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Stephan Miller
Stephan Miller

Posted on • Originally published at stephanmiller.com on

142 Places to Learn to Code for Free in 2020

#programming

Lists from the Past

The first list I compiled was a list of online sources for parts for a Honda CB750 motorcycle. My first motorcycle was a 1975 CB750 and quickly realized it was the Volkswagen Bug of motorcycles: they were imported, a lot were sold in the United States, and a huge aftermarket sprouted around them that stuck around for decades.

This was before the days of Google. So I wrote a scraper that went through the varous results of Excite, Altavista and half a dozen other search engines and gave me all the unique urls. Then I went through them one at a time manually, checking the results.

I realized nobody else would be that OCD about data. I had spent a lot of hours on the project. I had over a hundred links to everything you could think of for the motorcycle. So I sold the list on eBay for $10 a pop and made $100-$200 a week for a couple of years. It funded all my motorcycle trips in Arizona and all the states surrounding it, at least once a month.

When this blog was more about SEO and online marketing, I compiled a lot of lists that used to be here when any link was a good link and it would increase your rank in Google. Those lists were at one time responsible for 1500 visitors a day, because I kept them current and updated.

A New List for Learning How to Program

This is the first list I have compiled that has to do with programming. I learned to code online with the help of a few physical books. Now that I have a few languages under my belt, I know the territory enough to do most of my learning in bite-sized chunks from Google search results.

But I figured if you are just starting out, you may not know an array from an object. When I started, I tried Python. People said it was easy. I tried Python for a while but I couldn’t figure out where the windows were. Up to that point, I had only used a Windows machine and to me, all software had a GUI, though I didn’t know that term yet. So I went to Visual Basic and stayed there until I learned web development. It helps to have a place to start rather than stumbling around for a few years like I did

Today there are a lot more resources that will start you off on a more solid path. A few will take you from beginner to a job interview in a year or less.

They were hard to categorize. The way I see it, is if you are a complete beginner, chose from either Online University, Online Learning Platform, or maybe Web Development, because there are usually a lot of entry-level jobs for web developers. If you already know the basics of one technology, then chose a specific language to learn about. If you already know JavaScript, HTML and CSS, maybe learn some Python or SQL. And if you just want to stay up to date, checkout the News, Blogs, Podcasts and YouTube Channel categories.

Categories

Blogs

  • #### Tuts+ Thousands of free tutorials and videos that will help you learn the basics of various programming languages.
  • #### David Walsh A blog by the Mozilla senior software engineer.
  • #### CSS Tricks A well-known blog on web development technologies.
  • #### A List Apart This site began as a mailing list in 1997 and the website has been around since 1998. I don't know how many times a Google search on a programming topic sent me to this site.
  • #### Sitepoint Frequent blog posts from top programmers.

C#

  • #### Codeasy Learn to write C# code by playing an adventure game that requires you to write code to finish.

Coding Challenges

  • #### CodingGame Learn to code, practice your programming skills and compete against other developers in the language of your choice.
  • #### Hacker Rank A coding platform designed to improve your coding skills and help you find a job.
  • #### Coderbyte Improve your programming skills with a library of over 300 challenges. Also prepare for interviews.
  • #### Project Euler A series of challenging mathematical/computer programming problems that will require more than just mathematical insights to solve.
  • #### Code Chef Practice the coding challenges to become a better developer, compete with others to see how you rank or finish quizzes that could land you a job.
  • #### Codility A software platform designed to test coding skills for tech recruiters and hiring managers, but open to the public so you can test your own skills.

Command Line

Cybersecurity

Data Science

  • #### Elite Data Science EliteDataScience.com helps busy people streamline the path to becoming a data scientist.
  • #### Dataquest Dataquest will teach you data skills. Learn Python, R, SQL, data visualization, data analysis, and machine learning. Try any of their 60 free missions to start your data science journey.
  • #### Springboard Learn data analysis with this free curriculum covering statistics, data wrangling, and visualization by an Airbnb/MIT alum.

Free Ebooks

Git

  • #### Git Immersion A guided tour that walks through the fundamentals of Git, inspired by the premise that to know a thing is to do it.
  • #### Learn Enough Git Complete online book that will show you how to use Git.
  • #### Try Git Multiple resources that will teach you Git, hosted with Github.

JavaScript

Kids

  • #### Code Avengers This site, based out of New Zealand is designed to make learning to code fun.
  • #### CodeHS CodeHS is used as part of the curriculm in high schools across the country. Home learners can also sign up.
  • #### Code.org I put this under the kids category, but they actually have free course up to university level, organized by grade level. It's goal is to make programming a part of the regular educational curriculm.
  • #### Crunchzilla Interactive tutorials that will teach you the basics of programming.

Machine Learning

Mentors

  • #### Hack.pledge() This is a community of developers who have signed a pledge to mentor new developers.

Mobile Development

News

  • #### Hacker News A site based on Reddit where users vote on programming stories. One of the most popular programming sites online.
  • #### Medium Programming Category I wasn't sure about the News category and how to seperate that from Blogs. This is here because I am considering any site that aggregates a bunch of blogs as a news source, a place to find something new you might want to explore. You an usually find high quality content on Medium.
  • #### Lobsters A site similar to Hacker News, where users vote on popular programming stories.

Online Learning Platform

  • #### Udacity You can access all courses for free or pay to earn a nanodegree.
  • #### Sololearn Millions of users are active on SoloLearn. Each course is geared toward a specific language or technology with complete lesson plans and frequent quizzes.
  • #### Free Pluralsight Courses Pluralsight is a staple of on the job learning for tech companies. I have worked at two companies so far that bought licenses for all the developers. The whole Pluralsight platform is top notched. Most of the courses cost money, but there are a few free ones.
  • #### W3Schools I often end up here when I search for a programming related issue on Google. The site has been around for a long time an houses a wealth of programming information.
  • #### Scotch.io Build real world projects by following these online video tutorials.
  • #### After Hours Programming Basic site to learn about various programming languages.
  • #### Hackr.io This is actually a searchable, votable list of coding tutorials submitted by users that are hosted elsewhere. So if my list is not enough for you, go there to find more.
  • #### Simpliv A paid online learning platform that offers some free courses.
  • #### Microsoft Learn Learn about Microsoft technologies and prepare yourself to pass Microsoft certifications online.
  • #### Course City An aggregator for courses hosted on other platforms.
  • #### Upskill Upskill is a free online code boot camp that is project-based which means you will be building a portfolio as you learn.
  • #### The Odin Project Learn coding and get hired while interacting with fellow students.
  • #### Code Conquest A great site to learn the basics of programming.
  • #### Code Wars Kata style learning platform for a bunch of technologies.
  • #### BitDegree At BitDegree you can take courses of JavaScript, HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL. And they have free certifications.
  • #### Khan Academy Learn to code at one of the original and most well known learning platforms.
  • #### freeCodeCamp I think freeCodeCamp is one of the best programs I have seen. I wish it was around when I was getting started. I think I would have made a big difference in my career. It is 100% free. There are a lot of technologies covered. You can follow a frontend developer roadmap, backend developer roadmap, or a devops roadmap. You can even get a certificate. They have coding interview prep. They will even help you get a job. You can even work on projects for non-profit organizations to build a portfolio. Currently over 40,000 people have gotten jobs after freeCodeCamp.
  • #### Agupieware Agupieware is a suite of courses created by an independent software developer who surveyed the courses of some of the top universities in the United States and created a similar curriculm
  • #### Udemy Udemy is one of the largest online learning platform with some free courses. Note that they have frequent sales on paid courses with really deep discounts, sometimes over 50% off.
  • #### Bento.io This site curates online learning courses from across the web and combines them into full curriculms.
  • #### Code Academy At Code Academy you can learn basic programming skills for free. They also have pro courses available for a monthly fee.
  • #### Skillcrush's Free Coding Camp A course for the total beginner that can be completed in 5 minute increments. Great for getting for feet wet and deciding if development is for you.
  • #### Edabit Learn to code with interactive code challenges.

Online University

  • #### MIT Open Courseware You can audit the MIT courses online for free.
  • #### Coursera At Coursera, you can take courses from universities around the country and some of them are free. You can even earn a degree or certificate.
  • #### edX edX is an online university similar to Coursera with some free courses. You can also earn a degree or certificate.

PHP

  • #### PHP the Right Way An online course that will teach you PHP.
  • #### Killer PHP ‘Killer’ PHP Lessons for Non-Nerds!
  • #### Learn-PHP.org Whether you are an experienced programmer or not, this website is intended for everyone who wishes to learn the PHP programming language. Learn online in the browser.
  • #### Learn PHP Learn the fundamentals of PHP, one of the most popular languages of modern web development.
  • #### W3Schools PHP Tutorial Learn PHP at W3Schools.
  • #### Develop PHP Learn not only PHP here, but JavaScript, CSS, HTML and Flash.
  • #### PHP Buddy This site is designed to help you learn PHP programming here you will find high quality PHP articles, Quick Start PHP tutorials and scripts that will help to you learn PHP quickly.

Podcasts

Python

Ruby

SQL

  • #### MySql Tutorial Learn basic MySql, advanced MySql, even learn how to interact with MySql using Python, Perl, PHP or JavaScript.

UI/UX

Web Development

WordPress

YouTube Programming Channels

  • #### Derek Banas Derek makes tutorials based on your requests. He will cover any topic you can imagine. New programming videos are uploaded on Saturday and Wednesday morning. He live streams at 8PM EST on Monday and at 7PM EST on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.
  • #### thenewboston Tons of sweet computer related tutorials and some other awesome videos too!
  • #### LearnCode.academy 100% FREE Web Development tutorials, web site design tutorials and more.
  • #### Programming Knowledge Dozens of videos that will teach you how to code.

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