{"id":95887,"date":"2016-06-21T23:27:19","date_gmt":"2016-06-21T23:27:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/21\/do-yourself-a-favor-learn-to-code-heres-how\/"},"modified":"2016-06-21T23:27:19","modified_gmt":"2016-06-21T23:27:19","slug":"do-yourself-a-favor-learn-to-code-heres-how","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2016\/06\/21\/do-yourself-a-favor-learn-to-code-heres-how\/","title":{"rendered":"Do yourself a favor. Learn to code. Here’s how."},"content":{"rendered":"

grawly<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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monstersyllabus<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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laflahsdrive<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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silktum<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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maliwarm<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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boomeyer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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piggywheel<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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boomeyer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I\u2019ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It\u2019s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur<\/a>.\u00a0Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code<\/a> and now that man is making his first mobile application.<\/p>\n

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes<\/a> taking place<\/a> in the technology sector<\/a> that are poised to have an immense influence<\/a> on human life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

(note: yes I realize that 3\/5 of those links were Google projects)<\/em><\/p>\n

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.<\/p>\n

There are\u00a0a lot of resources<\/em> out there to teach you. I\u2019ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here\u2019s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:<\/p>\n

Novice<\/strong><\/p>\n

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won\u2019t get into the nitty-gritty, but don\u2019t worry about it for now:<\/p>\n

Dash – by General Assembly<\/a><\/p>\n

CodeAcademy<\/a><\/p>\n

w3 Tutorials<\/a> (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)<\/p>\n


Intermediate<\/strong><\/p>\n

Now that you\u2019ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it\u2019s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I\u2019ve found these resources to be solid:<\/p>\n

Khan Academy<\/a><\/p>\n

CodeAcademy – Ruby<\/a>, Python<\/a>, PHP<\/a><\/p>\n

Difficult<\/strong><\/p>\n

If you\u2019re here, you\u2019re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You\u2019re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.<\/p>\n

Programming problems<\/em><\/p>\n

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren\u2019t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems<\/em><\/p>\n

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Talentbuddy<\/a><\/p>\n

TopCoder<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Web Applications<\/em><\/p>\n

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I\u2019d highly suggest the tutorial – it\u2019s one of the best I\u2019ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Django Tutorial<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019ve never used Rails, but it\u2019s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I\u2019d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Rails Guide<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

If you know PHP, there\u2019s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I\u2019d suggest the following:<\/em><\/p>\n

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Cake PHP Book<\/a><\/p>\n

Symfony 2 – Get Started<\/a><\/p>\n

Yii PHP – The Comprehensive Guide<\/a><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Conclusion<\/strong><\/p>\n


<\/strong>If there\u2019s one point I wanted to get across, it\u2019s that\u00a0it is easier than ever to learn to code<\/strong>. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.<\/p>\n

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren\u2019t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Best of luck!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I\u2019d also like to add some more specialized resources!<\/p>\n

Video games:<\/h2>\n

Easy game engines (virtually no coding):\u00a0<\/p>\n