Learn WebRTC: How to Get Started on WebRTC Development [WebRTC Tutorial]

How do you learn WebRTC development? Is there an easy WebRTC Tutorial and what are the main techniques I suggest using?

So you’ve been learning WebRTC development for a while, did a WebRTC Tutorial or even not at all. You might have checked out a github demo or an app – running your own server (yay!). But now you’re feeling stuck, unable to become a serious WebRTC developer.

Lets see how we can get you up to speed on WebRTC.

Why WebRTC is different (and challenging)

WebRTC developers come in different shapes and sizes. They usually have one of two origin stories:

1. WebRTC developers were VoIP developers 10 years ago (that can mean anything from playing with the configuration of an Asterisk installation to write their own RTP stack)
2. They are web developers (which can easily be implementing WordPress sites on top of premium themes, but can just as well be building backends used by the SaaS giants of the world)

The challenge though is that WebRTC sits somewhere between these two very different disciplines that are VoIP and Web:

Me? I’ve got a VoIP developer origin story. I wrote my own static memory, no-recursion implementation of an ASN.1 PER encoder/decoder. Dealt with scaling linearly a UDP/TCP sockets implementation on different operating systems. Handled multi-threading in C code. Low level stuff that most developers today don’t even grok. While these are great starting points, they don’t really offer any way of making the transition to WebRTC.

This isn’t about WebRTC. It is about understanding the different mindsets and approaches of developing VoIP products and developing Internet web applications. And it requires being able to learn new techniques and new ways of thinking.

While I won’t take you through that journey here, I can help you formulate a plan. In this article, we’ll explore together four things you can start doing today to make the jump from VoIP or Web to an experienced WebRTC developer.

What Don’t You Know?

The first thing you need to get a handle on is what you need to learn. Some might think that all you need to know to be a WebRTC developer is HTML, CSS, and a bit of JavaScript. Take a github project that makes use of WebRTC, install and run it on your own. That’s your WebRTC tutorial and you’re ready! I’ve seen quite a few posts on LinkedIn by people who did just that (likely writing the posts with the help of ChatGPT while at it, considering the number of em dashes and emojis in them).

While that is certainly a good starting point, developing with WebRTC isn’t as easy as just learning a bit of JavaScript. Or Node.js for that matter.

To really call yourself a WebRTC developer, you’ll need to get a handle on a wide range of topics:

• WebRTC APIs: That’s quite an understandable requirement from a WebRTC developer 🙂
• Front-end development: HTML, CSS and JavaScript
• Backend development: Node.js or some other modern asynchronous development platform
• Networking: TCP, UDP, HTTP, WebSocket and anything in-between these concepts; oh… and things like bandwidth estimation as well
• Codecs and media processing: How codecs are designed and implemented, what are the algorithms and techniques used to send them over a network – using SRTP. Extra credit for understanding Simulcast and SVC
• Server side media processing: Knowing the different techniques that can be used to support group calling, live broadcasts, recording, etc.
• Troubleshooting and monitoring tools: to include, at a minimum, how to read webrtc-internals dump files and understand ICE failures (you might want to check out our rtcstats.com service)
• Common frameworks: know the popular frameworks that are out there and what they are good for. It doesn’t hurt to have some understanding of Janus, Jitsi, mediasoup and/or Pion for example

With these skills and knowledge base in hand, you’ll be able to create virtually any real time communications product. That might seem like a lot to learn, but I want to share some resources below that you can use to learn about each of these topics relatively quickly.

In addition, you don’t have to be an expert in every one of these topics, but as a WebRTC developer, you do need to have some basic familiarity with each and every one of these topics. I know I am not an expert in any of these…

👉 If this interests you, then also be sure to read my article on impressing WebRTC recruiters

Now that you know what you need to know, let’s look at the top four ways you can learn what you need to learn.

1️⃣ Learn by watching

First things first. Like many out there, you might be one of those who searches on YouTube when you want to learn something new (I know I am).

So before you start your path with WebRTC, watch this short video – it is a WebRTC tutorial for beginners:

There’s a lot more out there on YouTube to explore, but I think this one should give you the gist of it in the shortest possible time (and well… I created it 😉). Oh, and there’s always my YouTube channel to subscribe to for more WebRTC knowledge.

2️⃣ Learn WebRTC Development by Reading

Subscribing to WebRTC related blogs is one of the ways you can keep your development skills up-to-date.

One of the best things you can do to grow in your knowledge about any topic is to read and follow along with posts and tutorials written by other experts in the industry. WebRTC is no different in this regard.

There aren’t many WebRTC blogs out there, and they seem to be dwindling over time as well. There are a few-quality blogs to follow and others that publish less frequently or on a lot of other topics as well. I try subscribing to ALL of them, mainly because it is my job to know as much as I can about the WebRTC market AND because I curate the WebRTC Weekly. What I do follow closely and make sure I read and understand when it comes to hard core WebRTC development amounts to just three main blogs:

• WebRTC Weekly: Yap. I curate this newsletter. This one gives you the pulse of what’s happening with WebRTC, so following it can get you faster to the content that others are writing – especially those who don’t publish as much as I’d like them to
• WebRTC for Developers: Olivier Anguenot dives deep into WebRTC’s APIs and behavior, runs his own experiments and shares his conclusions. Worth following
• webrtcHacks: High quality content about WebRTC for developers. It is a lot less active in recent years, but many of the posts there stand the test of time well

Pick a few blogs that you want to follow and subscribe to them. You don’t have to read everything they publish, but make sure that on a regular basis you read technical articles that stretch and challenge your developer muscles. That’s my approach here and I don’t consider myself a developer anymore. You probably take the next step as well and open a code editor and try the code snippets that the articles you read publish.

3️⃣ Learn WebRTC by Studying

Reading about WebRTC is ongoing maintenance that you must do to keep up-to-date – especially because WebRTC changes over time and to some extent, there are new techniques and understandings that we’re gaining in the industry. To really develop new skills quickly some formal education is in order.

There are a couple of WebRTC Tutorials and online courses out there that you can find. Those that I’ve seen focus on the WebRTC APIs piece which is great to start with WebRTC or they focus on doing a single task with a specific third party framework. The challenge though is that the use cases and scenarios you are going to deal with when it comes to WebRTC can be very different from the narrow lens these courses have to offer.

I’d also refrain from enrolling in WebRTC courses that haven’t been updated in the past 2 years. Things change fast in WebRTC.

The courses I can recommend are my own. Take that with a grain of salt, as I can be considered prejudiced here (obviously). To be sure they are for you, there are two free courses you can take and get a feel to how I teach:

• WebRTC Basics: Gives you a general understanding of WebRTC
• WebRTC the Missing Codelab: This is the codelab that you all wanted to have for WebRTC but had nowhere to go. It includes code, examples, lessons and most importantly – explanations. If you plan on being a WebRTC developer and want to understand the APIs – this is the best place to begin your journey

Then there are my paid courses, which come highly recommended (and not only by me) – you can check the reviews on Trustpilot.

In general, there are two tracks here:

1. Developer track, which spans multiple courses covering many aspects of WebRTC. This is the most comprehensive and up to date set of courses on WebRTC available out there anywhere
2. Supporting WebRTC: For those who are on a supporting role and need to be able to understand WebRTC to some degree, then this training course is the best

Other than WebRTC, make sure to look at other courses as well – things around fullstack web development or Node.js development courses. Make sure they’re up to date if you take them (any WebRTC Tutorial that is 2 years back is old in WebRTC terms).

How about books?

I have a nagging feeling that goes with me for a few months now.

There hasn’t been any new book published about learning WebRTC development in almost a year.

Moreover, in total, there are less than 50 books in total about WebRTC (you can check Amazon…).

Two books I’d highly recommend:

1. Make sure you read High Performance Browser Networking if you are doing anything with web browsers (and especially if you are planning on using WebRTC and cobble up your own signaling). This book is old – but aged really well. There’s a WebRTC chapter there as well, but read it mostly for the rest of the book
2. There’s the online WebRTC for the Curious which was created by Sean DuBois. I find it highly detailed, which is great if you already know your way around WebRTC and need to close a specific technical gap

4️⃣ Learning by Doing – WebRTC Tutorial

Reading about WebRTC development will keep you sharp. Studying WebRTC development will help you develop new skills and give you a solid understanding of the technology. But to really grow as a developer you’ve got to find opportunities to put all of that education to good use and undergo a WebRTC Tutorial.

I can think of four different ways you can put your education to good use:

1. Build out personal projects – a blog, a personal portfolio, a hobby site. Create personal projects that really stretch your understanding that you’ll have to figure out as you go. I guess Muaz Khan did this best years back. Today you’ll mostly see it from vendors who share their experiences in specific areas they innovated on
2. Build products for paying clients – You wouldn’t believe how many vendors are out there looking for capable hands when it comes to WebRTC development. If you have the knowledge, then the next step is to gain the experience
3. Write about the new skills you’re learning and publish them on your own blog or better yet – submit it to webrtcHacks. There’s nothing that will ensure you really understand a topic like writing a tutorial about it. Just please, don’t ChatGPT about your obvious P2P use case on LinkedIn as if you built something groundbreaking
4. Become a WebRTC professional – Once you have the requisite knowledge and a bit of experience, you might want to join a WebRTC outsourcing company that is actively building products with WebRTC. This will get you in front of multiple projects with others in the team who should have experience you can learn from

What will you do tomorrow?

There’s a paradox in our industry.

For one, WebRTC is stupidly simple (if you compare it to doing the same things before WebRTC). But at the same time, there aren’t a lot of experienced developers out there that know how to use it.

Talk to employers who are looking for WebRTC skills and you’ll see how hard it is to come by – most end up with using internal resources they grow into WebRTC developers – sometimes after a really bad experience with an external outsourcing vendor that knows how to build websites or mobile apps, but know nothing about WebRTC.

If you’re ready to move past copy+paste implementations from github of Hello World WebRTC concepts and become a real WebRTC developer. However, if you’re ready to move past implementation or hobby WebRTC Tutorial and become a real WebRTC developer all you need is a plan and the self-discipline to stick to it.Your plan should include three core learning activities: reading, studying, and doing. Work on those three activities on a consistent basis and it won’t be long before you’ve left the hobby behind and grown into a WebRTC professional developer.

FAQ about learning WebRTC development & WebRTC Tutorials