I want to teach you how to program computers.
In today's day and age it has never been easier to enter the world of computer programming. Pretty much every adult has a computer that is capable of writing some kind of computer code, even if it's an old laptop that you've had forever.
All you need is a desire to learn and a willingness to keep trying when you don't get it right away. There is no magic bullet. You will get frustrated - that's true no matter what you're learning. If you're willing to take on this challenge, then this course will help guide you.
This is a question that only you can answer. Perhaps you run a small business and it's time to expand online and want to launch your own website. Perhaps you've launched your own Twitch stream and want to build integrations to interact with your audience. Perhaps you have a unique idea for an app that will save you and others time and money. Perhaps you want to exercise your mind to stay sharp. Perhaps it's none of the above. Code is how we interact with the technology in the world around us, so it's worth knowing how to use it.
This course is completely free. There's no pro plan, there's no locked features, there's only limited fanciness. If you have the time and money to pay for a more polished and refined course, here are several I recommend:
In order to be successful in this course, you will only need a couple things:
A Desire to Learn - I can't give you this, and you can't buy it. If you don't want to learn how to write code, then don't! It's that simple. There is no guarantee that you will finish this course and get a better paying job or even a job at all. Without a desire, you will not make it through this course, you will have no reason to stick with it. If you do not have a desire to code, stop here, do not continue reading, this is not for you.
A Computer - It is possible to write code on smart phones and tablets, but it is not intuitive and is not recommended. You should have either a laptop or a desktop computer running MacOS, Linux, or Windows. Windows will be slightly more work, because it is not as "commandline friendly", but it will do the trick.
Internet Access - Several pieces of the course interact with videos or outside resources, so having access to the internet is pretty important. You will need to get (fork and clone) this repository onto your programming computer (explained in detail later) which will require that the computer you are learning on has internet access.
That's It.
You don't need anything else. If you have those three things, you are ready to begin.
This is a basic Computer Science program. This course will plot a rough course through topics that you would normally be taught at a university in a computer science program. However, this course is NOT accredited. You cannot say you have a degree after completing this course, people will laugh at you. This course will also not go as in-depth as a university program would, because there actually are useless parts of college. Sorry, college.
Each module is a new language or skill. Each module will attempt to teach you what you need to know to put that language or skill into immediate use. Each module will also feature some waypoints that check to make sure you are still headed in the right direction. Much like a sailer will check the stars to see that they are still headed towards... wherever they're going... you will have opportunities to check that you actually understood what you just learned. If you cheat or skip over these, you only hurt yourself, no one else.
This course is Open Source. If you see something wrong or something that could be improved, it would be awesome if you suggested a fix, or even better, if you helped fix it (which this course will teach you how to do). Learning to program can be daunting, but together, we can make it accessible to every single person.
Together, we can teach the world to code.
If you're ready, Begin here.
- Mozilla's Web Development Course
- Real World OCaml (Yeah, I had to slip this in)