Start Over Coder

Teaching someone else to code is a great way to enhance your learning, even if you’re not too far from being a beginner yourself. In this episode I’ll talk about why, and how you can give it a try.

This episode was originally published 17 May, 2017.

If you’re new to programming you will undoubtedly come across GitHub & Git pretty early on. This episode describes the difference between the two, and explains how you’ll use both as you learn to code.

If you’re ready to get started, here are some of the beginner tutorials I found helpful when I first started using Git & GitHub:

And once you’re more comfortable, some additional resources to check out:

This episode was originally published 10 May, 2017.

After a few weeks of zero productivity, I’ve set a new learning plan for myself to learn to code. If I’m going to be a capable full-stack developer, I need a plan.

The first step is to get over the unhelpful thoughts that stopped my progress in the first place. This episode walks through those thoughts and how to overcome them.

Then I signed up for three courses to build the foundation and to keep me on track:

In addition to the courses I’ve also set weekly calendar reminders to stay on track. I expect this new game plan will help me reach my goals! Stay tuned & subscribe to see how it goes.

This episode was originally published 3 May, 2017.

Learning to code can be really overwhelming, especially if you’re doing it with the hopes of making income. The overwhelm has been hitting me over the past few weeks, and I’ll unpack that in this episode.

This episode was originally published 29 Apr, 2017.

I’ve just completed my first project where I call an API to randomly generate an inspiring quote, and this episode is all about how I did it.

One of the Free Code Camp projects that must be completed while learning JavaScript is to build a random quote generator by calling an external API, and including a button that lets people tweet the randomly generated quote. It was a great project and not as hard as I thought it would be!

Before getting started though, I spent a lot of time procrastinating. Part of that led me to the Dev Tips YouTube channel (and in particular this video), which was the inspiration behind my quote machine’s video background.

Here are the other resources mentioned in the episode:

My main takeaways / things to remember from this exercise were:

And finally, you can see the final outcome of my random quote machine on CodePen.

This episode was originally published 26 Apr, 2017.

I hit my first major stumbling block when it comes to learning to code. I say ‘first’ because I’m sure there will be more! In this episode I share what I think happened, and what I’m going to do differently to make sure this this speed bump doesn’t become a dead end.

This episode was originally published 21 Apr, 2017.

The Learn To Code series continues in this episode, as we talk about joining local coding groups!

I’m very lucky to live in a major metropolitan area where transportation is easy and there are lots of people learning to code. If that’s not the same for you, be sure to check out some of my other episodes in this series (links below). But if you live in a relatively populated area, chances are there are some in-person groups you can join up with like I have.

My first suggestion is checking out meetup.com for local groups. Enter your post/zip code and search for random terms like ‘coding,’ ‘programming,’ or the name of whatever language you’re trying to learn and hopefully you will find some meetups to join. Facebook is another good place to find local groups of people learning to code.

If you live near a coding bootcamp, you might also look into whether they offer any free or introductory courses in your area. These may turn out to be a bit of a sales pitch for their school, but you may well learn something and at the very least you’ll meet some other people who are learning to code.

Once you find a group, the practical things you need to know are to bring your laptop (and charger!), some food, and some water, just in case (spoken from experience!). In the episode I also talk about some of my impressions from a few groups I joined. But whatever your experience, go in with an open mind and be ready to put yourself out there and ask questions. Happy coding!

If you want to check out the other episodes in this Learn To Code series you can do so here:

This episode was originally published 13 Apr, 2017.

Hitting a key milestone in learning to code: that moment when you stop the coding exercises and actually build something!

After months of going through exercises and theoretical practice problems, I finally reached a point where I can see some practical uses for JavaScript. In today’s episode I share my excitement about it with you, and ask–what are some of your learning milestones?

This episode was originally published 7 Apr, 2017.

This time I talk about some ways you can learn to code online if you’re ready to shell out some cash. This is the third episode of my Learn to Code how-to series.

If you want to check out previous episodes in the series, you can start with an overview in episode 5 or find out about free online resources in episode 6.

Here are the paid courses I shared in this episode:

And here are some more I didn’t mention in the episode but are worth checking out!

I also mentioned the online bootcamp training programs. I’ll talk about bootcamps in depth in a future podcast, but to start your own research now, here are the few that I named which definitely offer online programs:

One tip–when looking at these resources, be sure to confirm that the course matches the skill level you have already reached. You don’t want to go through the basics in each new course you try if you’ve already got the basics covered! You can usually find reviews of all of these sites (and more) on sites like Quora, SwitchUp, CourseReport, and of course YouTube.

This episode was originally published 30 March, 2017.

Continuing the learn to code series, in this episode I’ll go deeper into how you can learn to code online, for FREE!

The 6 resources I talk about in the podcast are:

I also mentioned the Career Foundry blog post 20 Ways to Learn How To Code which talks about all of these resources and more–you might want to check it out for further research.

This episode was originally published 28 March, 2017.