HN Explorer

Ask HN: Recommended Online Coding Courses?

8 points by jeffool ↗ HN
Wow, I feel like a child writing this. I realize this comes up too often, but I'll be darned if I could find it off-hand.

About me: I used to know a little C++. I attended a CS program (made a bunch of simple games and shmups, and with friends made a Rampage clone and an abysmal 3d action shooter) but I didn't graduate. That was in 2004, so you can imagine how it's all faded from my head with such disuse.

Now, like many, I've got an idea or two itching at me for a few site ideas and I'd like to cut my teeth making them myself. I have little knowledge about doing so, aside from the simple HTML we've all picked up in forums and chats since... 1996? I'd love any suggestions as to the quality people are finding in online courses and what they've done with what they've gained there.

For what it's worth, the (more recent) similar questions I found to this seemed to concentrate on "what avenue should I take? Make a site myself?" I know I want to do that. I'm just curious how do I find out which languages/tools would be best for me to learn? What site will help me learn what tool will best serve my functions? To tell when I'll need HTML/Javascript/PHP/oh-God-what-are-Rails?!/etc to cover this task or that in running a site and make tools for chatting, forums, profiles, etc? And then where do you recommend learning it?

I know a lot of stuff can be installed and ran out of the box. I have a Wordpress blog for instance. But, this is about learning, so any good course recommendations are truly welcome.

6 comments

[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 24.9 ms ] thread
freshfey
If your goal is to build a web application, I'd suggest railstutorial.org. It basically picks up from your HTML skills and shows you how most of the things are done these days.

A great alternative would be treehouse, which helps you to answer this question at the first screen (what do you want to learn? web design, development or mobile development?).

Go through the tutorials, build some stuff and use stackoverflow when stuck.

tonyjwang
I was in a similar position as you: C++ experience from AP Comp Sci courses in high school, CS106X (accelerated intro-level CS course at Stanford, ended up majoring in something else), and Wordpress hacking from various projects. Worked through Rails for Zombies, why's (poignant) guide to ruby, but none of them really stuck for me.

www.teamtreehouse.com OTOH, has been great. easy-to-understand videos with logical progression.

brudgers
Personally, I find books better than online resources when it comes to self directed learning.
hmgauna
Hi,

If you are interested in front-end learning, I've found this useful for myself: http://www.codecademy.com They have sort of interactive tutorials to go through js, jQuery, html, etc. I shall say that I was a complete newbie to programming (though I knew a lot about HTML/CSS). Codeacademy is meant to teach from scratch, so it may be a little boring to you. Anyways, it can help if you want to catch up in some of the most renowned front-end practices.

By the way, «...and use stackoverflow when stuck», great advise from freshfey.

Hope it helps!

7gramroxg
choose a platform/technology, download the sdk or any other dependencies, then start looking at sample code. If you know c++ then you at least have a grasp on how a computer carries out tasks pro-grammatically, its all the same in principle so jump in head first and dont beat about the bush!

If web stuff is where you interest lies then you should follow every tutorial on w3cschools and by the time you have gone through that you will be primed