My 10 favourite Black Friday deals from other indie creators ❤️

Hey there!

I’m old enough to remember when “Black Friday” was literally a one-day event. On the Friday right after American Thanksgiving, stuff went on sale.

Well, today is actually Black Friday! And I thought it would be fun to round up some of the sales that my fellow developers and course creators are running. 😄

While I haven’t taken most of these courses myself, I’m only including courses from creators I think are top-notch. There are no affiliate links or backroom shenanigans here; I’m sharing these courses because I think they’re worthwhile. There’s no financial incentive for me at all.

And, of course, my own courses are on sale for Black Friday! You can save an eye-popping $500 on my Joy for JavaScript Developers bundle(opens in new tab), or you can save around 40% on each course individually:

• CSS for JavaScript Developers(opens in new tab)
• The Joy of React(opens in new tab)

Alright, enough about me. Let’s get to the deals!

Link to this headingWizard Zines

Let’s start with the most time-sensitive deal: Julia Evans’ incredible Wizard Zines(opens in new tab) are 50% off, but only for today!

If you’re not familiar with Julia’s work, she creates incredible comic-style booklets on a bunch of software development and computing concepts. You can either download the PDF version, to print and staple yourself, or you can receive a physical copy by mail!

They’re short but incredibly dense when it comes to value. I’ve purchased a couple of her zines in the past and they’re wonderful.

Each zine is normally between $10-15, and she even supports purchasing power parity (fun fact: Julia very kindly shared her regional data with me, and helped shape the first version of my own regional pricing scheme!). During the Black Friday sale, you can pick up the entire collection for around $100, which is an absolute steal.

• Wizard Zines(opens in new tab)

Link to this headingPractical Accessibility

Practical Accessibility is a comprehensive course focused on helping us learn how to diagnose and fix real-world accessibility issues. It’s created by the legendary Sara Soueidan(opens in new tab). I’ve gotten to know Sara personally over the past couple of years, and she’s just the best. There’s no one better to teach you about accessibility.

Accessibility has always been important, but I feel like it’s never been more important than it is now. Most websites are terribly inaccessible, and I fear that’s only going to get worse as more sites are vibe-coded. I try to sneak in as many accessibility principles as I can in my own courses, but there’s so much value in learning about accessibility from an expert like Sara, both for you and for the folks who use the websites you build.

Her course is typically US$399, but is currently 30% off for Black Friday, down to US$279. 💸

• Practical Accessibility(opens in new tab)

Link to this headingCSS Demystified

For the first time in 7 years, YouTube sensation Kevin Powell(opens in new tab) is running a Black Friday sale! You can pick up his CSS course for ~40% off.

• CSS Demystified(opens in new tab)

I haven’t seen the course myself, but Kevin is a fantastic educator, and super knowledgeable. My recent blog post on subgrid(opens in new tab) was heavily inspired by Kevin’s videos on the subject, since he has a knack for coming up with great real-world use cases!

A common question I’ve gotten from y’all is whether my “CSS for JavaScript Developers” course is worth taking even if you don’t have much JavaScript experience, or don’t use a framework like React. I think in those cases, it probably makes more sense to pick up Kevin’s course instead.

Link to this headingPiccalilli

Piccalilli is a learning platform that has been absolutely killing it this year. They’ve launched two brand-new courses in the past few weeks, and they both seem excellent:

• Mindful Design(opens in new tab) is a video course from the super-talented Scott Riley(opens in new tab). The really interesting thing about this course, to me, is that it’s focused on human psychology and neuroscience, and how we can leverage that understanding to design better interfaces for humans. This is a design course, not a development course, but Scott says right in the trailer that it’s a great fit for front-end devs who want to learn more about design!
• JavaScript for Everyone(opens in new tab) is a course from the brilliant Mat Marquis(opens in new tab). The course is focused on understanding JavaScript at a deeper level, covering things like prototypal inheritance, iterators, generators, stuff like that. Whether you use a JS framework or not, it’s super helpful to understand this stuff, and the curriculum looks really solid.

For Black Friday, you can save £60 on all of Piccalilli’s courses, and they’re doing something really interesting where if you buy one course during Black Friday, you also get a 50% discount coupon you can use on their other courses. You can learn more here:

• Piccalilli’s Black Friday page(opens in new tab)

Link to this headingSubatomic: The Complete Guide To Design Tokens

Have you ever heard of “Atomic Design”? It was created by the pioneering Brad Frost(opens in new tab), and has had a major impact on how many designers and developers work.

Well, Brad and his brother Ian have created a signature course all about design tokens! It’s called Subatomic, and it’s currently 45% off for Black Friday!

• Subatomic: The Complete Guide To Design Tokens(opens in new tab)

Design tokens are useful in lots of contexts, but they really shine in enterprise, when the company you work for has many different websites/webapps that all need to share the same brand identity. If you work for a larger company and have struggled with juggling multiple projects, it would be foolish for your employer not to pick up some licenses for the team. Especially with 45% off for Black Friday!

(If you don’t see the sale right away, check back later today. I’m sending this newsletter issue a couple hours before the sale actually starts.)

Link to this headingDeveloper To Leader

Developer To Leader(opens in new tab) is a bit of a different course from Ankita Kulkarni(opens in new tab). Rather than focus on technical topics like JavaScript or CSS, it’s a course on engineering leadership!

If you spend enough time working as a developer, you’ll eventually reach a fork in the road: either you start transitioning into engineering management or you continue down the technical path, becoming more of a tech lead or architect. Either way, you’ll need to learn an entirely new set of skills, things like how to give good feedback or how to set and manage expectations.

This stuff is deceptively hard, and there really aren’t that many resources out there that focus on it, so I’m glad to see that Ankita has made this course! It’s 40% off for Black Friday, and there are regional discounts as well. 😄

• Developer To Leader(opens in new tab)

(A bonus pick on this topic is Sarah Drasner’s book, Engineering Management For The Rest Of Us(opens in new tab). It’s not on sale for Black Friday, but the Kindle version is only $10!)

Link to this headingMotion+

Ok, this one isn’t a course, but it’s a super cool thing for front-end devs. 😄

Motion(opens in new tab) is a ridiculously powerful JavaScript/React/Vue animation library. We use it in both my React course and my upcoming Whimsical Animations course to tackle animations that are too complex/difficult to manage with CSS.

This library used to be called “Framer Motion”, back when it was owned by Framer (the prototyping/design software), but really, it’s always been the brainchild of Matt Perry(opens in new tab). Matt has been making animation libraries forever; he previously released a lovely library called Popmotion(opens in new tab), among others!

Motion is totally free to use, but since going independent, Matt has also introduced Motion+(opens in new tab), a premium option that grants you early access to upcoming features and a suite of advanced motion-based components.

For example, the Cursor component(opens in new tab) can be used to create iPad-style cursor-snapping effects:

Motion+ is available as a one-time payment (no subscription!), and for the next 2 days, you can save 25% using the coupon code BLACKFRIDAY25. You can learn more on the Motion+ website:

• Motion+(opens in new tab)

Link to this headingTesting JavaScript

Over the past few years, one of the most common questions I’ve gotten is around my automated testing philosophy. And, honestly, it’s just not something I’m terribly interested in 😅. I have a handful of e2e tests for my main course website, and that’s it.

That said, testing is very important in many different circumstances, and if you want to learn more about automated testing, there’s nobody better to teach you than Kent C Dodds(opens in new tab). He’s the creator of the widely-used testing-library(opens in new tab), and has been a proponent of automated testing for a long time.

Kent’s signature testing course, Testing JavaScript, is currently 50% off for Black Friday. The course is a few years old at this point, but as far as I know, nothing fundamental has changed in the testing world recently, especially when it comes to methodologies and high-level strategies. So I think it’s still a worthwhile investment.

• Testing JavaScript(opens in new tab)

Fun fact: Kent was one of the earliest people who encouraged me to get into teaching online. In fact, he helped connect me with the egghead(opens in new tab) folks, who supplied me with some of the recording gear I still use to this day!

Link to this headingInteractive SVG Animations

One of the most exciting course launches I’ve seen in recent years has been Nanda Syahrasyad(opens in new tab)’s Interactive SVG Animations. Unlike a typical video-based course, Nanda’s course is deeply interactive, with plenty of opportunities to poke and prod at things. 😄

The course has a brand-new website, and it’s currently 20% off for Black Friday!

• Interactive SVG Animations(opens in new tab)

This course covers some of the same ground as my upcoming Whimsical Animations(opens in new tab) course, but they’re still quite different from each other. Nanda’s course goes deeper into SVG, covering things like SMIL, whereas my course looks at a broader set of technologies; only 1/4 of my course is about SVG.

Link to this headingResponsive Web Design

Jess Chan, better known on YouTube as Coder Coder(opens in new tab), has been teaching front-end development and design topics for years. This year, she’s really going big for Black Friday: her responsive web design course is 75% off! 😳

Truthfully, I’m not that familiar with Jess’ work, but I’ve seen a few of her videos and they’re fantastic. And the format of her Responsive Web Design course is really interesting: starting from a Figma design, you’ll follow along as she implements the design, tackling the responsive challenges along the way. I think there’s a lot of value in seeing how an experienced developer tackles problems.

It’s definitely more of a beginner-focused course, intended for folks who understand the basics of HTML/CSS but who struggle to use that knowledge to solve real-world problems. If that sounds like you, I think this course could be very worthwhile! Especially with a 75% discount. 💸

• Responsive Web Design course(opens in new tab)

You know, I started writing this email yesterday, thinking it would be a quick collection of links I could bang out in half an hour. Turns out, I had more to say than I thought, and it took most of the afternoon. 😂

Like I mentioned at the top of this email, my courses are also on sale for Black Friday! Here are those links again:

• Joy for JavaScript Developers bundle(opens in new tab) is 50% off (US$998 US$498)
• CSS for JavaScript Developers(opens in new tab) is 40% off (US$399 US$239)
• The Joy of React(opens in new tab) is 42% off (US$599 US$349)

Hope you’re having a good week! And a happy belated Thanksgiving, to my American friends. ❤️