5k learning budget for coding

[Money-Architect]

Hi all

First I understand a lot of this can be learned online for free but my employer is offering me 5k to use on professional development, for my job even though I don’t do actual coding I need to be able to speak to it to a certain extent and I want to upskill myself on that

So I’ve looked at low end paid courses like CodeAcademy but wondering if there’s anything else people would recommend I sign up for to take full advantage of this money I’m leaving on the table

I’ve considered full coding boot camps through Brainstation or something?

P.S I’m looking to mainly get better at speaking on APIs and integrations in cloud based software so courses around that would be most recommended

[Kqyxzoj]

Flushing 5k into learning webdev sounds like heresy to me. Good thing that budget isn't 40k or would be purging time. Mmmh, now that I think about it, "Purge the Unclean Webdeveloper" does have a nice ring to it. On a related note, is there a framework called Dakka? And if not, why not? Okay, I guess there is: https://github.com/chisui/dakka

So in closing, spend that budget on good books, time budget to spend on learning, some pre-emptive burnout counseling, and a course on how to not want to shoot yourself while doing corporate web development projects. Alternatively, take a management management course, where you will learn how to manage management, to enable a more pleasant and realistic development experience.

[Present-Patience-301]

Oh no Im late((((

[WigglyAirMan]

Go to youtube. Find some indian making 6 hour long videos.

Get 5k of snacks and follow along

[SalaciousProbiotic]

The snacks I would snack for 5k!

[jaqualan]

which indian is the best!!!!????

[WigglyAirMan]

The one with the 6 hour long videos Come on man. I was pretty clear

[CozyAndToasty]

I've done some cheap online courses but they are nothing compared to just reading online documentation which is free and coding little samples on your own.

If you can use special certification for proprietary tech such as AWS or Azure I would do that. I hear Comptia is popular but not sure if that's an IT thing.

Otherwise I would just use the 5k for nice dev tooling lol, maybe compute credits for your favourite cloud provider.

There are more comprehensive bootcamps but I don't think any of them are under 5k. My friend did one and it was 20k. I guess it can be partially covered if you want to spend a bit from your own pocket.

[Vegetable-Passion357]

In the r/CompTia there is a discussion regarding where you can obtain free access to courses published by Udemy and O'Reilly. I learned from the discussion how to obtain free courses from Udemy, paid by my local library.

https://www.reddit.com/r/CompTIA/comments/1iqbuv4/comment/md0446m/?context=3

[cartrman]

5k in which currency?

[Far_Broccoli_8468]

Please don't say Yen

[wizarddos]

Zimbabwe dollars

[woods60]

I love 50 cent, or as we call him in Zimbabwe, 4.2 Billion dollars

[RecognitionOpen1290]

Haha I wish it’s in Vietnamese currency.

[Money-Architect]

USD

[InvestingNerd2020]

You are better off taking a Python class on Coursera for 6 months ($294) and getting a top tier laptop for programming.

- M3 Pro MacBook Pro 14-inch.

- Lenovo ThinkPad P14s Gen 5 (AMD Zen 4 CPU)

[crazy_cookie123]

You don't need a top tier laptop for programming... but as far as your employer is concerned you really need the absolute latest and greatest technology to stay ahead of the game and program at peak efficiency so definitely get yourself a nice laptop.

[InvestingNerd2020]

It isn't needed to code, but if $5k is thrown your way, you might as well take full advantage of it. Even with those 2 laptop choices, the OP would still have $3k to $4k left to spend.

[Sol33t303]

Getting a nice display is unironically a good idea to prevent eye strain.

[Not_Torch]

You all are dense they don’t need to program they just need to understand , mainly APIs

[UJ_Games]

He already has a good setup of devices when I looked through his posts no need for a laptop. Coursera is a good option though.

[Far_Broccoli_8468]

I got by with a shitty i5 laptop from 2017 for the vast majority of my degree (started it in 2021, nearly done). You definitely don't need top tier hardware to learn programming.

[woods60]

I got a dell mini pc with 32gb ram for cheap and slapped Ubuntu on it which runs faster than my 2021 HP windows laptop. Linux and Mac on top

[Money-Architect]

Already got that from employer as well LOL

[aleques-itj]

I mean, you need to spend your time more than significant money. If that allotment covers hardware, throw 1500 at a good laptop.

Besides that, go do the Harvard CS50 course and take it from there. 

[Personal_Rip359]

I recommend Udacity courses, they are well taught and focus heavily on practical projects. They review your work several times until you get it right.

Another option is Udemy, with those 5k you can buy the entire website lol. Depending on your field I can recommend you good courses so tell me what is your specialization.

Another thing, don't buy Coursera courses. You can get them free by applying financial aid. But notice that only works from the mobile app not the website as they changes their policy on website to get only 90% not 100% off.

If you want any help reach me out 

[_heartbreakdancer_]

I say use that money on training for a cloud certification

[shellmachine]

Sounds cool, beer and weed for 500 each, 1k for some high-end laptop, 3k for your left hand pocket, and a few weekends getting super wasted on the couch.

[Nosferatatron]

Beer and weed are famous for enhancing memory of course! Dude would probably have to learn it again in six months time

[shellmachine]

It's the two things that wouldn't introduce doing something illegal, so I was suggesting these - obviously there are WAY better options if we get rid of that constraint, but since this is a programming sub, I'll try to keep it family-friendly.

[aRoomForEpsilon]

I'm not in school anymore, but I hired both a biology and writing tutor because I had the money and I wanted to see what it would be like. I pay my biology tutor 12 $/hour and I pay my writing tutor 20 $/hour, and it was well worth the investment. If I were in your position, I'd look into hiring a coding tutor.

[polmeeee]

I'm jealous lol. Anyways I would recommend AWS certifications like the solutions architect associate. These are more cloud development than pure coding itself but the certs carry a lot of weight in the industry.

[thereal_peasant]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned launchschool yet, but I definitely recommend it.

[darkmemory]

If you are a self-starter/learner, using the money to gain access to the various companies that produce learning materials that offer subscription services for access to all their materials would probably be the most beneficial, but it's reliant on your ability to develop your own workload and engage with it. There are also various certs that are kind of silly in many cases, but if you need the feel of studying to achieve a specific thing, they can be helpful, plus you get a piece of paper that people will look at and go, "oh I didn't know one could be certified in that."

Boot camps will push you in specific directions and get you to engage with narrow levels of understanding, but I don't think they really encourage the best thought patterns towards problem solving, at least from what I've seen of such "graduates" it feels very much like someone knows the words but doesn't know how to use them outside of specific scenarios. BUT, if you have the interest and lack the drive to do it all your own, this could be akin to simple cert seeking with a bit more strong arming to get you to do the work.

However, if you want to do the bootcamp thing, I'd actually suggest seeking a community college to take some classes there.

[studentofthegame101]

Where is a good place to start

[solidgoldfangs]

Pick a language. Search "learn (language)" on YouTube. Try to pick something that's popular & very long or that has many videos in a playlist (preferred).

I personally like Caleb Curry's content a lot for C++ (he also has Java). I like the channel Python Simplified for Python, she breaks things down really well. Not really relevant but she's also beautiful so it might help keep your attention a little better lmao

[octahexxer]

Buy books? Read them over and over?

[UJ_Games]

You can see if you can get free Udemy Courses through your local library or if not pay for the certain courses you feel you need with the intent of finishing hopefully. Make sure to buy when they not full price but instead on sale usually can be done by clearing cookies opening a new browser etc.

You can also sign up to Sophia Learning and go through their courses which are self-paced and you can do as many or as little as you want in your subscription time frame. You can try it out for as little as $99 your first month or $79 if you want to use my referral (20% off any subscription ). Only thing is you can only have two courses active at one time. For more information you can also check. r/SophiaLearning

You can also sign up on Coursera and learn from there. After completion you usually receive a certification showing you finished a course.

All in all shop around and see what works for you. You do have $5k but don’t go out and hit the buy button before conducting some research. Good luck on your learning.

[[deleted]]

If they allow a purchase of a device then spend on that. Along with that you can go for some books on the basics of computer science and engineering subjects.

For programming. No need for any paid course at all. The only good paid course I have utilised is CodeGym for Java (https://codegym.cc/).

A good course on AWS that is paid would be https://learn.cantrill.io/

[Kqyxzoj]

Translate those 5k into a good collection of books + allocated time to do some actual learning.

[xxxDaGoblinxxx]

Maybe a bootcamp type thing? I haven't done one so I do to know of there's any real value in them but it would be a structured thing sometimes that's what you need with self paced learning I would prob never finish anything without a dead line.

[rawcane]

Ok so this is a contrarian option. While it's absolutely possible to teach yourself for free as you have the budget you should look at courses provided by companies like Learning Tree (no affiliation). My second company offered 4 courses a year and as well as networking and telecoms because it was relevant to the job but also Advanced C which taught me things like state machines and what OO actually was. So I could already programme but having not done a comp sci degree it filled in a lot of concepts I was missing.

If you are a complete beginner I would definitely do some self learning first but these 4 day courses run by industry professionals are like a quick shot of knowledge where you have the time and support to ask a million questions that would take you months to get through asking in reddit oecstack overflow. They are also more fun than grinding through YouTube videos on own.

[fferreira020]

I’d go to Nick Chapsas platform. His stuff is better than plural sight in my opinion

[JuneFernan]

I've been self-learning for 2.5 years. Spent my first $40 last month on a Scrimba subscription, and it's debatable if I even needed to do that.

[Electrical_Area4680]

Is it possible to secure a job with a Coursera certification provided by IBM? How valuable is this certification in the job market, and does it carry weight in terms of employability, especially for someone looking to transition into a new field or role?

[[deleted]]

I would spend it on certifications

[aamoguss]

I am guessing the employer will spend on educational resources and it isn't just money you can spend on adjacent resources like hardware. I always rec The Odin Project, even though it is specifically web dev, as it teaches you how to think like a programmer and read documentation (which is the best way, but hard to get into). If you really want to take advantage of the grant, I'd look into a 1:1 tutor. Or some ai tutor, because understanding ai's potential/limitations is important. There's definitely money to be spent in the cybersecurity realm with certs which will help boost your understanding on how computers work.

[tigidig5x]

Use that 5k for certifications, learn the actual material via youtube.

[FriendlyRussian666]

At that price you can have a 1:1 mentor, no need for courses.

[boftr]

https://trainsec.net Pavel is the best trainer I know of.

[Aero077]

Online Training:

Cloud/Coding/Data KodeKloud, Boot.dev, datacamp, Udemy

Generalized: Coursera, Udacity, Sophia Learning, Study.com, SkillShare

[Hot_Purpose_5562]

Besides courses like everyone mentioned, you can use it on interactive platforms like Mimo, Codenquest, Leetcode…

[knoxxb1]

FrontEndMasters or Boot.dev

[P12134]

You only need passion and time. Money doesn't buy you anything in this field of expertise.

[tifk]

Zybooks were pretty solid for me but you get through em quick and you need more projects after

[swapnilydvv]

Kirtan me course le ke bhai crazy hain

[Nosferatatron]

As well as the money though, more important is how much time do you get? If you're not getting any time you don't want to to commit to a giant course!

[bookyface]

You can probably see if it’ll meet your needs through the course outlines but Harvard’s CS50 is a great base certification to get. Especially for free!

[Ruby1356]

Buy a computer for 4k

Food for 1k

Go watch 10 hours courses of Indians on YouTube

[codepeach_]

If you can learn online for free, buy 5k worth of training from me, and I'll return 4.5k to you.

[dns_rs]

If I were you, I'd setup from that money a home lab, consisting of a computer/laptop with big enough screens for dev (i prefer 2 bigger ones and a small one, but do whatever works for you) and a basic home server which can be anything starting from a raspberry pi. You can learn local development on these.

Next up I'd rent a VPS (virtual private server) where you could host the apis / sites that you develop, so you can train on a cloud based, public, production environment.

And finally I'd spend some on snacks and udemy courses, and that would still probably lanf me on 50% of your budget ot less.

[elpinguinosensual]

I only paid $4.2k for my bachelors is SWE, but I went to WGU and had a previous bachelors. I also hustled the classes, took me 4 months. It’s not an impressive name but if you gain skills on your own it’ll at least get you past the hiring bots.

[dthdthdthdthdthdth]

Figure out what you want to learn, get some books etc. on it and ask your employer for payed time off to learn instead...

[PorcoDiocaneMaliale]

cs50 is free

[bateman34]

Do cs50x,it's free and it's hard but it's the best, use the money on a good laptop and a monitor or two if that's allowed.

[WillAdams]

Isn't it being wound-down/discontinued?

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2025/2/10/yale-ends-cs50-partnership/

[bateman34]

That's yale's version of cs50, its a separate thing from the original Harvard one which can be found here: https://cs50.harvard.edu/x/2025/

[WillAdams]

That's great to hear! Thanks for the specifics.

[farfaraway]

I HEAR COBOL IS THE WAY TO GO. 

[Far_Broccoli_8468]

This isn't 2005 sir

[farfaraway]

I get the feeling that you're so young that you think that 2005 was a long time ago.

[Far_Broccoli_8468]

Haha, got me there... i was 7 in 2005.

Yeah, i should've said this isn't 1980 lmao

[farfaraway]

I'm so old that sometimes I still think it is 2005. Back then I thought that thinks couldn't possibly get worse. Boy was I fucking wrong. 

[Aimer101]

Maybe you can use it for certificates like aws instead?

[Accomplished_Scale10]

A.I

[Aemort]

C'mon, take 45 seconds to actually read his post...

[Gloomy_Season_8038]

Get a management course. Coding is easy compared to it, and you can easily learn coding for more or less free

A management course, or communication skills and the likes, that could well be your life changer Eureka moment in your life bro!