DEV Community: Angel Young

Are these 14 sites REALLY free?

Angel Young — Tue, 01 Dec 2020 03:08:55 +0000

I was scrolling on Instagram and I saw a screencap of a tweet about 15 sites where you can learn coding for free.

I am leaving out who tweeted it for privacy purposes. Also, I counted 14 and not 15.

I am going to go through each one of them to see if any of these courses are really free.

Codecademy
Treehouse
Udemy
Coursera
Khan Academy
W3Schools
EdX
FreeCodeCamp
Evanto tuts+
Codeconquest
Udacity
Sololearn
Code Avengers
Learnenough
TLDR

Codecademy

Is it free?: Yes and No.

What do you mean?: There is a premium service called Codecademy Pro. In fact, they highly encourage you to purchase it through ads on the site.

How much is Pro?:
$39.99 a month
$239.88 annually.

If you are a college student, Codecademy Pro Student is the option you want to go to for premium service. They advertise that it's 35% less than a normal Pro membership. Since I am not a student I don't have easy access to the price.

Treehouse

Is it free?: No

How Much is it?: It depends on what you want...

Courses

After a 7 day trial period, 29.99 a month.

Techdegree

After a 7 day trial period, $199 a month

Keep in mind, there are sales throughout the year so if you want it for cheaper, keep checking the site.

Udemy

Is it free?: No, however, if you search on Twitter hard enough you might find some free courses but I would be wary of that in case it contains outdated information.

How much is it?: Courses start a $9.99 and they have sales all the time.

From personal experience, if you buy one course you will likely get more sales than if you weren't are buying a course for the first time.

Coursea

Is it free?: Yes and no

What do you mean?: There are free courses you can search for here. The rest are free trials of 7 days before payment. There is financial aid available.
If you want to enroll in MasterTrack™ Certificates or a Bachelors' degree with them that is not free. The cost of them depends on the institution and course.

Khan Academy

Is it free?: Yes!

What's the catch?: Nothing as far as cost. However, it's aimed towards kids. I recommended it for true novice learners but you probably won't get a lot out of it if you are a little bit more experienced. They have a really good SQL course that I recommend.

W3Schools

Is it free?: Yes!

What's the catch?: Nothing. You can get certified through them at but they aren't pushy about it. It's a good site for true beginners along with the Mozilla Developers Network Web Docs aka MDN.

EdX

Is it free?: Yes and no

What do you mean?: Similar to Coursera, there are free courses you can search for here but it's mostly paid.

FreeCodeCamp

Is it--: YES!

What's th--: There is no catch the word free is in the name. I actually very highly recommend it.

Are you su---: It's 100% free. There is also a Youtube channel of free content in addition to the free courses on the website.

Evanto tuts+

Is it free?: Yes and no.

What do you mean?: I would compare this site to Skillshare the site is a subscription-based site. There are some free courses here

Codeconquest

Is it free?: Yes!

What's the catch?: If you are more of a visual and auditory learner, there are other options. It's similar to W3Schools and good for beginners.

Udacity

Is it free?: Yes and no.

What do you mean?: Similar to EdX and Coursera there are free courses here but it's more like Treehouse's tech degrees except Udacity's courses are called "nanodegrees."

However, there offer scholarships into certain nanodegrees. An example of what going through a nanodegree on scholarship is here.

Sololearn

Is it free?: YES!

What's the catch?: No catches. In fact, I used this site before to learn on the go with my phone while I was in my web development Bootcamp.

Code Avengers

Is it free?: No.

How much is it?:
From their pricing site:
$29 for a monthly plan
$150 for a semi-annual (6 months) plan
$240 for an annual (1 year) plan
You do have a 7-day trial before payment.

The cool thing about it is Code Avengers aim towards everyone with separate tiers. JR for kids, EDU for Teachers, and PRO for everyone else. I am not sure if the prices are just for the PRO tier, this is all I could find on the pricing page.

Learnenough

Is it free?: No.

How much is it?: Learnenough offers a unique price structure in comparison to the other paid sites:

Starting at $5 one time for À La Carte Downloads for downloads of their ebooks.
Starting at $9 a month for À La Carte Courses
$49 dollars for All Access (after a 7-day free trial.)

I know nothing about this site except that you can learn Ruby on Rails on it from looking at the navigation footer.

TLDR

Out of the 15 sites mentioned in the tweet, only 5 of them are truly free FreeCodeCamp, Sololearn, Codeconquest, W3Schools, and Khan Academy.
The freemium sites (paid with free courses) are Codecademy, Coursera, EdX, Udacity, and Evanto tuts+.
The sites that aren't free are Udemy, Treehouse, Learnenough, and Code Avengers.
A lesson for beginners to not believe everything on the internet especially related to free coding classes.

Cover Photo by NESA by Makers on Unsplash
EDIT (12/1/2020): I counted 14 sites even though the post said 15 so the title had to change. I also fixed the conclusion and called it a TLDR in case you don't want to read all of it.

Which YouTube Web Developers Do You Like to Watch?

Angel Young — Fri, 01 May 2020 23:59:00 +0000

Photo by Szabo Viktor on Unsplash

I decided to use my blog to ask questions to people in the community. If it annoys you, I apologize. I will post my answers below to start the conversation.

I Did My First #CodePenChallenge

Angel Young — Tue, 24 Mar 2020 04:51:44 +0000

While I am so sure the instructions wanted me to do it with mostly JavaScript, I opted to use CSS animation and the Document Object Model (DOM). This is because I feel I haven't been practicing enough CSS animations as I want and haven't used the DOM to activate CSS animation.

As shown below, I want the animation to zoom out towards you. I used keyframes for this. Within the keyframes, I had the font-size go from 0px at 0% to 120px at 75% back down to 0px at 0%.

For the DOM, I used this code:

document.getElementById("hello-world").style.animation = "fontzoom 20s infinite";

This is just a way for me to implement JavaScript in the project. In CSS, I was taught to activate the animation below the keyframes like this (this might be wrong as I am still learning):

#hello-world { animation: fontzoom 20s infinite }

As you can see, it's essentially the same thing except you have to use dot notation rather than calling it like you would in CSS.

From a design standpoint, I decided to use the colors green and aqua to represent water and grass since I have been feeling particularly shut-in during the pandemic. The font is Merienda from Google Fonts. I wasn't going to use a script font but decided at the end since it looks nicer. I added a text-shadow of a different shade of blue...which is blue. Finally, media queries have been added for responsiveness at max-width of 750px and 500px.

If you have any questions, let me know in the comments below.

I Dual Booted Ubuntu to My Computer Over A Year Ago

Angel Young — Thu, 15 Aug 2019 02:45:33 +0000

When I was at the New York Code + Design Academy (NYCDA) in 2018, I was one of 5 students who used Windows 10. The problem with that was the teachers and TA wasn't always hipped to how stuff works in PC. A few students told me I should get a mac computer. The problem with THAT is Macs are over a thousand dollars and I couldn't afford one at the moment. I also would tell them to get me a Mac if you think I should have one so badly. Nobody obliged.

When we got to Ruby On Rails, I realized I was in trouble. A lot of Rails isn't fully supported on Windows and I was running into a lot of unique problems that the teacher and TA can't solve.

One afternoon, I finally broke and after some encouragement, I decided to dual boot Ubuntu into my windows machine.

Why Dual Boot?

The question I keep getting is:

Why dual boot? Windows sucks, just wipe it clean.

I hate to inform you but for me, this isn't something I want. I left Windows on there for troubleshooting proposes and also so I can keep my files in since I was still in the boot camp. I also am a designer and unfortunately, there aren't any good designer products for Linux. In the future, I do want to purchase a separate machine and wipe it clean and have it all be Ubuntu.

How did I dual boot?

A TA from the main campus of NYCDA sent me this video.

I played it on my phone and followed the steps to dual boot. It took me about 2 hours to do it but it was worth it. I by no means think this is the best video. It helped me as a beginner.

I Love it!

I have moved most of my programming to Ubuntu. I feel more comfortable using the terminal and learning new languages on Ubuntu. At times, I am on Ubuntu more than Windows. I have been finding out there are a lot of apps I can use that is open source and free. I only go back over to Windows if I really must use my Adobe products or play The Sims.

I like that I can update in the terminal. It feels cooler than how Windows does it. How Windows handles updates is time-consuming when stuff gets updated and the less said about which release doesn't wipe your files the better (this didn't happen to be but I remember what a mess that was.)

Issues with Ubuntu

Aside from the aforementioned design software problem, there is one major problem I have been having since I had it on my machine. It would lock up unexpectantly. Not freeze, lock up. The cursor would freeze and all functionality of the machine would stop working. I can't even access the keyboard. I cannot find a solution to this problem online so I do a force restart (hold down the power button to restart it.) I know that isn't good for the machine but at this point, I learn to accept it as an ongoing issue. If anybody has experienced this and know how to solve it, let me know in the comments.

I also have been having weird issues with updating Ruby which I only noticed today. I didn't realize there was an update and when I went to update it, it still stayed with the previous version. As you probably guessed, I don't use Ruby on Rails since finishing at NYCDA. This minor issue is keeping me on my toes since I find that I love troubleshooting problems. If you want to help me troubleshoot this problem, post in the comments below.

In Conclusion

I love Ubuntu, aside from the issues I have been having. It's making me a better programmer and if it weren't for the people at the now-defunct NYCDA, I probably would never have gotten a chance to use it.

Preview of My New Portfolio Page

Angel Young — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 17:21:48 +0000

For accountability purposes, I am going to post about my progress on my portfolio page. I am not expecting nor want advice on how to improve it. Though if you do feel obligated to comment on something that I didn't think about I may take that advice.

Home

I started on a portfolio page about a year ago but I didn't know how to make it my portfolio page. It had my old headshot on it and I am glad that mess got updated.

I used the design from my old website (this was before the controversial Squarespace site that this site is replacing.) I decided my home page would be a hero page.

This site is by no means done and could take me a few weeks to do it. Here are more screenshots and descriptions of where I want them to go.

About

The about page is simple. I don't expect anything fancy except links to be added to it. I will be linking my school even though it closed (unless it's a dead link by now) along with Philly Tech Sistas, my home Toastmasters club, among others.

It is also the only page right now that is responsive. I plan for all pages to be responsive, this one just easier to make responsive.

Resume

This page is very much under construction and will be going last being built. I am thinking of linking my PDF of my resume once it gets improved. Right now it's a white page and screen capping a blank page is not necessary.

Profile

I am trying to replicate what I did on Squarespace. I might have to implement bootstrap for this part. So far it looks like a hot mess and I look forward to having it look a lot better. What I want it to look like is below.

Contact

I want this page to be simple. Not as simple as this. I do want my twitter and Instagram feed on the page and I also understand if it's not professional if I include it. I might put the font awesome as a consistent footer.

How I am Building It?

Right now, I am using simple HTML and CSS since I am working off files from a year ago. This is so I can have a good structure to go off of. However, I plan to switch to GatsbyJS since I am realizing that I have a component as a header and footer. I have created the Gatsby page so I can move some of the code in there.

Thanks for the response

Angel Young — Sat, 10 Aug 2019 00:55:20 +0000

When I wrote that post I was frustrated and I received a lot of support. Thank you so much for that.

In the next few months, I will stop payments on my Squarespace account and I will move my domain over to Github pages and create a site myself. I hate writing technical blogs due to my perfectionism and I will try to write something about it. I know that is required as somebody going into tech to do it.

As far as the advice I was given, I cannot follow all of it that would be impossible, I am going to find common ground with all of it. It was a lot of advice for me and very overwhelming. I am also going to work with my mentor on how to get the interview since I only been on 3 interviews since finishing the Bootcamp. We are going to move our appointments to weekly rather than biweekly.

I am going to delete my LinkedIn, somebody gave me this awesome advice. I realized how broken my LinkedIn is and that it cannot be salvaged since it already has a negative digital footprint.

I do have a job and other obligations so having a green everyday GitHub is not something I can realistically do. What I can do is push something every week. I will also repin some of my projects.

I am going to continue to attend meetups. I have 3 within the next 10 days.

I also am joining another Code For Philly project since the one I was apart of is inactive. I don't want to say which one since I realized how public this site is and I don't want to reveal a lot of information about the project. This will keep me busy and provide a project I can have on my resume. It is an open-source project something that I have been afraid to get into.

I am not going to lie in order to get a job. If people don't think I am a good fit, that is on them. I can only control the skills and grow from them.

Again thank you for all of your advice. I really appreciate it.

I've been looking to break into the industry since 2018, what am I doing wrong?

Angel Young — Mon, 05 Aug 2019 18:53:48 +0000

I have been frustrated by the constant rejection emails I have been getting. I don't wear them as a badge of honor as much as a reminder of how discouraging the tech industry can be. I often have thoughts of maybe if I wasn't female or maybe I was white, I would have gotten a job faster. I feel like I am doing something wrong and I don't know what it is. I have been doing the following:

-Networking
-Attending Meetups
-Asking for what I could do better in interviews
-Updating my resume (I have 3 versions of the same resume.)
-Building projects
-I have my own website
-Taking on independent projects for free to build my resume (I, however, would not work for a startup with no funding/for free, I tried that before and I didn't feel motivated with the project.)

I have come to the conclusion that the city I live in is not junior friendly however, it is unrealistic for me to consider a move since I am a junior and nobody would pay for me to relocate since I have no experience (I was told this on a Slack channel.)

I feel like I am hitting a brick wall and think I have wasted a year and a half looking for work. I have so many negative thoughts that I wonder if it's even worth it to keep going.

I really want somebody to tell me what I am doing wrong. I feel like people are laughing at me behind my back for wasting time going into the tech industry. If I am not good enough just say so. I am more than happy being miserable in retail.

Sorry for the negativity of my post.

DEV Community: Angel Young

Are these 14 sites REALLY free?

Table Of Contents

Courses

Techdegree

TLDR

Which YouTube Web Developers Do You Like to Watch?

I Did My First #CodePenChallenge

I Dual Booted Ubuntu to My Computer Over A Year Ago

Why Dual Boot?

How did I dual boot?

I Love it!

Issues with Ubuntu

In Conclusion

Preview of My New Portfolio Page

Home

About

Resume

Profile

Contact

How I am Building It?

Thanks for the response

I've been looking to break into the industry since 2018, what am I doing wrong?