Viewing 15 posts - 1 through 15 (of 15 total)
  • Learning how to code… Q2
  • brooess
    Free Member

    I posted a few weeks ago about learning to code and I’ve been playing around with Code Academy since – it’s quiet satisfying actually, suits my anally retentive side and my creative side 🙂

    I’m thinking about taking a short course but don’t want to pay for something which is all fluff and no substance

    Does anyone know anything about these guys? Steer

    Or any of the others in this list?
    Guardian

    Is a course any better than doing it at home through Code Academy?

    tomhughes46
    Full Member

    What do you want to get out of it?

    I have a specific need (automate data analysis) and have found the Lynda.com material good. No idea how much it is though as I get it free from work.

    My experience of being ‘taught’ such things is that I can never go at the pace I want and find self paced learning suits me.

    JulianA
    Free Member

    I certainly wouldn’t pay for any courses until you have exhausted all the free stuff available.

    W3Schools do some basic stuff to give you a grounding, there’s stacks of stuff on ASP.Net MVC etc.

    As to higher said, what do you want out of it? Do you want to write a web site? If so do you need dynamic content (ie from a database)? If so you will need to learn a server side technology and some database skills.

    Let us know where you want to go and we might be able to find you some free resources.

    Oh, and don’t buy any development tools – you can go a long way with free ones!

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    marmaduke
    Free Member

    I don’t think you’d find better than the free Harvard CS50 course. It’s very well taught through recorded lectures and problem sets to do every week.

    Mackem
    Full Member

    I’ve been using this lot…
    http://www.teamtreehouse.com/
    There’s a free 2 week trial.
    The biggest problem for me is there are so many courses that I like the look of.

    mogrim
    Full Member

    There’s no way I’d pay to learn how to code, not with the amount of quality free resources out there. As already pointed out: what do you want to do?

    brooess
    Free Member

    No idea what I want to do! I’ve been working in marketing for 20 years 🙂 Don’t know anything about coding yet…

    I keep reading that understanding coding is increasingly being seen as a fundamental skill – especially for our kids, so I figured I should find out more about it. I’ve enjoyed doing the Code Academy stuff so I’ll carry on with that for now – about halfway through so far.

    I suspect I’ll get a clearer idea what I want to do once I know more about the possibilities. I’ve been given a Raspberry Pi so I quite like the idea of doing something with that, just don’t know what yet…

    Mackem
    Full Member

    This is the thing, learning the nuts and bolts of coding is pretty straightforward, it’s when you have a project to do from scratch that you really learn properly. It’s why I did my wee app.

    benji
    Free Member

    Never mind the coding, the most important part is the design, get that right and the coding is literally a translation exercise, knowing how to code and not to design, just leads to hacked about rubbish, that is in the main write once and read never.

    elzorillo
    Free Member

    Only my personal opinion.. but this idea that coding is a necessity for all kids is farcical. The vast majority of people need to know how to use the tools, not create the tools.

    Sure instilling a logical mind in kids is good.. but coding a necessity? really?

    TheFlyingOx
    Full Member

    The last time I did any “coding” I was using an assembler on the C64.

    I was spurred into learning a modern programming language after having an idea that will massively streamline maintenance activities the petrochemical process industry (and likely many others) but need to be able to code to bring it to fruition. I’ve started on this: http://www.sololearn.com/Course/CPlusPlus/ and so far it seems very good.

    mogrim
    Full Member

    Only my personal opinion.. but this idea that coding is a necessity for all kids is farcical. The vast majority of people need to know how to use the tools, not create the tools.

    Sure instilling a logical mind in kids is good.. but coding a necessity? really?

    I sort of agree – I don’t think being able to write the modern equivalent of “10 print “mogrim is great” / 20 goto 10″ is going to be of much use.

    However I could certainly see coding as being part of a science curriculum: things like boolean logic, modelling real life (classes etc) and being able to break problems down into smaller chunks are useful beyond computing. I’d also be in favour of teaching a basic understanding of how computers work and their limitations, computer security and digital privacy etc.

    Of course, there’s a fairly large risk it’ll just turn into a program churning out large numbers of cargo-cult Javascript programmers…

    GHill
    Full Member

    1) Design a programme you’d like to write.
    2) Use free resources (or a book) to figure out how to do it. You’re likely to learn more than following a paid for class.

    Paid class can be useful for certification, but doesn’t sound like that’s a consideration in this case?

    mogrim
    Full Member

    I’ve started on this: http://www.sololearn.com/Course/CPlusPlus/ and so far it seems very good.

    I quite like C++, although it’s been a fair few years since I last used it, but it’s not a language I’d necessarily recommend to a beginner! I realise you’re not a complete beginner, TFOx, – so I’m not in any way saying you shouldn’t do the course 🙂

    For beginners these look better:

    https://www.coursera.org/course/pythonlearn
    https://www.coursera.org/course/interactivepython1

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