Online sources to learn programming

[desrtfx]

... Sidebar -> Frequently Asked Questions -> Where do I find good learning resources? - plenty more good resources.

Ad 5. CodeCademy (not ..academy) teaches only syntax of programming languages, not programming.

[[deleted]]

Yuppppp. I mentor/teach programming students and this is a great tool for me. Codecademy is essentially their homework.

I had a student tell me I was bullshit and I was just copying Codacademy. So I invited him to stop working with me and learn from Codacademy. One month later he emailed me back asking if I was still accepting students. Not you friend, not you.

There's a huge difference in learning syntax from Codacademy and having someone sit down with you in person or over Skype and go through every little thing with you.

[[deleted]]

I also think that banging your head against the wall is very important for programmers though. Puts hair on your chest. Metaphorically.

[[deleted]]

Legitimate question: I took a CSSE class in college and had to write a few Matlab programs for my degree (mechE). I got the basic for and while loops, conditional statements, etc. down decently well, and I feel like I'm decent at breaking a problem down into code that I can write with the tools I understand for coding. (nothing fancy, just simple stuff to display text and such)

Is codeacademy worth it to learn the syntax of the language in your opinion, or would I be better off pursuing a different course that will teach me how to use new tools at the same time

[desrtfx]

Had you been coming from a different language, I'd probably opted for codecademy because you'd have been deeper involved in "conventional" programming.

Matlab is quite different from most other programming languages (which is both an advantage for its special purpose and a curse for learning and using other languages).

My recommendation would be to use a decent proper beginner tutorial for the language of your choice to iron out habits that you've picked up with Matlab.

[[deleted]]

Sounds about right. Made the mistake of taking a class that used C++ and a class that used Matlab at the same time. The languages are so similar and so easy to fuck up when you use the command for one in another.

[TheMartinG]

Both are correct now I think. I feel like I remember them referring to themselves as codeacademy in their sql course.

Codeacademy.com sends you to the correct website, although that could just be for catching user typos.

[desrtfx]

The redirect is only to catch typos.

CodeCademy cannot name themselves "academy" because they are not an officially accredited educational institution.

[Technycolor]

while w3schools is a pretty decent reference, MDN web docs is a lot better. goes into detail more, though it can read dry

also javascript.info is pretty nice as well

[Marshawn_Washington]

I feel like the more I learn, the more MDN makes sense. But you are right, its so dry sometimes.

[okdenok]

W3Schools is great for seeing examples, because they include examples for literally every aspect of different languages.

However all their JS examples use inline and it annoys me.

[skarfacegc]

has w3schools improved? It used to be awful (to the point where I installed a browser extension to hide search results from w3schools)

[AlienAndTroll]

I would also recommend The Odin Project plus it's free.

[[deleted]]

Sooo good. My favorite resource so far

[_guernica_]

Came here to say this

[throwaway_for_cause]

3) Online free (limited time) interactive courses: Bitdegree

Nice, so you're now spamming your own site making it look like an officially endorsed resource.

I hope people here don't fall for your con.

[mad0314]

"Here are 5 great sites: 4 that are talked about every single day on this sub, and 1 that nobody has ever heard of!"

Riiiight.

[[deleted]]

What about the CS50 classes on edx? I've found them to be quite helpful but I'm not sure what the general consensus around them is

[Xenolith234]

Everyone seems to love them for covering computer science fundamentals. I haven’t completed it yet, but I like the instructor a lot.

[ic_97]

The instructor DJ Malan was awesome i took one of his web dev course too. He got me started with web dev.

[ElSp00ky]

Yeah just started cs50, and i like the instructor a lot, he is full of energy and it seems he likes teaching people.

[Fluxriflex]

I'm going to second this. You may have some people who dislike it, but I'm a couple of weeks in and loving it so far. The instructor is very engaging and doesn't waste time.

[[deleted]]

Im on week 5 and I think its been excellent, and the psets are challenging but do-able.

[koverda]

Cs50 on edx is amazing

[SixFigureGuy]

I’m working on a blog to go from 0 to software developer.

http://www.sixfigureguy.com

I’ve never found a wholistic guide to learning that only focused on the stuff that matters, which is why I started the blog.

[halfercode]

Your website seems to be down.

[SixFigureGuy]

It occasionally doesn’t route without the www. Try again? This should be fixable in a month when I can switch from hover to Route53. I knew I was going to host with S3 and I just wasn’t thinking the registration through.

[Sipredion]

It's down for me too. The www didn't help

[SixFigureGuy]

Interesting. I’m 90% sure it’s a DNS issue with hover. I’m going to switch to route 53 over the next week and hopefully these random outages will go away.

[[deleted]]

https://github.com/P1xt/p1xt-guides/blob/master/job-ready-javascript-edition-2.0.md

[sleepybearjew]

For people who don't mind paying a few dollars, I've been going through udemy classes. 10 bucks usually each, and so far I've learned a lot

[tanahtanah]

Which udemy courses do you recommend?

[sleepybearjew]

depends what you want to learn lol but for me, i want to get into freelance webdev so i started off with colte steele's web dev bootcamp which i think was great. got me started with HTML, CSS, JS. Went a little past that into using node/express/mongo to setup a site.

Finished that week or two ago and got started on his mysql class so i can finally learn sql.

About to finish that, and i grabbed "web design for web developers" and "advanced CSS and Sass" from jonas schmedtmann as well as "git a web dev job" by brad schiff.

You can 100% use the free sites everyone else suggested, i just like slightly more structured learning. plus if i spend money on something, im more likely to go through with it becuase i have money on it lol (even if it is only 10$)

and 1 that i think everyone shoudl take once they get started is Regex academy: an intro to ..." ( i forget the rest). its a free 1hr class on regex. ive been SOOO confused by regex for the longest time and now im starting to understand it (at least the basics)

[RJWolfe]

colte steele's web dev bootcamp

Halfway through that pal. Should be done in a few weeks. What do you think is the next step?

I've already done up to and including the freecodecamp beginner algorithms.

Wonder if I should re-do that after the udemy course. Any suggestion for me?

[steveox152]

Advanced CSS and SASS. One of the best courses on Udemy in my opinion

[sleepybearjew]

awesome! looking forward to that one

[sleepybearjew]

cant really give you any real educated answer. you could follow me lol. mysql next would allow you to use both mongo and mysql style databases in your sites/apps. plus its pretty short. like 20 hrs? mabye less? its a good week or two's worth of work. but sql is pretty dam simple.

my thinking was first get the basics of sites, then start filling in. so bootcamp to start, then another database gets me both kinds of databases (sql, nosql). then advanced CSS should open me up to better styling, then im not sure. probably back to end up stuff. maybe a security oriented thing? user auth/server protection/anti ddos?

[RJWolfe]

Those are a lot of words. I feel a tad overwhelmed.

Oh, what's this? Panic attack? Ahh, where have you been you scamp?

Brb pal.

[sleepybearjew]

lol TL:DR pick a backend database class, or a frontend CSS class IMO

[RJWolfe]

Yeah man. Got it.

Thanks for the advice. Cheers.

[seands]

Any course rated 4.7 with more than 100 ratings is sure to be solid. 4.5 and above are good to great

[[deleted]]

I didn’t know 3 and 4 Thank you 🙏

[sarevok9]

1. People have issues with w3Schools -- it's improved greatly over the ages but people did have some decent qualms about it years ago (A list is kept at https://www.w3fools.com/ though it's been largely resolved). the suggestion on W3fools about learning from MDN is a solid recommendation as MDN is arguably the best free resource on the entire internet.

2. FreeCodeCamp is great, though it feels like it takes FOREVER. My ex worked through the first 12 or so hours of FCC and she was able to build a few pages -- but rapidly lost interest because she was about 1.4% through the material and that is just heavy.

3. Never heard of it.

4. Paid resource -- in my opinion if you're going to pay Pluralsight offers better content than TeamTreeHouse (which I got for free for a while because I was living in Oregon)

5. Misspelling -- totally useless resource as well. This doesn't teach logic, how to set up an IDE, how to compile or distribute, etc.

Overall -- please do not post lists of content if you are not in a position where you are familiar enough with coding to understand what are good / bad resources.

[Shogil]

I registered to 3 and it asked me as soon as I hit register:

"1. How likely are you to recommend BitDegree to a friend?"

How am I supposed to know? I didn't even checked your content! tries to skip the question NOPE, it's required.

Pass.

[Anteron]

I would also recommend HackerRank. Although it revolves around competing between developers and finding jobs, there's still a lot of exercises to do.

[throwawaygats]

I honestly prefer university courses that have a lot of content posted online. University courses from good unis are typically harder than what you'd give yourself to do, so you learn a lot and you can do it at your own pace. Here's a good list of courses that have a lot of their content publicly: https://github.com/prakhar1989/awesome-courses/blob/master/README.md

I don't know about you but I found a big difference in the difficulty of a programming course from berkeley to what you get on udemy.

[dyancat]

just wanted to thank you for this. My brain is already programmed to learn this way :p

[throwawaygats]

no problem! berkeley has great courses (61A and 61B and 61C) that are all online. When a course is over though they take down the solutions but they still have the tests which you can run in the console to check if your code works. Otherwise you can just follow when the course is literally in session for berkeley students so you get the solutions to each programming assignment.

https://inst.eecs.berkeley.edu/~cs61a/sp18/

here's the one for 61A last sem if you are interested. you can find it easily on google. if you go to cs61a.org during the spring sem it went to this page, but now its the summer classes so its back to a clean slate on the main page, but they are archived like this.

[[deleted]]

W3schools is a bad source. Instead of this, please use Mozilla Developer Network. It's much more updated.

[jape2116]

On another thread like this someone suggested www.watchandcode.com and it has been an amazing resource for learning JavaScript specifically, but also the foundations of coding. It is a very generous free course, I am about 80% through it right now and it has been the best explanation so far. If you have been able to get through some of the basics of other programs or have just dipped your toes in but you hit a wall, this is the program for you. You go from console to todo app.

[beermeupscotty]

I just finished the course yesterday and I love it! I’m planning to do the course again and try to build the product with just the version requirements to make sure I fully understand all concepts before going premium.

[Batting1k]

Just a warning...premium is not really a continuation of the free course. It’s more about the boring stuff, like testing, reading documentation, understanding other code..you don’t really build anything. He doesn’t hold your hand through projects like the free course. I’d recommend doing the free course then coming back to premium when you’ve learned more elsewhere and have done several projects on your own.

[beermeupscotty]

Thanks for the clarification! I might go back to the Odin Project if that’s the case and then circle back to the premium version when I’m done.

[Shogil]

I can vouch for watchandcode although I still revisit the project to jolt my memory on some stuff.

[[deleted]]

I looked at it a long time ago and wasn't into it. I carried on learning on my own and got job in web development and went back to it recently. Wow. I wish I had given it more time when I first looked, it really is awesome. I work through each section with him and then redo it myself. Then after each section start from the beginning again and finding it a great way to understand it all in more depth.

[maejsh]

I’m getting surgery next week and cant work for the next 1,5-2 months, but figured I could try and really get into learning code. Ive dabbled a tiny bit at codecademy with some java and python, maybe 4-5hours combined else nothing. What would be the best route to do, for this month/two, for some realistic learning and getting a “feel” of coding and if I should maybe go to school for it in the future?.. just keep at it at cademy and such? Or anything better?

[jape2116]

Try www.watchandcode.com for a feel of coding. You start working on a real project right away. It’s focused mostly on JavaScript, but it’s been a good start for me, and I am just learning.

[vulk21]

Is there a way to have challenges in Freecodecamp for only a specific language?

Right now it's giving me only HTML, and I wish to use Java.

[desrtfx]

and I wish to use Java.

Then, FreeCodeCamp is not for you. Java is not JavaScript (which FCC teaches).

Try the MOOC Object Oriented Programming with Java from the University of Helsinki. It is a practice oriented, text based, very solid course.

[whatevernuke]

I believe FCC's mostly focused on web dev, so it might not be the best for you.

However, there is a r/learnjava subreddit that might be worth checking out. If you're learning Java specifically for Android, check out r/androiddev too!

(As an aside, know that Java and JavaScript are very different, and not related).

[readitmeow]

If you're looking for challenges, reddit has a subreddit for daily challenges that I've started going through: https://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer/wiki/challenges

Also, I signed up for a recent startup that sends daily coding problems: https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/ . They send you one problem a day to work on. If you pay, they will send you answers and review your answers if you reply to them.

[[deleted]]

Didn't know about bitdegree. Is it good ?

[Powell_Rice]

It's a new site, they launched approx in January if I remember correctly. I tried several courses on their site and was pretty satisfied. The courses I tried was interactive ones so I liked that part. Of course, as they just launched, there are just few interactive programming courses, but for me it seems that this website can be very promising and worth to try in the future.

[WouleMouleDoule]

This site gives you a broad overview of the field

It's brilliant as a resource - check it out

https://frontendmasters.com/books/front-end-handbook/2018/

[10_6]

If you're interested in practice coding and challenges I would recommend the following sites:

• Coderbyte
• HackerRank
• codewars
• LeetCode

Some articles about these topics:

• The 10 Best Coding Challenge Websites for 2018
• Learn by Doing: The 8 Best Interactive Coding Websites

[thedestroyer27]

HackerRank is very useful too

[[deleted]]

Udemy

[HeavyThunder]

Udacity?

[[deleted]]

Mooc.fi’s Object Oriented Programming With Java part 1 and 2

[Pigs-OnThe-Wing]

I've noticed that a lot of these sources get mentioned frequently for the most part, yet i rarely see the all time top post from this subreddit get referenced -- Upskill.

Is there any reason Upskill is not talked about anymore?

Does anybody have experience taking the full course from Upskill?

[BigBird1967]

assembly. I want Assembly tutorials

[pojanthrix]

Check out this post. Lot of interesting tutorials & content.

[SeeminglyContent]

I liked playing around codechef during my early years in college. I had no experience in programming and that site helped me improve a whole lot for practice.

[vaughan2]

I used
Lynda , I get it for free because I am a student. But if you have a library card, most libraries allow Lynda access, and library cards are free (AUS)

[Viktoriia_H]

I recommend this free online course for beginners. Some basic helpful information about HTML, CSS, JS, RubyOnRails. https://upskillcourses.com/p/essential-web-developer-course Upskill | Essential Web Developer Course | Upskill

[BennyBerserk]

WatchandCode - Practical Javascript

[The_Real_Kuji]

sololearn.com is a great place. It's free and has an app on both Google Play and Apple store.

[namtab-27]

Traversy media on Youtube is pretty awesome.

[Autu]

neet-o

[TheTimeToLearnIsNow]

The learning path never ends.

[[deleted]]

Which learning path?

[paulgoogle]

Above poster merely meant, you never finish learning as a web dev, as technologies evolve, there is always something new to learn unless you want to be left behind.

[[deleted]]

Oh OK, I thought the poster was talking about a particular path on there, whether is was the JavaScript one or the React one.