So you want to become a Software Developer? (Collection of Tech Training Resources)
On numerous occasions people have asked me — how did you make the move from working in a non-technical role into Software Development? Of course there were multiple factors at play that helped me achieve this but one of the biggest was utilising the wealth of resources freely available online. Whilst I went through more than those included here, I’ve here put together a collection of the ones I found most useful. I’ve categorised them into Beginner, Intermediate and Other (which are largely resources more specifically Frontend focused) so hopefully no matter where you are at in your journey learning coding you might find something suitable for your level and that will help augment your learning.
A very important thing to keep in mind is that learning to code is like learning a new spoken language and it takes time and regular practice. You’ll make the most progress if you’re spending at least 30 minutes a day on it, or at minimum a few times a week.
Beginner (Never written code before / very little coding experience)
GrokLearning
Learn to code at your own pace, the best place to start in my opinion. Doesn’t just spoon feed you example code to copy-paste so you actually learn as you go. The first few modules / courses are available for free and I would specifically recommend their Introduction to Programming (Python) course.
Codecademy
Codecademy has a number of polished courses but a lot of the examples / lessons essentially give you the answer which you just have to copy-paste. This is still great exposure to common syntax and increasing your familiarity with programming languages and tools. I personally completed the following -
- https://www.codecademy.com/learn/introduction-to-javascript
- https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-python
- https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-the-command-line
Pluralsight
So as I was putting this collection together it turns out what I went through (Code School) now goes under the name pluralsight. Seems to be a more premium offering now requiring a subscription but from memory it was again a treasure trove of content. It looks like you can get a free trial to see how you find it before deciding whether to sign up for a subscription or not.
YouTube
YouTube is yet another gold mine of free and quality content if you know where to look and what to search for. There are multiple channels with step by step coding tutorials and tech overviews. Some of the channels I particularly enjoyed following were —
- Very well formatted and structured coding tutorials to “black-belt your web skills” often focused / structured around a particular technology or framework
- Personally I completed his React and NodeJS multi-step video series.
- HTML, CSS and JS web development tutorials. Has some good videos about mastering the terminal and ZSH specifically.
Your own laptop / computer
I found just playing around with writing code for personal projects, making silly websites and apps was a great way to develop my skills and get more comfortable writing code. Connecting them to another interest like a game I was playing worked like a charm to stay motivated and actually finish them or at least get part of it working. In particular you’ll want to get used to using a terminal and an IDE (Integrated Development Environment) which in layman’s terms is just a fancy text editor. I personally use iTerm2 (iOS) set up per this blog or ConEmu (windows) as my terminal and vscode as my IDE.
Intermediate (You will want to be comfortable with reading and writing code)
CodeSignal
Previously called codefights, the platform advertises itself as a place to prepare for interviews but has a really neat Arcade mode (mostly used the Python section) where you can answer a bunch of programming challenges and test your programming syntax as well as problem solving skills.
HackerRank
If you ever apply for a job at a Software Company you might come across this site which employers use for coding tests and programming interviews when applying screening for technical positions. This is part of their “HackerRank for Work” offering but they also have “HackerRank for Developers” which lets you test your skills on very similar coding challenges.
Advent of Code
Advent calendar of coding challenges released each December to test your skills in the lead up to Christmas.
MIT Comp Sci Courses
MIT have published a lot of their courses online for free through a program called MIT Open Courseware. I personally only did part of their Introduction to Algorithms course.
Khan Academy
Taken from their website — “Khan Academy offers practice exercises, instructional videos, and a personalized learning dashboard”. Similar in structure to groklearning and codecademy linked above but I found some of the Khan Academy courses more advanced. I personally did their Intro to Algorithms course.
Other (many of these are more specifically Frontend focused)
Computerphile
Interesting videos that break down a particularly technology, security vulnerability or problem space. I particular enjoy how they often involve interviews with veterans of the tech industry and Computer Science in general.
Netflix UI Engineering
Hear about the latest projects and technology being developed by Frontend focused teams at Netflix.
Google Chrome Developers
Updates coming in the latest versions of the Chrome Web Browser and technical talks from the Google Chrome development teams.
The Coding Train
Really creative coding projects with great live demo walk throughs and can provide good inspiration for what is possible and the different kinds of frameworks there are available to play with.
https://egghead.io/
A subscription is required but egghead.io is full of high quality video tutorial courses focused on modern and commonly used JavaScript tools and frameworks.
React Patterns
Examples of common code patterns used in React with simple code snippets as well.
Create React App
Create React App is one of the easiest ways to get a modern web app up and running with some React boilerplate code provided for you.
You Don’t Know JS
A book series on JavaScript that takes time to go in-depth into various features of the JavaScript language and aims to uncover deeper complexity of what actually happens under the hood.
Interesting Medium Blogs to follow
- Free Code Camp (they also have a site for learning to code linked from their medium page)
- gitconnected
- Google Design
- The Netflix Tech Blog
- HackerNoon
A lot of these blogs and other good articles I discovered through the following email newsletters -