At first, they may all seem very overwhelming, but if you can get a good start, before you know it you will be on your way to mastering code. How do I know this? Well, I used to be like you too. I had no idea about coding or where to start. But, after going through several websites and courses, I found myself on track to my career, and now I’m the web developer and designer of my own little web design firm.
Grasping all of the concepts of code may seem difficult at first, but if you really focus and be persistence, you will eventually understand them all. However, if you plan on starting a career, coding is not going to be enough. I actually followed a series of courses in different online schools to get where I am today, and I’m going to tell you exactly what I did to start building my career in coding.
CodeAcademy
Codeacademy is the best place to start learning to code. With practical and easy to understand courses in HTML, CSS, PHP and many more programming languages, this site will make sure to get you through the basics without burning you out.
Before you begin learning, it’s important that you choose which path you want to take. Learning every single course on the site is not going to help you understand everything, it will only make things worse. So, first decide if you want to be a web developer, an app developer, or a game designer, and then start with the course that suits you the most.
W3Schools
From the beginning I knew I want to be a web designer. So, I started with HTML, CSS and PHP courses on Codeacademy. Those courses were very short and only covered the basics, and I wanted to go deep. So, I decided to go old-school and learn some more about PHP on W3Schools.
This site is the best place to get some intermediate coding lessons and put what you learned to test. I spent a long time learning on this site because PHP was a little difficult for me to understand, but when I finally did I was ready to learn more.
Code School
A lot of courses on Code School are free, but the best one’s are only accessible to paid users, which costs $29 per month. But, if you could spend just $29 for one month access, you can actually learn a lot through this site in a month.
When I was done learning HTML, CSS and PHP, I decided to take on Javascript. Just like before, I started Javascript from a course on Codeacademy and then W3School. But Code School was the place where I fully understood the language.
Code School has various kinds of other courses as well, like Ruby, Git and even iOS app development. Their courses are also very user friendly and fun to watch.
Udemy
Once I learned the coding part, I thought I was ready to start designing websites. And I actually designed several websites, but they weren’t good. I tried over and over but they all seemed to be missing something. I started looking around and found something called User Experience Design (UXD), which actually takes a crucial part in web design and many other product designs.
I found this impressive UXD course on Udemy and learned the concepts and theories about designing a product that people loves. After landing a special promotion I managed to get this $99 course for just $10 and it was worth every single penny spent.
After finishing the course, I extended my learning and found several other websites and how-to guides that taught me how to implement those UXD theories to design a great website. And that folks, is how I started out my web design career.
This may not be the best way to learn to code, but I wanted to show you that making a career out of something you learn online can be done, and it will only cost you a few dollars. Sure, there are other free sites that offer the same courses at no cost, but remember, if you want to learn something right, you must be prepared to give it something in return.
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Follow @nrjperera – Roshan Jerad Perera
