Code School: Best way to learn programming online

While there are many sites for learning programming online, Code School sets itself apart with high quality screencasts, PDFs and in-browser coding challenges.

If you’re a newbie at programming and want to kickstart your career by learning programming online, you’re left with a lot of choice. There’s CodeAcademy, Khan Academy, Udacity and many others.

Code School is a similar site which I stumbled upon recently, and I was really impressed with it. It seems to better than all the sites I’ve tried before.

code-school

The main thing which sets Code School apart is their high quality screencasts – which is a much better way to learn than going through documentation (especially for beginners).

After you have watched the screencasts, you’ll be able to write code in browser itself, completing challenges. As you complete a course, corresponding badge will be added to your profile page, which you can make public for sharing with others.

I have started learning Git and it’s going really well. Apart from screencasts, you’ll also be given access to slides for referring to later.

The courses are pretty good in number, covering most of web designing (HTML5, CSS3, JQuery), iOS development, Git, Ruby and lot more. If the course you wanted isn’t listed, you can ping and ask them on Twitter, they’re pretty active there.

While Code School isn’t exactly free, they do provide few of the courses for free and more over, you can have access to all courses for free for 48 hours when you sign up initially. If your friends sign up for Code School under your referral link, you’ll be getting free access for 2 extra days.

Link: Code School

7 Comments

SAJITHA January 2, 2013

@Vibin Could you suggest any good sites for school-going kids to learn coding?

Vibin January 2, 2013

I wouldn’t recommend school going children to learn coding, first of all. 🙂

Rahul Bansal January 2, 2013

I am not sure about kids but http://www.codechef.com/ has different competition levels.

My idea is to learn by doing rather than following tutorials.

IMHO math, coding, sports are few things that improves with practice.

Aditya Kane January 2, 2013

Kind of agree with the both of you. Would not recommend kids learning the next newly popular coding language, as it might just become obsolete in a few years. Also children might not enjoy programming and might actually develop a distaste for it in later life.

But if a child is truly gifted then allowing them to explore algorithms and slightly advanced math is better than a programming language.

SAJITHA January 2, 2013

I have read somewhere online about some games for kids which gives the basic idea of coding. There are already learning-toys are available in market for kids even below 2 years age . Then why not Coding games?

Vibin January 3, 2013

You should probably make them learn advanced math and try to increase their IQ, because coding is more about the logic part than syntax or the algorithm.

SAJITHA January 3, 2013

Thanks @Vibin, @RahulBansal, @Aditya Kane. Great advice. It is really practicable.