Trying out coding
with little or no no cost.
Not everyone likes coding.
Self learning is a very different thing, you no longer have peers, students, friends to compare or discussed with, internet becoming your only friend and Google and Youtube tutorials becoming your best source of information.
Without people to connect around, you now have to figure out things and get stuck, this is where I find online resources to be useful, a lot of the websites have forum where people engage and talk to each other, there are solutions that you don’t understand or never thought of, algorithms that you heard of but never thought can be applied in certain ways.
But before really entering the programming world, why not just try it first.
Codecademy is where I started to learn coding. I wanted to try and take a look at what people are talking about, I have no knowledge of what coding is and what it does.
Codecademy is full of code along, you can choose which language you would like to try and there will be step by step instructions and to do list, also mini-projects to test your knowledge after you finish a section.
If your’e really interested in more advance topics, they do have a Pro version where you will be able to learn and explore more on specific projects and also open to a lot more different programming languages with different career paths such as these. (Beginner Friendly!)
- Full-Stack Engineer
- Data Scientists
- Front-end Engineer
FreeCodeCamp is where I stumbled upon. There are so many different categories that you will be able to learn with long hours and video reviews.
There are no ads from freeCodeCamp and they are also non-profit, amazing staff and people in the community always update each others knowledge and the classes you can take become more and more.
Free code camp has over six thousands of tutorials, from the basic exploring of a certain programming language, to specific skill set that might be able to apply to your current project.
I was interested in JavaScript and was into one of their 300 hours certification. But most importantly and useful to me is actually their Youtube Channel, they have videos where they combine the entire lecture go-through in ONE single video, that’s hours of hours of work and knowledge combined and refactored into one long video.
Things that really helped while I was learning Ruby.
Since youtube have time stamps now on videos, you can directly jump into the part that you don’t understand and see the instructor uses examples and explain how to use them which I find extremely helpful.
Also the idea of data base and how them join together was really hard until seeing the idea of pictures and examples usage.
Also, if you are a code along person like me, under their main website you can also search for beginner friendly lessons. All of these lesson have a mini-project where you will be using everything you learnt from the previous lesson and try to use them.
They also said that these certifications are something you can write on your resume you cant think of them as milestones that you achieved.
NOTE: the 300 hours is the approximate time of the lecture, imagine if you code ten hours a day, five days a week, you should learn certain topic under 2 months. However, coding isn’t like that, there will be times you will be stuck on certain things for hours or unable to understand certain topic.
Coursera is where I started self learning online. There was this article about Google giving out their own education about IT/support, product manager and also UX/UI design, and Google will consider these certifications as a 4-year college degree.
Initially I started learning with there IT program, from setting up certain items, knowing how a computer works and basic remote access. However, I soon found out that even though the certification and knowledge sounds very great to my current situation. The knowledge is useful however, I don’t see myself working as a IT support or Dev ops.
There are a lot of free courses on Coursera or certain requires $50 a month, so you can be actually paying depend on your learning speed. There are also courses directly from college that collaborate with this website where credits you earned through these classes can be applied towards your Bachelor degree.
Udemy
I was using Udemy for online lesson about music programs with Ableton, there are a lot of free ones where they explain certain functions and how to use them. This website provides all kinds of classes with a very low-cost, which allows you to try maybe certain part of area without going “all-in” at certain places.
Those courses what tell you exactly what you will get with student examples and knowledge enough to build certain projects.
Learning to code requires focus, there are so many programs and languages and extensions that can help you at work. However, sometimes it’s better to focus on certain task in front of you instead of diving into another area.
There will be times you are introduced with something new, while it is great to understand the concept or how it works, sometimes you can just see it as a program that simplifies things for you and just learn the commands.
Lastly, coding takes Grit.
“Grit is passion and perseverance for long-term and meaningful goals. It is the ability to persist in something you feel passionate about and persevere when you face obstacles. This kind of passion is not about intense emotions or infatuation.”
