Which Tools and Resources Do You Suggest for Folks Who Are New to Programming?

Starting out as a new programmer can be overwhelming, but there are plenty of tools and resources available to help you along the way! Some of our favorites include:

• Codecademy for interactive coding courses
• Stack Overflow for troubleshooting and community support
• GitHub for version control and collaboration
• Udemy for in-depth video tutorials
• FreeCodeCamp for project-based learning

What tools and resources have you found helpful as a beginner programmer? Share your favorites with us!

Comments

[Raí B. Toffoletto]

+1 for freeCodeCamp !! I send everyone there that wants a solid html / css / js base.

I will argue that before github a good tutorial on Git and basic CLI commands are necessary 😉

And also DEV.TO it has great begginers articles. I kicked off my dotNET Core studies from a great guide here.

[Devarshi Shimpi]

I would suggest starting with Canva for total beginners and then moving on with Figma for UI UX Designing. Again, Canva here can be used for many more tasks for simple light-weight photo editing and video editing as well. Once you got that base you can move on with Figma or Adobe XD for UI UX Designing. For Video Editing, you can go for Premiere Pro and After Effects Combo. And for Photo Editing, You can go with Photoshop.

Hope this helps!

[leob]

Nice, but that's to get into design, rather than programming? Anyway, that sounds kinda right - if you want to get into design :)

[Aneeqa Khan]

I would recommend "YouTube". You can find videos on just about any programming topic you can think of.
I would also recommend Visual Studio Code for IDE

[Amrin]

start with Freecodecamp if you are an absolute beginner.
if you have a little knowledge of web dev or programming in general try The Odin Project.
These are open source and one of the best resources available out there.

On YouTube I recommend The Travesy Media, webdev siplified and The net ninja.

[optimisedu]

Odin project is great for beginners, I would advise their path over free code camp

[Amrin]

I've tried both I think Odin require a bit tech and coding knowledge. They start out by setting up a local enviornment. while in FCC you can just start coding without doing anything.

[taigadtrbl]

nah there's just too much to read on odin ...

[Amrin]

and those readings are important. they also have projects if you know that and those projects are very practical.

[taigadtrbl]

Yh I do ... I took their foundations Course and it really helped me understand a lot of stuff, but for me taking a fullstack js or ruby course there would be too painful ... For a new programmer reading large volumes of content isn't the best way to go about learning, I personally think short videos along with tad bit of documents and a lotta mini projects would get you working faster ...
And Note that programming does not explicitly refer to web development (which is what The Odin's Project is mostly about), so i think anyone thinking of programming should consider their interest (by messing around on yt and google) or what jobs they want to take, this would determine what content source is suitable for them...
But of cos if anyone wants to go into web development then TOP(if you don't mind reading a lotta stuff) and FreeCodeCamp have amazing resources to start with.

I recommend Checking :

For Web: Free Code Camp, Fireship(yt), web.dev, TOP, codecademy

Mobile App: Hyperskill(Free Kotlin Course), Flutter/dart docs and yt tutorials, MS .net shows

Data science: DataCamp(Freemium), Kaggle, CognitiveClass.ai, dataquest.

just a few i can remember now....

but what ever path you choose (Cloud Computing, Game development, Systems programming) there's lotta free content to learn from, you just have to search.

[GingerKiwi]

Scrimba, especially the Frontend Developer Career Path.

Plus:

• select YouTube (eg Kevin Powell for CSS)
• using the Pomordo technique
• doing the #100DaysOfCode challenge.
• VSCode for writing code. Use handy extensions like Emmet (code completion), coloured brackets, …
• GitHub for sharing your code and Git for version control
• Obsidian for documentation in markup (keep your notes in here. It formats code blocks including colour coding)
• Start documenting your journey by posting your daily learning to LinkedIn
• Andrew’s Coffee Chats for a great bimonthly Zoom for new Devs
• Dear Junior Devs for support and building a professional network

I’ve done Udemy, coursera, university courses, CS50, and LinkedIn Learning.

SCRIMBA is interactive, project based, and a comprehensive curriculum with a really supportive online community and weekly (optional) synchronous Town hall meetings.

The platform is built on VSCode - the industry standard code editor. You can - pause the “scrims” (videos) and interact with the code,

• see the results in an integrated mini browser,
• download the project and open in vs code,
• voice record your own scrim to share, and
• save notes.

There’s free community code reviews on the discord community.

The final couple of modules in the Frontend program focus on getting a job. Doing just the short LinkedIn module plus applying things from Andrew’s Coffee Chats has resulted in recruiters contacting me for technical writing jobs (my focus while I’m working on my web dev skills)

As a former teacher I can see the thought that goes into the curriculum.

You can start with some of the free courses (eg Html and CSS) to get a feel for things.

scrimba.com/learn/htmlandcss

scrimba.com/learn/learnjavascript

There’s also brand new React Router course for those of us more along our self teaching paths.

scrimba.com/learn/reactrouter6

@bookercodes Can answer lots of questions.

[Mikhail Mikhasev]

i love Scrimba. Really the only one that worked for me. Freecodecamp and Odin probably are good to, but my motivation is lacking. Scrimba is the best fit because you code and solve challenges in each scrim. + creators are really nice people. I love scrimba townhalls. Worth every penny!

[Frank Font]

Coffee and a positive attitude.

[AndyRosenberg]

As an aid to written resources and videos, I always recommend Exercism. They have great exercises in just about every language.

Also the school I started with has a bunch of free resources:
free books

[Chris Greening]

I usually recommend Youtube and/or Udemy for getting the

• syntax
• basic control flow
• simple project ideas
• etc.

but with a followup emphasis on being curious all the time, diving into project-based learning, and getting their hands dirty in the code ASAP (while also emphasizing not to get discouraged if they don't know something or if they make mistakes, every mistake is an opportunity to learn)

I also recommend seeking community on DEV, Twitter, etc. even if to just get exposed to and inspired by others talking about learning, building, etc. Validation and support is sooo critical when you're starting out

[nricks]

I would just say whatever you do, read on the daily. even reddit is growing a lot on me lately.
chatgpt with time might become one of the best teachers you could ever ask for, but never really rely only on online sources, finding a real person that can mentor you and inspire you is far more important on the road to becoming the best you could ever be, especially in programming, where there can be a lot of stress and it's the brain doing the heavy lifting.

[Ilyas Babu]

I would suggest to use VIM from the beginning, since it would be difficult to later switch from another IDE to VIM. One great thing I have ever done in my career is switching to VIM from VSCode.