Tips For The Code Beginner

Rejoice fellow uni students looking for some studyspo, we urge you to take a few free lessons, as well as academic lessons provided from actual universities on several topics. Have a look at the 50 top learning sites you can find online to help you save some time.

Art and Music

Dave Conservatoire — Dave Conservatoire is an entirely free online music school offering a self-proclaimed “world-class music education for everyone,” and providing video lessons and practice tests.

Drawspace — If you want to learn to draw or improve your technique, Drawspace has free and paid self-study as well as interactive, instructor-led lessons.

Justin Guitar — The Justin Guitar site boasts over 800 free guitar lessons which cover transcribing, scales, arpeggios, ear training, chords, recording tech and guitar gear, and also offers a variety of premium paid mobile apps and content (books/ ebooks, DVDs, downloads).

Math, Data Science and Engineering

Codecademy — Codecademy offers data science and software programming (mostly Web-related) courses for various ages groups, with an in-browser coding console for some offerings.

Stanford Engineering Everywhere — SEE/ Stanford Engineering Everywhere houses engineering (software and otherwise) classes that are free to students and educators, with materials that include course syllabi, lecture videos, homework, exams and more.

Big Data University — Big Data University covers Big Data analysis and data science via free and paid courses developed by teachers and professionals.

Better Explained — BetterExplained offers a big-picture-first approach to learning mathematics — often with visual explanations — whether for high school algebra or college-level calculus, statistics and other related topics.

Design, Web Design/ Development

HOW Design University — How Design University (How U) offers free and paid online lessons on graphic and interactive design, and has opportunities for those who would like to teach.

HTML Dog — HTML Dog is specifically focused on Web development tutorials for HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding skills.

Skillcrush — Skillcrush offers professional web design and development courses aimed at one who is interested in the field, regardless of their background — with short, easy-to-consume modules and a 3-month Career Blueprints to help students focus on their career priorities.

Hack Design — Hack Design, with the help of several dozen designers around the world, has put together a lesson plan of 50 units (each with one or more articles and/or videos) on design for Web, mobile apps and more by curating multiple valuable sources (blogs, books, games, videos, and tutorials) — all free of charge.

General – Children and Adults

Scratch – Imagine, Program, Share — Scratch from MIT is a causal creative learning site for children, which has projects that range from the solar system to paper planes to music synths and more.

Udemy — Udemy hosts mostly paid video tutorials in a wide range of general topics including personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, software, health, music, language, and more.

E-learning for kids — E-learning for Kids offers elementary school courses for children ages 5-12 that cover curriculum topic including math, science, computer, environment, health, language, life skills and others.

Ed2go — Ed2go aims their “affordable” online learning courses at adults, and partners with over 2,100 colleges and universities to offer this virtual but instructor-led training in multiple categories — with options for instructors who would like to participate.

GCF Learn Free — GCFLearnFree.org is a project of Goodwill Community Foundation and Goodwill Industries, targeting anyone look for modern skills, offering over 1,000 lessons and 125 tutorials available online at anytime, covering technology, computer software, reading, math, work and career and more.

Stack Exchange — StackExchange is one of several dozen Q+A sites covering multiple topics, including Stack Overflow, which is related to computer technology. Ask a targeted question, get answers from professional and enthusiast peers to improve what you already know about a topic.

HippoCampus — HippoCampus combines free video collections on 13 middle school through college subjects from NROC Project, STEMbite, Khan Academy, NM State Learning Games Lab and more, with free accounts for teachers.

Howcast — Howcast hosts casual video tutorials covering general topics on lifestyle, crafts, cooking, entertainment and more.

Memrise — Lessons on the Memrise (sounds like “memorize”) site include languages and other topics, and are presented on the principle that knowledge can be learned with gamification techniques, which reinforce concepts.

SchoolTube — SchoolTube is a video sharing platform for K-12 students and their educators, with registered users representing over 50,000 schools and a site offering of over half a million videos.

Instructables — Instructables is a hybrid learning site, offering free online text and video how-to instructions for mostly physical DIY (do-it-yourself) projects that cover various hands-on crafts, technology, recipes, game play accessories and more. (Costs lie in project materials only.)

creativeLIVE — CreativeLive has an interesting approach to workshops on creative and lifestyle topics (photography, art, music, design, people skills, entreprenurship, etc.), with live access typically offered free and on-demand access requiring purchase.

Do It Yourself — Do It Yourself (DIY) focuses on how-tos primarily for home improvement, with the occasional tips on lifestyle and crafts topics.

Adafruit Learning System — If you’re hooked by the Maker movement and want to learn how to make Arduino-based electronic gadgets, check out the free tutorials at Adafruit Learn site — and buy the necessary electronics kits and supplies from the main site.

Grovo — If you need to learn how to efficiently use a variety of Web applications for work, Grovo has paid (subscription, with free intros) video tutorials on best practices for hundreds of Web sites.

General College and University

edX — The edX site offers free subject matter from top universities, colleges and schools from around the world, including MIT and Harvard, and many courses are “verified,” offering a certificate of completion for a nominal minimum fee.

Cousera — Coursera is a learning site offering courses (free for audit) from over 100 partners — top universities from over 20 countries, as well as non-university partners — with verified certificates as a paid option, plus specializations, which group related courses together in a recommended sequence.

MIT Open Courseware — MIT OpenCourseWare is the project that started the OCW / Open Education Consortium [http://www.oeconsortium.org], launching in 2002 with the full content of 50 real MIT courses available online, and later including most of the MIT course curriculum — all for free — with hundreds of higher ed institutions joining in with their own OCW course materials later.

Open Yale Courses — Open Yale Courses (OYC) are free, open access, non-credit introductory courses recorded in Yale College’s classroom and available online in a number of digital formats.

Open Learning Initiative — Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU’s) Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is course content (many open and free) intended for both students who want to learn and teachers/ institutions requiring teaching materials.

Khan Academy — Khan Academy is one of the early online learning sites, offering free learning resources for all ages on many subjects, and free tools for teachers and parents to monitor progress and coach students.

MIT Video — MITVideo offers over 12,000 talks/ lecture videos in over 100 channels that include math, architecture and planning, arts, chemistry, biological engineering, robotics, humanities and social sciences, physics and more.

Stanford Online — Stanford Online is a collection of free courses billed as “for anyone, anywhere, anytime” and which includes a wide array of topics that include human rights, language, writing, economics, statistics, physics, engineering, software, chemistry, and more.

Harvard Extension School: Open Learning Initiative — Harvard’s OLI (Open Learning Initiative) offers a selection of free video courses (taken from the edX selection) for the general public that covers a range of typical college topics, includings, Arts, History, Math, Statistics, Computer Science, and more.

Canvas Network — Canvas Network offers mostly free online courses source from numerous colleges and universities, with instructor-led video and text content and certificate options for select programs.

Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple — Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple” is, as the name implies, a set of just three lectures (plus intro) very specifically about Quantum Physics, form three presentations given by theoretical physicist Hans Bethe.

Open UW — Open UW is the umbrella initiative of several free online learning projects from the University of Washington, offered by their UW Online division, and including Coursera, edX and other channels.

UC San Diego Podcast Lectures — Podcast USCD, from UC San Diego, is a collection of audio and/or video podcasts of multi-subject university course lectures — some freely available, other only accessible by registered students.

University of the People — University of the People offers tuition-free online courses, with relatively small fees required only for certified degree programs (exam and processing fees).

NovoEd — NovoEd claims a range of mostly free “courses from thought leaders and distinguished professors from top universities,” and makes it possible for today’s participants to be tomorrow’s mentors in future courses.

IT and Software Development

Udacity — Udacity offers courses with paid certification and nanodegrees — with emphasis on skills desired by tech companies in Silicon Valley — mostly based on a monthly subscription, with access to course materials (print, videos) available for free.

Apple Developer Site — Apple Developer Center may be very specific in topics for lessons, but it’s a free source of documentation and tutorials for software developers who want to develop apps for iOS Mobile, Mac OS X desktop, and Safari Web apps.

Google Code — As with Apple Developer Center, Google Code is topic-narrow but a good source of documentation and tutorials for Android app development.

Code.org — Code.org is the home of the “Hour of Code” campaign, which is aimed at teachers and educators as well as students of all ages (4-104) who want to teach or learn, respectively, computer programming and do not know where to start.

Mozilla Developer Network — MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) offers learning resources — including links to offsite guides — and tutorials for Web development in HTML, CSS and JavaScript — whether you’re a beginner or an expert, and even if you’re not using Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.

Learnable — Learnable by Sitepoint offers paid subscription access to an ebook library of content for computers and tablets, and nearly 5,000 videos lessons (and associated code samples) covering software-related topics – with quizzes and certification available.

Pluralsight — Pluralsight (previously PeepCode) offers paid tech and creative training content (over 3,700 courses and 130K video clips) for individuals, businesses and institutions that covers IT admin, programming, Web development, data visualization — as well as game design, 3D animation, and video editing through a partnership with Digital-Tutors.com, and additional software coding lessons through Codeschool.com.

CodeHS — CodeSchool offers software coding lessons (by subscription) for individuals who want to learn at home, or for students learning in a high school teacher-led class.

There’re some people who teach to people how to code or learn programming on youtube. I think these guys are so cool, they’re doing great jobs and they have knowledge of every subject of programming. I chose some of them and listed in my tumblog.

So here:

1. The New Boston

2. Derek Banas

3.MyCodeSChool

4.CodeGeek

5.DrapsTV

6.TheShellWave

7.CrashCourseCode

8.Sentdex

9.WildAcademy

10.VoidRealms

11.ProgrammingHelpOrg

12.ChiliTomatoNoodle

13.The Bad Tutorial

14. Komputez(Css and Html)

15. Patrick WashingtonDC(Java and C#)

16. LearnCode Academy(Web development)

17. Adam Khoury

today is Nov. 15. the FCC, under chairman Ajit Pai, will not listen to the public despite millions of comments in support of net neutrality. They are going to try their hardest to kill net neutrality, which in turn will kill the internet, which in turn will help eradicate democracy. it won’t just affect Americans, it has the potential to affect the entire internet, something we ALL use daily. you can bet your ass other countries will see america doing this, and use it as an excuse to do it in their own countries.

this is what buying a plan without net neutrality looks like there:

you have to pay MORE for features you’re already guaranteed to have under net neutrality. and in america, you already know how expensive everything is.

democrats AND republicans both want net neutrality. advocacy groups in touch with congress have said that if your members of congress receive calls from you, they are more encouraged and more likely to take action to stop Pai’s plan to gut net neutrality. after Nov. 22, it will be MUCH HARDER to convince your member of congress.

please, call them. call them daily.

I had this post sitting on my drafts for a few weeks, so I decided to make it pretty and post it. Enjoy!

Based on what my teachers told us.

1. Think before coding.  →  Take 10 minutes, 20 or even 30, whatever you need and think about which design pattern (if any) is appropriate for what you are going to code. Really think about it, you’ll be glad for those “wasted” minutes when you have to change or add something on the code and it only takes you 30 minutes instead of 5 hours.

2. Comment your code. →  Seriously, there’s nothing worse than check your own code two months later and don’t remember what it does. Comment everything important, avoid really obvious things.

3. Write clean code →  Indentate. Use spaces. Separate your code in blocks by functionality.  Read Clean Code by Robert C. Martin, it’s really useful. Also, follow whatever convention/standard the code has (like the Java Code Conventions), especially if it’s a shared code.

4. Refactoring is your friend. →  Nobody likes those looooooooong methods with tons of lines. Usually (almost always), that means you’re mixing functionality. Separate the code in more manageable methods. It also helps to make the code more reusable… which lead us to 5.

5. DO NOT COPY AND PASTE CODE.   →  If you have the same chunk of code twice or more times, you’re probably doing something wrong. Read no. 4.

6. Use meaningful names. →  It’s always funny to name your int variable “elligent” or your char, “mander”; but that doesn’t say anything about what it is for.

7. Test your code. →  Test, TEST, test, tEST. Also, test as you code. Don not wait until you’re done with the program to test it or you’ll regret when you find a giant bug you don’t even know where it came from.

7b. Automated testing is usually worth it. It also helps to save a lot of time with retesing and regression testing.

I like them for them, of course; I find their lives and worries interesting and valuable, and enjoy the work we do together. But also?

They make the more “serious” work I do possible. People with the greatest need for therapy are frequently the least able to pay for it. When one of my clients loses their job and benefits, they need therapy more, not less. And in private practice I can only afford to keep treating them for free if I have enough people on my caseload who are paying me full price. My ability to volunteer at a homeless shelter and talk to them about grief and trauma is strongly dictated by how many upper-middle-class people pay me $200 an hour to talk about optimal job performance.

And emotionally, it is an honest fucking joy sometimes to get out of a session with someone whose childhood abuse makes their entire life difficult, and spend an hour talking to one of my worried writer clients about anxiety management and creativity and nothing too deeply painful.

Also, the boundary between “worried well” and mentally ill/traumatized can be blurry sometimes. At one point I was in therapy for severe depression. But now, with my lower grade trauma, social anxiety, excessive shame, and just Needing Someone To Talk To In Order to Deal With Emotional Stuff And Reflect in General? That’s “worried well” compared to a lot of people here on Tumblr.

A related idea (which I’ve had before) is that if you do have a serious trauma, you’re wasting your/the therapist’s time if you aren’t talking about the most traumatic thing possible every single moment of therapy. But sometimes you’re not ready to go there, and that’s okay. Sometimes, your work or family need you to focus on more minor problems, like anxiety management or writer’s block. And getting unstuck on something like that can make you feel so much better about yourself, and more capable of change in general. I would think that could only help you deal with the serious trauma.

Especially about that blurry boundary @neurodiversitysci mentions, a lot of people feel like they “can’t” go until they’re in Absolute Crisis… but if they go before they need help, often the therapy is a lot easier and more effective. An ounce of prevention does more than a pound of cure, you know?  If you get a checkup when you’re just feeling a little stressed and mildly iffy can help you maintain self-care routines that make you a lot stronger and more resilient when the real shit hits the fan.

Hi there! Ohhh that’s so awesome, good luck! Computer science is an amazing subject to study! I was terrified at first because I haven’t had much experience in coding before going to uni, but you’re going to be just FINE trust me!  ✨

💻  first of all DON’T BE SCARED YOU CAN’T CODE - that’s why you’re going to computer science in the first place, to learn to code. Of course, there’s going to be people who are pro-coders already, but don’t get intimidated by them, find your own pace and just do your thing! They’re probably repeating the year anyway or they transferred.

💻  I know in computer science you’re mostly like ‘why do I need lectures when I need to CODE not listen about coding’, but trust me GO TO LECTURES - I attended (almost) every lecture possible during my first year and it really made a World of a difference especially if you’re a newbie to all of this! You’ll meet the professors and you’ll know what they’re expecting of you and they’ll probably tell you some funny stories as well. Plus you’ll have more familiar faces on the campus :) 

💻  DO SOME READING - there’s one lecture that I didn’t go to and that was a mistake I tell you. I didn’t go because the lecturer's voice was boring and I was literally falling asleep. But after I did some reading about the subject before the exam I realized his words were very valuable, but unfortunately if you already knew a bit about the subject, so if you have a subject that bores you - do some reading on your own and then go to the lecture. you’ll get much more information out of it! 

💻  CODE AT HOME - after you’ve practiced some skills during the classes, go home and practice them again on your own. Try doing something useful or fun with it. Like make it print out “Yolo” in a circle (I did that, no regrets lmao)

💻  INSTALL ALL THE SOFTWARE DURING YOUR FIRST WEEK - install all the things you’re going to need during the year on your first week, honestly, please do! It’ll save you time later on. As soon as the professor mentions what you should install, note it down, go home, install it. 

💻  PRACTICE EVEN REALLY SIMPLE THINGS - if you don’t understand anything just type it on youtube and you’ll find plenty of the video tutorials which ARE AMAZING. They helped me a lot with understanding some stuff I couldn’t get a grip of. And I know you’ll find some stuff that you’re like “I don’t need to practice this, this is trivial” IT’S NOT and you’ll get it wrong if you don’t code it at least once, just do it, it’ll take like 30s. 

💻  here are some links which really helped me out and I would recommend checking out beforehand: * c++ step by step video tutorials with Bucky (Bucky saved me before the exam)* learn c++ in one video ( doesn’t really teach you c++ in one video, but there’s some useful stuff especially if you’re new to this) * sorting algorithms with hungarian folk dance (lmao these are really useful, I promise) * codeacademy (here’s just basic coding, but good to start with :) )*  introduction to 3D graphics with Blender ( THE GOD OF BLENDER) and finally:* incredibly realistic wolf animation 

Then, one day, I was in the blackboard and was stuck somewhere, the professor gave me that advice. One step back and I saw the blackboard in a different way. I was able to keep on writing a solution for the problem.

After that, I found it doesn’t need to be a literal step back. It can be going for a walk, drink or eat something, whatever. You know that, if you ever feel stressed and you can keep going on, relax, but you seldom do that. At least, I don’t.

essays - make each essay you write better than the last


 small assignments - aim for 100s, expect 100s, get 100s


 homework - pretend they’re assignments


 homework that’s not graded - pretend! they’re! assignments!


 tests - study for 100s, expect less


 long term projects - act like it’s due in four days -even when it’s not- until you’re done with it


 group projects - do not get angry


 presentations - pretend you’re obama

August 2015

October 2016

April 2017

July 2017

September 2018

December 2018

June 2019

February 2020

August 2020

Rejoice fellow uni students looking for some studyspo, we urge you to take a few free lessons, as well as academic lessons provided from actual universities on several topics. Have a look at the 50 top learning sites you can find online to help you save some time.

Art and Music

Dave Conservatoire — Dave Conservatoire is an entirely free online music school offering a self-proclaimed “world-class music education for everyone,” and providing video lessons and practice tests.

Drawspace — If you want to learn to draw or improve your technique, Drawspace has free and paid self-study as well as interactive, instructor-led lessons.

Justin Guitar — The Justin Guitar site boasts over 800 free guitar lessons which cover transcribing, scales, arpeggios, ear training, chords, recording tech and guitar gear, and also offers a variety of premium paid mobile apps and content (books/ ebooks, DVDs, downloads).

Math, Data Science and Engineering

Codecademy — Codecademy offers data science and software programming (mostly Web-related) courses for various ages groups, with an in-browser coding console for some offerings.

Stanford Engineering Everywhere — SEE/ Stanford Engineering Everywhere houses engineering (software and otherwise) classes that are free to students and educators, with materials that include course syllabi, lecture videos, homework, exams and more.

Big Data University — Big Data University covers Big Data analysis and data science via free and paid courses developed by teachers and professionals.

Better Explained — BetterExplained offers a big-picture-first approach to learning mathematics — often with visual explanations — whether for high school algebra or college-level calculus, statistics and other related topics.

Design, Web Design/ Development

HOW Design University — How Design University (How U) offers free and paid online lessons on graphic and interactive design, and has opportunities for those who would like to teach.

HTML Dog — HTML Dog is specifically focused on Web development tutorials for HTML, CSS and JavaScript coding skills.

Skillcrush — Skillcrush offers professional web design and development courses aimed at one who is interested in the field, regardless of their background — with short, easy-to-consume modules and a 3-month Career Blueprints to help students focus on their career priorities.

Hack Design — Hack Design, with the help of several dozen designers around the world, has put together a lesson plan of 50 units (each with one or more articles and/or videos) on design for Web, mobile apps and more by curating multiple valuable sources (blogs, books, games, videos, and tutorials) — all free of charge.

General – Children and Adults

Scratch – Imagine, Program, Share — Scratch from MIT is a causal creative learning site for children, which has projects that range from the solar system to paper planes to music synths and more.

Udemy — Udemy hosts mostly paid video tutorials in a wide range of general topics including personal development, design, marketing, lifestyle, photography, software, health, music, language, and more.

E-learning for kids — E-learning for Kids offers elementary school courses for children ages 5-12 that cover curriculum topic including math, science, computer, environment, health, language, life skills and others.

Ed2go — Ed2go aims their “affordable” online learning courses at adults, and partners with over 2,100 colleges and universities to offer this virtual but instructor-led training in multiple categories — with options for instructors who would like to participate.

GCF Learn Free — GCFLearnFree.org is a project of Goodwill Community Foundation and Goodwill Industries, targeting anyone look for modern skills, offering over 1,000 lessons and 125 tutorials available online at anytime, covering technology, computer software, reading, math, work and career and more.

Stack Exchange — StackExchange is one of several dozen Q+A sites covering multiple topics, including Stack Overflow, which is related to computer technology. Ask a targeted question, get answers from professional and enthusiast peers to improve what you already know about a topic.

HippoCampus — HippoCampus combines free video collections on 13 middle school through college subjects from NROC Project, STEMbite, Khan Academy, NM State Learning Games Lab and more, with free accounts for teachers.

Howcast — Howcast hosts casual video tutorials covering general topics on lifestyle, crafts, cooking, entertainment and more.

Memrise — Lessons on the Memrise (sounds like “memorize”) site include languages and other topics, and are presented on the principle that knowledge can be learned with gamification techniques, which reinforce concepts.

SchoolTube — SchoolTube is a video sharing platform for K-12 students and their educators, with registered users representing over 50,000 schools and a site offering of over half a million videos.

Instructables — Instructables is a hybrid learning site, offering free online text and video how-to instructions for mostly physical DIY (do-it-yourself) projects that cover various hands-on crafts, technology, recipes, game play accessories and more. (Costs lie in project materials only.)

creativeLIVE — CreativeLive has an interesting approach to workshops on creative and lifestyle topics (photography, art, music, design, people skills, entreprenurship, etc.), with live access typically offered free and on-demand access requiring purchase.

Do It Yourself — Do It Yourself (DIY) focuses on how-tos primarily for home improvement, with the occasional tips on lifestyle and crafts topics.

Adafruit Learning System — If you’re hooked by the Maker movement and want to learn how to make Arduino-based electronic gadgets, check out the free tutorials at Adafruit Learn site — and buy the necessary electronics kits and supplies from the main site.

Grovo — If you need to learn how to efficiently use a variety of Web applications for work, Grovo has paid (subscription, with free intros) video tutorials on best practices for hundreds of Web sites.

General College and University

edX — The edX site offers free subject matter from top universities, colleges and schools from around the world, including MIT and Harvard, and many courses are “verified,” offering a certificate of completion for a nominal minimum fee.

Cousera — Coursera is a learning site offering courses (free for audit) from over 100 partners — top universities from over 20 countries, as well as non-university partners — with verified certificates as a paid option, plus specializations, which group related courses together in a recommended sequence.

MIT Open Courseware — MIT OpenCourseWare is the project that started the OCW / Open Education Consortium [http://www.oeconsortium.org], launching in 2002 with the full content of 50 real MIT courses available online, and later including most of the MIT course curriculum — all for free — with hundreds of higher ed institutions joining in with their own OCW course materials later.

Open Yale Courses — Open Yale Courses (OYC) are free, open access, non-credit introductory courses recorded in Yale College’s classroom and available online in a number of digital formats.

Open Learning Initiative — Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU’s) Open Learning Initiative (OLI) is course content (many open and free) intended for both students who want to learn and teachers/ institutions requiring teaching materials.

Khan Academy — Khan Academy is one of the early online learning sites, offering free learning resources for all ages on many subjects, and free tools for teachers and parents to monitor progress and coach students.

MIT Video — MITVideo offers over 12,000 talks/ lecture videos in over 100 channels that include math, architecture and planning, arts, chemistry, biological engineering, robotics, humanities and social sciences, physics and more.

Stanford Online — Stanford Online is a collection of free courses billed as “for anyone, anywhere, anytime” and which includes a wide array of topics that include human rights, language, writing, economics, statistics, physics, engineering, software, chemistry, and more.

Harvard Extension School: Open Learning Initiative — Harvard’s OLI (Open Learning Initiative) offers a selection of free video courses (taken from the edX selection) for the general public that covers a range of typical college topics, includings, Arts, History, Math, Statistics, Computer Science, and more.

Canvas Network — Canvas Network offers mostly free online courses source from numerous colleges and universities, with instructor-led video and text content and certificate options for select programs.

Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple — Quantum Physics Made Relatively Simple” is, as the name implies, a set of just three lectures (plus intro) very specifically about Quantum Physics, form three presentations given by theoretical physicist Hans Bethe.

Open UW — Open UW is the umbrella initiative of several free online learning projects from the University of Washington, offered by their UW Online division, and including Coursera, edX and other channels.

UC San Diego Podcast Lectures — Podcast USCD, from UC San Diego, is a collection of audio and/or video podcasts of multi-subject university course lectures — some freely available, other only accessible by registered students.

University of the People — University of the People offers tuition-free online courses, with relatively small fees required only for certified degree programs (exam and processing fees).

NovoEd — NovoEd claims a range of mostly free “courses from thought leaders and distinguished professors from top universities,” and makes it possible for today’s participants to be tomorrow’s mentors in future courses.

IT and Software Development

Udacity — Udacity offers courses with paid certification and nanodegrees — with emphasis on skills desired by tech companies in Silicon Valley — mostly based on a monthly subscription, with access to course materials (print, videos) available for free.

Apple Developer Site — Apple Developer Center may be very specific in topics for lessons, but it’s a free source of documentation and tutorials for software developers who want to develop apps for iOS Mobile, Mac OS X desktop, and Safari Web apps.

Google Code — As with Apple Developer Center, Google Code is topic-narrow but a good source of documentation and tutorials for Android app development.

Code.org — Code.org is the home of the “Hour of Code” campaign, which is aimed at teachers and educators as well as students of all ages (4-104) who want to teach or learn, respectively, computer programming and do not know where to start.

Mozilla Developer Network — MDN (Mozilla Developer Network) offers learning resources — including links to offsite guides — and tutorials for Web development in HTML, CSS and JavaScript — whether you’re a beginner or an expert, and even if you’re not using Mozilla’s Firefox Web browser.

Learnable — Learnable by Sitepoint offers paid subscription access to an ebook library of content for computers and tablets, and nearly 5,000 videos lessons (and associated code samples) covering software-related topics – with quizzes and certification available.

Pluralsight — Pluralsight (previously PeepCode) offers paid tech and creative training content (over 3,700 courses and 130K video clips) for individuals, businesses and institutions that covers IT admin, programming, Web development, data visualization — as well as game design, 3D animation, and video editing through a partnership with Digital-Tutors.com, and additional software coding lessons through Codeschool.com.

CodeHS — CodeSchool offers software coding lessons (by subscription) for individuals who want to learn at home, or for students learning in a high school teacher-led class.

Hey, everyone! I spent a lot of time in the past couple months organizing myself. I decided to make a masterpost so I could share what I did! I hope this helps you at least a little bit.

Study space

Organize extra papers into folders, binders, or clipboards.

Use magazine racks, boxes, wall racks, and shelves to organize your extra stuff.

Make sure your workspace is clear of clutter. Clear desk, clear mind.

Use drawers or desktop drawers, and organize them with drawer organizers.

Keep your wires separate so you don’t have to untangle tons of chargers.

Store books and textbooks on shelves or racks. The Umbra Conceal shelves are great if you don’t have a giant bookshelf.

Don’t leave snacks and water bottles lying around your desk. It creates unnecessary clutter.

Store stationery in cups, jars, or pencil bags. Mason jars are super affordable and cute!

Keep a tray of lined paper.

Hang up motivating pictures to make your space pretty.

Pin things on a bulletin board!

Hang a calendar on your wall and use it to keep track of events. There are tons of cute printables, so you don’t have to buy one!

Keep something fun to do on your desk that isn’t electronic.

Candles and succulents make everything look pretty.

Leave yourself sticky notes with reminders.

Make sure you have enough light! This is better for pictures and for your eyes.

If your desk tends to get messy, pick a weekday to organize it!

If you have enough space, consider getting a whiteboard. They’re great for practice problems!

School

Organize your work by subject. There are multiple ways to do this: you can use a folder and a notebook, binders, or accordion folders. Label each folder/notebook/binder according to its subject so you use the right one. Color coding works well with this! (ex. Science is green, math is blue)

I use a big binder with a divider for each subject! Each semester I clean the binder out and store old work in an expandable folder. This helps me keep my backpack light.

Keep current assignments in a homework folder!

Create a schedule for your work when it’s on a syllabus.  Check out mindofamedstudent’s great tutorial!

Use a to do list, bullet journal, or a planner to keep track of your to dos. You can buy a planner, use printables, or use an app like Glass Planner. I use a bullet journal!

Write down your tasks and assignments as you get them and keep track of due dates

Try to take neat notes so you can save time because you won’t need to rewrite them. (If rewriting notes helps you learn then do what works for you. But if it doesn’t help you then then save time by taking neat class notes or by typing your notes like in OneNote.)

Store your stationery in a pencil case or pencil bag. The Lihit Lab case is nice and a great alternative to the Kipling 100 one!

Carry stuff that doesn’t fit in your backpack in a cloth tote bag.

Keep random things like earbuds and mints in a medium cosmetic bag so they don’t wind up at the bottom of your backpack.

Store money in a small wallet so you don’t lose it.

Periodically (once a month or so) go through your bag and throw out trash. Make sure everything else in your bag has a place and that you put it in its place.

Electronic

On your computer, make an administrator account for free time and a guest account with restrictions for studying and work.

Organize your files into folders and subfolders. Clean these out occasionally

Clean out your backpack every three weeks or so. This helps prevent tons of papers piling up.  It’s good to clean as you go, but deep clean outs are really useful if you’re like me.

Go through your inbox every so often and clear out what you don’t need. Sort the rest.

If you take digital notes, keep an extra notebook with you just in case.

House

Store clutter in cute, opaque boxes. (You can buy these or decorate plain boxes.)

Organize your books (alphabetically is best) so you can find them easily.

Find or make a place for every item. But throw out what you don’t need.

Pick a day of the week to declutter your house. Take that day to do laundry as well.  

Miscellaneous

Get a watch and set it five minutes ahead to stay on time.

Make routines and stick to them. It’s the best way to build habits.

Schedule chores. This makes adulting a lot less overwhelming.

Organize on a budget

Plastic folders and manila folders are fairly inexpensive (especially during back to school sales) and great for storing papers.

To save money on boxes, buy blank shoe boxes and decorate them yourself. Target also has boxes in its office supply area, and I think most of them are under $10.

Glass jars are great for storing most small things. You can get a pack of Mason jars for under $10.

Baskets are also great for storing pretty much anything.

Target has really cheap candles that make your study space super cute.

Target and Amazon have yearlong planners for under $20, which are great for keeping track of tasks. You can also buy a composition book for a bullet journal or use printables.