the event loop, asynchronous JavaScript with Promises and async/await, and modern ES2024/ES2025 features. What sets the content apart is Jonas's insistence on explaining the mechanics behind every concept — learners understand how the JavaScript engine actually executes code rather than just memorising syntax. The course is regularly updated; the 2025 edition incorporates the latest language additions. With 68–70+ hours of video the breadth is unmatched in its niche, and the sequencing earns specific praise for building each topic on the last without skipping anything a working developer would need.
Jonas Schmedtmann receives the strongest instructor praise in our web-development catalogue. Across 22 collected opinions not a single reviewer criticised his teaching style — praise is consistently superlative: "the best Udemy instructor I've ever seen", "impeccable explanations", "he really cares about what he's teaching people." The defining quality reviewers highlight is depth: Jonas goes beyond showing you the code to explaining why the language behaves the way it does, using visual diagrams, real-world analogies, and progressively layered examples. He actively maintains the course with new content and responds meaningfully to structural feedback, though the sheer student base (1M+) limits direct Q&A access. For solo video-based JavaScript instruction it is difficult to identify a more consistently praised teacher on any platform.
Udemy courses routinely go on sale for $10–$20, making this 70-hour course one of the highest content-to-price ratios in technical education. Multiple reviewers make this comparison explicitly, noting that equivalent material at a bootcamp would cost thousands of dollars. Course-discovery platforms and independent blog reviewers reinforce the value framing, pointing out that the course is perpetually updated at no extra charge — buyers of the 2021 edition still have access to all 2025 additions. The score falls just short of perfect because the list price ($84.99+) is steep without a sale, and students who only need a refresher on specific topics may overpay for content they skip.
Six substantial real-world projects thread through the course and receive emphatic praise. The capstone Forkify application — a full recipe search and bookmarking app built with the Model-View-Controller pattern, a third-party API, and modern ES modules — is cited repeatedly as portfolio-worthy. Earlier projects include a geolocation-powered workout tracker (Mapty), a budgeting app, a banking UI, and a dice game. Reviewers specifically value the pattern of building the project from scratch alongside Jonas rather than receiving pre-built starter code, which forces genuine understanding. The projects are also cited as the mechanism that converts theoretical knowledge into employable skills — multiple students credit them directly with landing their first developer role.
The course deliberately teaches plain JavaScript without a framework, and every project targets real browser interactions, DOM manipulation, REST API consumption, local-storage persistence, and modular code architecture — skills used daily in professional front-end work. Reviewers who subsequently found employment as JavaScript or front-end developers consistently credit this course. The caveat preventing a perfect score is the framework gap: modern front-end roles almost universally require React, Vue, or Angular, and the course does not cover them. Students who complete this course will be well-prepared to learn a framework, but will need at minimum one additional course before applying for most junior front-end positions.
Beyond the six projects, the course includes coding challenges at the end of most sections that students must solve before watching Jonas's solution. This challenge-first, solution-second format is explicitly praised by reviewers as more effective than passive watching. The projects themselves are built incrementally — each lecture adds a small, testable feature — so learners spend the majority of their time writing code rather than observing it. Reviewers who compare this course to others consistently single out the hands-on density as a differentiator. The small deduction reflects the fact that challenges exist inside the Udemy video environment rather than a dedicated coding sandbox with automated feedback.
What learners said
What people loved
5- Jonas explains how JavaScript works behind the scenes — the call stack, event loop, closures, and prototypal inheritance are covered with diagrams and analogies that multiple reviewers describe as the clearest available anywhere. Students don't just learn syntax; they understand the engine.×14
- Six real-world projects, including the MVC-architected Forkify recipe app, build a genuine portfolio. Reviewers across multiple platforms cite these projects as the mechanism that converted theoretical knowledge into employable skills, with several crediting the course directly with landing a first developer job.×12
- The course covers JavaScript comprehensively from absolute fundamentals through modern ES2024/ES2025 features — OOP, async/await, Promises, modules, and more — meaning students rarely need to supplement with a second JavaScript course to fill gaps in core language knowledge.×10
- Jonas actively updates the course as the language evolves; buyers of earlier versions receive all new content at no extra charge, making the one-time Udemy purchase price an exceptional long-term value especially during frequent sales at $10–$20.×8
- End-of-section coding challenges require students to solve problems before watching Jonas's solution — a format praised for reinforcing retention far better than passive video watching and for building the problem-solving instinct needed in real work.×6
What frustrated learners
4- At 68–70+ hours the course demands a major, sustained time commitment. Several reviewers acknowledge that many students start but do not finish, and the sheer volume can feel overwhelming without a structured study plan and consistent daily practice.×9
- The course deliberately stops at vanilla JavaScript and does not cover React, Vue, Angular, or TypeScript. Most junior front-end job postings require at least one framework, so students will need a separate course before applying to the majority of entry-level roles.×7
- Absolute beginners may find the pace challenging in the intermediate and advanced sections. A small number of reviewers recommend supplementing with slower-paced foundational material before tackling the course's second half.×4
- With over 1 million enrolled students Jonas cannot respond personally to most Q&A threads. The Q&A section is active but answers largely come from fellow students rather than the instructor himself.×3
Real quotes from real users
“Really, really well made course. Super in-depth, with great challenges and projects that will solidify your Javascript understanding. I found the lectures were paced perfectly — Jonas doesn't skip over anything that might be useful to a JS developer.”
“One of the truly best, clear, concise, and most up-to-date courses to learn modern JavaScript in a hands-on way with building projects and applying the knowledge you learn in theory lectures.”
“After testing dozens of courses, this remains the gold standard for learning JavaScript comprehensively.”
“Jonas was the best Udemy instructor I've ever seen, he really explains everything in-depth and explains how the language works behind the scenes.”
“With over 70 hours of material, the course demands a significant investment of time and discipline.”
“Covering JavaScript fundamentals to advanced concepts, making it suitable for both beginners and advanced students — a one-stop shop for mastering the language.”
“This course is extremely comprehensive, covering everything from the very basics to advanced concepts.”
“The projects are a huge plus; they help you apply what you've learned and build a portfolio.”
“Jonas' course is great but it moves a little too quickly for a beginner.”
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How we evaluated this
This review synthesizes 22 opinions collected across the public web. Final score = Bayesian average penalising small samples, then weighted by the positivity ratio. No paid placements, no hidden agenda.
- 10 from reddit
- 5 from Blogs
- 3 from Other
- 1 from class-central
- 1 from Forums
- 2 from Official course platform