#3 - Free is always better...
In a world filled with ads, it’s getting more and more difficult to weed through the crap and find anything useful. Anything useful that’s free, at least. It seems as though, in this world of $0.99 apps, we are always finding an excuse to spend just that one dollar to make our lives easier.
What happened to the days when we went to the library? Hmmm? That was free. You could check out books, magazines, music, and more! Today, we hit Google and type something like, “Free programming courses” or “Learn to code for free”. Whatever the case, staying off of the Play and App Store may benefit all of us.
In my search to submerse myself in coding, I started looking for “Intro” material. A few years ago, I took an Intro to Programming course in college. It was mostly basic logic and flowchart programming. We never really got to the meat and potatoes of programming. However, that’s to be expected in an Intro class.
A friend of mine suggested Code Academy. It is a free to use website with courses for various programming languages. It includes courses for JavaScript, PHP, and Rails. I signed up and started the JScript course, and it was quite fun to use.
The web page contains an emulator to help you through the various lessons. The course starts with an Intro to the language, then progresses at your pace to a more in-depth look at the language.
The site is quite satisfying for goal-oriented individuals, like me. It keeps track of your progress and gives you a completion percentage. If you’re anything like me, you want to complete everything. Having the percentage readout makes it that much easier to find the motivation to progress.
I highly recommend this site to anyone looking to learn popular web-based languages. Signing up is free. If you complete everything on the site, they also have partnerships with brick-and-mortar schools to further your learning. http://www.codecademy.com/
The last free tool is geared more towards those that learn by doing and have the time to do so. For those of us who do not have time because of our 9-5′s family, etc., can read through the “Introduction to Programming” section of WikiVersity. I stumbled across this gem scouring the internet while at work. I wanted something to supplement any emulators I might be using with a more theory-based approach to programming.
I was not disappointed with this page. While reading, various terms and subjects are linked to their various Wikipedia pages. While there are those who claim that Wikipedia is not credible, they must be referring to what Wikipedia used to be. It’s much different now than it was 14 years ago.
It is still open source and edited freely by anyone with an account, but article changes require links to relevant data. Then, editors read over the changes for approval. I’m not too sure on the overall process, but I do know that Wikipedia is a great place to “get your feet wet” with various topics. At least it will give you exposure to the topics involved, allowing you to search for relevant material more easily.
Check it out, if you have time over your lunch break. I will link the page HERE.
To wrap things up, I know that we live in a world of immediate gratification, but there is no hard and fast way of teaching yourself a new skill. This may comes easier to some than others, but keep plugging away. I know I will.
As always, if anyone finds this blog helpful, let me know!
Sincerely,
The SysAdmin Dev Team
