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Course Review
Here is our in-depth review of Docker and Microservices, based on hours of rigorous testing and evaluation.
Updated: September 1, 2023
Tremendous free resource for learning the foundations of Docker and Microservices for full stack development.
Fast Facts
App Academy Open
By Various Authors
This course consists of readings, quizzes, exercises, and guided projects where you practice the basics of containers and Docker Compose, and convert Express and Python documents to microservices with Docker.
Each section contains quizzes to ensure you’ve grasped the material, along with hands-on practice executing an attack on vulnerable code, along with step by step instructions to mitigate the attack. This frequent practice is incredibly valuable for making your knowledge more tangible.
The topic coverage is just thorough enough to get you started working with Docker. Often in the curriculum, the authors provide links to supplemental materials -- these are important for gaining a deep understanding of Docker and working with containers. After taking this course, you'll have a solid understanding of the fundamentals, and will be ready to learn more advanced topics.
It's important to be aware that App Academy Open's curriculum was written with the assumption that students would take the entire program sequentially. So if you jump into this section of the course, you'll notice the course references other sections and assumes a lot of prerequisite knowledge.
This course covers the essentials of working with Docker, but does not go as in-depth into containerization as other courses in this guide.
Pluralsight
By Nigel Poulton, Dan Wahlin, others
Exceptional video-based courses by some of the leading Docker experts.
A Cloud Guru
By Linux Academy
Exceptional hands-on Docker course with a focus on practical, real-world exercises.
Udacity
By Various Authors
This intensive, hands-on course that covers using Docker and Kubernetes to build a distributed microservices application for scale.
Cloud Academy
By Ben Lambert, Logan Rakai
A robust choice for mastering Docker containerization, with frequent hands-on labs for practice and assessments for skill validation.
Udemy
By Bret Fisher
Highly practical and comprehensive resource for learning Docker foundations.
Our course reviews are conducted by a team of technical professionals, course developers, and lifelong learners.
The lead of this project, Brian Green, has worked in developer education since 2009. He built the content development teams at Pluralsight and Udacity, implementing quality standards and tutorials to improve course quality and working with hundreds of authors to create courseware. Most recently, he built the product team at App Academy. As of writing, he estimates he has spent nearly a year of his life taking or reviewing online courses, on topics ranging from Web Development, Networking, Server Administration, DevOps, Cybersecurity, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.
We reviewed this course using the following criteria:
