How to Keep Coding over Christmas🎄
Consistency is key, and in order to become a good developer, it is important to get the practice in. With the holidays coming up and the general wind-down that comes at the end of the year, it is easy to let coding slip a little. Why would you worry about grids when Home Alone is on?
Luckily, there are many ways to keep coding, mostly from the comfort of your own home.
Useful Websites
There are tons of excellent online resources that you don’t even have to go outside to use!
Christmas Advent Calendar- In the run-up to Christmas, the team at About 24 ways publish a daily dose of web design and development goodness to bring you a little festive cheer.
#100daysofcode- The holidays are a good time to start a new habit. Code 1 hour every day. Share your progress on Twitter and be part of the community keeping each other accountable and motivated!
Flexbox Froggy — Use CSS Flexbox to move an animated frog around the screen. One of our favourites!
Flex Box Grid — Get to grips with grids with this easy to use website
Free Code Camp — An excellent way to learn the basics of front end web development and building a website. freeCodeCamp is amazing on Medium too.
Code Wars — Work your way through these challenges. It’s great if you like problem-solving but it’s definitely a Marmite website.
Team Tree House- An online learning platform with a range of front-end web development courses you can complete in your own time with tutorials, quizzes, code challenges, and portfolio building opportunities.
Learn Git Branching — Learn Git and version control skills from this useful website.
Events
You will have to go outside for these but there may be a Mince Pie in it for you! There are still a few tech events happening over the holiday period and here are some of our favourites.
Coding Black Females Xmas Party — LONDON, December 18th. You can join the Coding Black Females Christmas Party where they will be sharing the achievements and projects of Black women in their community.
Code Project Hackathon — LONDON, December 28th. Join this hackathon to work on your coding projects in a casual and supportive study session. You can bring your own projects or work through the exercises from Free Code Camp.
Code Bar — ACROSS THE UK. Code Bar run meetups across the UK where you can work through their HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Ruby, Python and Git tutorials with instructors. They still have some events coming up in December so check them out.
Things to Listen to
Stay up to date with what happening in Tech without doing any work by listening to our recommended podcasts:
23 Code Street Podcast — Our new Podcast series where we demystify topics in tech with an expert guest.
Code Newbie — A podcast sharing stories from different people on their coding journeys.
Techish — A podcast about the intersection of tech, pop culture, and life. If you want a podcast that will discuss things like Venture Capital, Startups and Kanye West in one episode, you’ve come to the right place.
To Read:
The holidays are an excellent time to find yourself a good read to keep you entertained. For those of us who prefer books to movies, we’ve put together a list of tech-related titles.
Ada Lovelace Cracks the Code, Rebel Girls
From the writers of the “Good Night Stories for Rebel Girls” book comes this new title which is an accessible retelling of Ada’s life and work. It is aimed at 6–9-year-olds and is a perfect way to get the children in your life inspired by Ada’s story.
Female Innovators at Work: Women on Top of Tech, Danielle Newman
Feel inspired by 20 brilliant women in tech who have helped shape the technology we use today.
Life in Code: A Personal History of Technology, Ellen Ullman
Ellen Ulman wrote her first computer program in 1978. She went on to have a successful career as a programmer and software engineer. This book tells a continuing story of the technical world she experienced over her career, giving us an important insight into how programming and the industry developed over 20 years.
Technically Wrong: Sexist Apps, Biased Algorithms, and Other Threats of Toxic TechTechnically Wrong, Sara Wachter-Boettcher
A revealing look at how tech industry bias and blind spots get baked into digital products — and harm us all. Wachter-Boettcher demystifies the tech industry, enabling us to make informed choices about the services we use and allowing us to demand more from the companies behind them.
HTML and CSS: Design and Build Websites, Jon Duckett
This book is a great way to teach yourself the basics of HTML and CSS. It’s easy to use, aesthetically pleasing, and generally perfect for dipping into when you feel like it. Read our review here!
Gift Guide 🎁
Buying gifts is a lot of fun, and giving the gift of knowledge is even better. That’s why we’ve put together a shortlist of tech gadgets and toys you can buy for yourself and for children which teach technical skills in a fun, interactive way.
Lego is helping teach kids to code! Create and command amazing LEGO MINDSTORMS robots with touch sensors, colour sensors, and infrared sensors.
A coding kit aimed at helping children understand coding concepts. They now also have a Disney Frozen 2 Coding Set.
RASPBERRY PI — A small and affordable computer that you can use to learn to code, which can be plugged directly into a computer monitor or television. Watch this video to find out more. It is aimed at adults and kids who love to build things. The possibilities of what you can do with it are endless and there have been some amazing projects.
Sphero Mini packs tons of fun into a tiny, app-enabled robotic ball. You can programme it to do all sorts of stuff. Watch it in action here.
How do you like to keep up with coding in the holidays? Let us know on Twitter & Instagram @23codestreet, we would love to add your tips!
