Sign Up only for $9
So you’ve decided it’s time to learn some programming skills. Perhaps your employer wants you to take on a new project, you’re working on beefing up your resume, or you want to work on a personal project. There are a multitude of options available, ranging from free to very expensive.
1) Go to a 4 year University and get a degree in Computer Science or Computer engineering. Cost: Anywhere from $20,000 and up, depending on the institution of higher learning.
2) Find an internship where you can work for free for an extended period of time and hopefully be exposed to the type of learning opportunities you need in the correct discipline you are intending to improve at.
3) Get yourself extremely familiar with your library card and spending some money on books that aren’t available there. Keep in mind that by the time the books you’re studying are in print, a good percentage of the information contained in them will be out of date, and you’ll have to play catch up to keep your newly learned knowledge current.
4) Enroll in an online school that offers courses that are: current with consistent relevant updates, available 24 hours a day so you can study when you have time, and offer learning in a modern and interactive format. Often these schools have free trials or free promotions where you can determine how well they work for you before committing to a longer term path.
At first glance, any of the four options above might be a realistic path to gain the programming skills you need. All four of them will get you the skills you need, but there are some caveats.
Option 1) If you opt to go to a 4 year university, a lot of your education will be focused on theory, rather than practical application. It’s also by far the most expensive option.
Option 2) The free internship route can have advantages of having a real, live, in-person mentor. The downside of this is you may waste time trying out several different internships to find one that suits your goals, and generally you’re not getting paid. If you’re in the unique life situation that you can spend 40 hours a week working without being paid while you hopefully gain the skills you want, this is a potential path for you.
Option 3) Until recently, this was a very popular and highly recommended option amongst those learning to code. The price is right, and with a combination of borrowed and purchased material, you have a lot of information that can help you on your way to becoming a skilled coder. The potential downside of this glut of information is knowing where to start, and which resources are better than others.
Option 4) In the last 12-24 months there’s been an explosion in the online learning space for aspiring coders. Whether you want to learn web development, Javascript, mobile app development, or one of the many other highly sought skills by employers these days – there’s an online place to learn it.
CodeSchool offers a $9 first month trial, and gets very good reviews from it’s current and former students. If you’re like most, you may not have determined exactly what you’re looking to learn. In that case, Code School helps you in getting started with their learning process, and how to determine which path is right for you. The CodeSchool $9 first month trial is a great way to get your hands dirty and get coding fast.
Sign Up only for $9
Currently there are 42 courses at codeschool.com by different instructors and more exciting courses are coming. You can also suggest new courses and features to them so that they can add those according to your opinion. If you have a big team to enroll you can also do that at bulk price. You can learn those course individually or follow one of their four paths which covers related topics.
Ruby
Master your Ruby skills and increase your Rails street cred by learning to build dynamic, sustainable applications for the web.
JavaScript
Spend some time with this powerful scripting language and learn to build lightweight applications with enhanced user interfaces.
HTML/CSS
Learn the fundamentals of design, front-end development, and crafting user experiences that are easy on the eyes.
iOS
Try your hand at building iOS applications for iPhone and iPad mobile devices. Learn the basics of iOS development and bring your app ideas to life.
Here is the full list of their courses with the instructors name on it…
Ruby Bits
Gregg Pollack, Adam Fortuna, Jay McGavren, Mark Kendall, Carlos Souza
Front-end Formations
Drew Barontini
Testing with RSpec
Gregg Pollack, Olivier Lacan
Assembling Sass Part 2
Nick Walsh, Dan Denney
iOS Operation: MapKit
Jon Friskics, Gregg Pollack, Eric Allam
Exploring Google Maps for iOS
Jon Friskics
Discover Drive
Gregg Pollack, Matt Schultz
Mastering GitHub
Peter Bell, Gregg Pollack, Adam Fortuna, Russell Centanni
Anatomy of Backbone.js
Gregg Pollack, Eric Allam
Anatomy of Backbone.js Part 2
Gregg Pollack, Brad Dunbar, Eric Allam
Real-time Web with Node.js
Gregg Pollack, Eric Allam
Warming Up With Ember.js
Adam Fortuna, Gregg Pollack
JavaScript Road Trip Part 2
Jason Millhouse
Try R
Jay McGavren
JavaScript Road Trip Part 3
Jason Millhouse
Git Real
Gregg Pollack, Olivier Lacan, Jay McGavren
CoffeeScript
Gregg Pollack, Carlos Souza
Rails Testing for Zombies
Nathaniel Bibler
Fundamentals of Design
Tim Dikun, Jason VanLue, Nick Walsh
Journey Into Mobile
Jason VanLue, Nick Walsh, Drew Barontini
JavaScript Road Trip Part 1
Jason Millhouse
Discover DevTools
Gregg Pollack, Paul Irish, Peter Lubbers, Jay McGavren, Tony Winn
Try jQuery
Gregg Pollack, Adam Rensel, Olivier Lacan, Adam Fortuna
Try Ruby
Eric Allam
Rails for Zombies Redux
Gregg Pollack, Eric Allam
Try Git
Gregg Pollack, Olivier Lacan, Adam Rensel
Try iOS
Gregg Pollack, Mr. Higgie, Eric Allam
Try Objective-C
Eric Allam, Jon Friskics
Rails Best Practices
Gregg Pollack, Carlos Souza
Ruby Bits Part 2
Mark Kendall, Carlos Souza
Assembling Sass
Nick Walsh, Dan Denney, Aimee Simone, Drew Barontini
Rails 4 Patterns
Gregg Pollack, Carlos Souza, Adam Rensel, Tony Winn
Core iOS 7
Eric Allam, Jon Friskics
jQuery: The Return Flight
Gregg Pollack, Adam Rensel, Adam Fortuna
CSS Cross-Country
Nick Walsh, Aimee Simone
Surviving APIs with Rails
Carlos Souza, Gregg Pollack, James Newton
Rails 4: Zombie Outlaws
Gregg Pollack, Carlos Souza, Jay McGavren
Shaping up with Angular.js
Gregg Pollack, Alyssa Nicoll, Adam Rensel, David Rogers, Adam Fortuna, James Newton, Russell Centanni
JavaScript Best Practices
Jason Millhouse, Alyssa Nicoll, Adam Rensel, James Newton, Russell Centanni
iOS Operation: Models
Jon Friskics, Gregg Pollack, Eric Allam
Git Real 2
Gregg Pollack, Jay McGavren
Rails for Zombies 2
Gregg Pollack
Sign Up only for $9
Few useful links related to the codeschool
CodeSchool First Month 9 Dollar Trial Offer Details
CodeSchool Free Weekly Screencasts
CodeSchool Forum for Discussion
The post Teaching yourself to program? CodeSchool Review appeared first on We Build Design.