I’ve been asked a few times to share a list of the resources I used when I was first learning to code, as well as my ongoing go-to resources. I just sent out an email to a student at my alma mater whom I chatted with at an alumni event recently. I was happy to help him out and point him in the direction of the sites and programs I’ve found helpful.
There’s so much out there, this list is by no means comprehensive. But, it’s worked for me! So here goes…
- Mozilla (the makers of Firefox) has extensive documentation on all things web. They also have modules set up to learn various topics. This one is a good place to start for the basics. Any time I feel like I need to know more about a specific topic, I generally find myself searching on MDN.
- W3 Schools is a pretty good encyclopedia of web topics where you can play around with code examples to see how they work.
- Many of the bootcamps have free online resources covering the basics:
- Watch and Code: I did this one (the free version) when I was starting to learn JavaScript and found Gordon, the instructor, to be really clear and easy to understand.
- FreeCodeCamp is another good free resource!
- Colt Steele’s Web Developer Bootcamp Udemy course is great and as of writing this, is on sale for $9.99.
- Udacity has plenty of free courses as well as more structured paths you can take. I completed this Front End Nanodegree path courtesy of Grow With Google. It was quite comprehensive and required a decent time commitment (probably about 5-10 hours a week), but I learned a ton and enjoyed having classmates to collaborate with. (Several of us participated in a Facebook group that was really helpful.)
- I really like Brad Traversy’s YouTube content. He has an intro HTML course as well as one on CSS. He’s got a lot of stuff on his YouTube but some is more advanced/specific. Bookmark him for later!
- For on-the-go learning, download the SoloLearn app.
- Once you get into things, you’ll find that if you ever google a question about how to do something, an error you’re getting, etc., an answer on Stackoverflow.com will be a top hit. It’s a good resource – I’ve solved many a coding problem by scouring stack overflow’s threads!
- I would recommend setting up a GitHub account (GitHub.com) as soon as you start out, and learn the basics. There are plenty of free courses for that, and this is just one.
- Codepen.io is fun to explore/play around on.
- CSS Tricks is a great resource for understanding CSS and more.
It’s not the most organized list, but it will likely be an evolving work-in-progress type of thing. Hopefully you find something useful there that helps you out as you set out on your journey to learn to code!