Learn You Code

An in-progress guide for those learning to code

Big Overwhelming List of Coding Resources

This is my master-list of coding resources… out of order and all in one place.

The purpose of this is to point you in the right direction when you’re thinking, “I have too much free time. I wonder if there is something I could be looking at that’s programming-related.”

General Online Learning Resources

  • Codacademy - This is probably where you should start if you are completely new to programming and aren’t ready to spend money on learning this stuff yet. Unfortunately, I’m not huge fan of the interface and I think their instructions are often confusing to beginners.

  • CodeSchool - Very polished tutorials with videos and coding exercises. It costs, but they have a free trial, and it might be worth subscribing for a month or two if you have the time to spend going through their exercises. I’d recommend trying this after you get the basics down using Codecademy. CodeSchool does a better job of spoon-feeding you some of the more advanced concepts.

  • TeamTreehouse - Their videos are extremely easy to follow and when you’re starting out. I’m not a huge fan of their multiple choice questions, but their videos are top notch, and they have a feature that lets you try out what you’re learning on a virtual machine that has everything you need to code along. This is fairly expensive, but they offer a 30-day trial and I’d recommend giving it a try.

In-Person Instruction

  • Bootcamper - An extremely thorough list of all the intensive coding bootcamps. They are all generally somewhat pricey and the best ones are difficult to get into (I tried to get into both Hack Reactor and HackerSchool multiple times and was not accepted). That said, if you can make it happen, any of these will probably accelerate your learning tremendously. However, if you’re patient and persistent, you can definitely become a professional programmer without attending a single class.

  • General Assembly - An excellent source of in-person instruction in NYC. For me, they hit the sweet spot between excellent serious instruction and time-commitment and cost. I haven’t taken any of their courses, but I’ve heard good things from people who hire programmers.

Sites Like This (getting meta in here)

  • Metis pre-work - Metis is an intensive Ruby on Rails bootcamp from thoughbot, which is a well-regarded Rails consultancy. Although, this is the pre-work for entering the course, anyone just starting out in web development could benefit from it.

  • Flatiron School pre-work - Flatiron School is a well-regarded Ruby on Rails bootcamp in NYC, and their pre-work is also a good resource for beginners.

Programming Culture

Twitter

Part of being a programmer is understanding the culture. Others have already made lists of people to follow on Twitter, and I’ve made my own list of podcasts to checkout, so I’ll just link to some of those here.

Podcasts

Videos

  • dev culture - A playlist I made of some videos about programming. They are mostly about philosophy and sometimes have more to do with being familiar with some of the most interesting (to me) personalities in the world of programming and software.
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