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Ask HN: Course material to teach (adult) friends how to code?

4 points by walski ↗ HN
Hey,

a couple of friends asked me if we can arrange a weekly workshop where I introduce them to the basic of coding. I like the idea but hardly know where to start. The variety of material that is out there is huge and it's hard to judge what is good and what's not.

I'm basically looking for something like a "course book" that walks our group through the basics with hands on examples etc. It should be "fun" and not strictly academic. I don't care which topic the course is about (hardware hacking? web? game dev? whatever) as long as it's well thought though :)

Thanks for any recommendations!

Thorben

7 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 21.7 ms ] thread
jonjacky
This is a brief but comprehensive course book for novices: web including HTML and CSS, command line, Python, Django, git, hosting, deployment ... It gives step-by-step directions for making a simple blogging platform in Python/Django. It has been tested in use in workshops. It's not just for girls.

Django Girls Tutorial http://tutorial.djangogirls.org/en/

brudgers
This course from Coursera.

https://www.coursera.org/course/digitalmedia

It assumes very little technical expertise. It uses Processing so it's both powerful in an interesting direction and designed specifically for beginners. It's cool and your friends can pursue it at their own pace [removes a dependency on your time and patience].

Good luck.

dman
Back when I was getting started, reading this page helped me immensely - Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years (http://norvig.com/21-days.html) . Once I read it, I felt a lot more relaxed and learned to pace myself over a longer timeline. I try to pay it forward by mentioning it to people who are just getting into the field.