coding resources

Code Academy

(which I talked about

here

)

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

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

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

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.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re 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.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t 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

Talentbuddy

TopCoder

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

Django Tutorial

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

Rails Guide

If you know PHP, there’s 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’d suggest the following:

Cake PHP Book

Symfony 2 - Get Started

Yii PHP - The Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

sharing the knowledge

SLIDE MENU TUTORIAL :::: BY TRENZATHEMES :::: LEVEL :::: INTERMEDIATE :::: RULES :::: NO REPASTING // NO CLAIMING AS YOUR OWN // LINK TO THE TUTORIAL WHEN ASKED WOULD BE COOL. :::: I finally decided to post how I code my slide menus. I use them for asks, theme rules, update tabs, etc.  Pretty much anything you want to put content into! I use Codrops tutorial and this is how I get it to work with tumblr. :D Under the cut is the tutorial! Enjoy!

So I decided to make a tumblr theme base code that has some tips and explanations inside! There’s some stuff for beginners and some stuff for people who might have a bit more knowledge. I also put a couple of websites in there that can give you further help with html/css. Hopefully you’ll find it helpful whatever stage you’re at. If you’re going to use it as a base for a theme you’re going to distribute, please make sure you’ve edited it enough so that it’s not recognizably mine (it looks pretty ugly as it is anyway haha). Otherwise do what you please with it! (I just don’t want people to use my themes as base codes)

Links to Help You Start Coding by azurethemes/salazhar In honor of opening my theme blog, I thought I’d make this post on learning how to code since many people ask where/how I started coding. This is not a tutorial on how to code a theme, but a list of resources on how to start learning HTML and CSS.

UNDERSTANDING HTML These websites are the one I used to learn and understand more about HTML and CSS. 

Code Academy Code Academy teaches you HTML, CSS, Javascript, jQuery, and more interactively. Their tutorials are great for anyone of any age. This site is my favorite and I definitely recommend it.

w3Schools w3Schools is what I like to call my online glossary. It has literally everything you need to know.

MAKING TUMBLR THEMES There are many great tutorials here on tumblr on creating your own theme. Here are a few:

By lmthemes

By farahmir

By themesbyeris

By ettudis

By howtomakeasimpletheme

By buildthemes

Tumblr has also provided us with a document on creating custom themes and I suggest going through it. 

USING BASE CODES If you wanna start coding themes, but you don’t know where to start, I suggest using a base code.  I have a masterpost of base codes here, but you will want to use base codes that come with instructions like these two [ one | two ] so it’s easier for you to customize and understand the theme.

CONCLUSION Again, this is just a list of resources to help you begin coding your own tumblr themes. I will release another resources list with more external links that provides you with tutorials to make your themes even better. This one is just to help you start out.

Search Boxes - apparently a hot commodity. I get asked this a lot, especially as far as theme-hunter’s theme was concerned. I now present you a tutorial on how to make one and how to style it. Enjoy!

up next: actual themes