DEV Community

Cover image for Which Tools and Resources Do You Suggest for Folks Who Are New to Programming?

Which Tools and Resources Do You Suggest for Folks Who Are New to Programming?

Ben Halpern on February 23, 2023

Starting out as a new programmer can be overwhelming, but there are plenty of tools and resources available to help you along the way! Some of our ...
Collapse
 
raibtoffoletto profile image
Raí B. Toffoletto

+1 for freeCodeCamp !! I send everyone there that wants a solid html / css / js base.

I will argue that before github a good tutorial on Git and basic CLI commands are necessary 😉

And also DEV.TO it has great begginers articles. I kicked off my dotNET Core studies from a great guide here.

Collapse
 
devarshishimpi profile image
Devarshi Shimpi

I would suggest starting with Canva for total beginners and then moving on with Figma for UI UX Designing. Again, Canva here can be used for many more tasks for simple light-weight photo editing and video editing as well. Once you got that base you can move on with Figma or Adobe XD for UI UX Designing. For Video Editing, you can go for Premiere Pro and After Effects Combo. And for Photo Editing, You can go with Photoshop.

Hope this helps!

Collapse
 
leob profile image
leob

Nice, but that's to get into design, rather than programming? Anyway, that sounds kinda right - if you want to get into design :)

Collapse
 
aneeqakhan profile image
Aneeqa Khan

I would recommend "YouTube". You can find videos on just about any programming topic you can think of.
I would also recommend Visual Studio Code for IDE

Collapse
 
coderamrin profile image
Amrin

start with Freecodecamp if you are an absolute beginner.
if you have a little knowledge of web dev or programming in general try The Odin Project.
These are open source and one of the best resources available out there.

On YouTube I recommend The Travesy Media, webdev siplified and The net ninja.

Collapse
 
optimisedu profile image
optimisedu

Odin project is great for beginners, I would advise their path over free code camp

Collapse
 
coderamrin profile image
Amrin

I've tried both I think Odin require a bit tech and coding knowledge. They start out by setting up a local enviornment. while in FCC you can just start coding without doing anything.

Collapse
 
taigadtrbl profile image
taigadtrbl

nah there's just too much to read on odin ...

Thread Thread
 
coderamrin profile image
Amrin

and those readings are important. they also have projects if you know that and those projects are very practical.

Thread Thread
 
taigadtrbl profile image
taigadtrbl

Yh I do ... I took their foundations Course and it really helped me understand a lot of stuff, but for me taking a fullstack js or ruby course there would be too painful ... For a new programmer reading large volumes of content isn't the best way to go about learning, I personally think short videos along with tad bit of documents and a lotta mini projects would get you working faster ...
And Note that programming does not explicitly refer to web development (which is what The Odin's Project is mostly about), so i think anyone thinking of programming should consider their interest (by messing around on yt and google) or what jobs they want to take, this would determine what content source is suitable for them...
But of cos if anyone wants to go into web development then TOP(if you don't mind reading a lotta stuff) and FreeCodeCamp have amazing resources to start with.

I recommend Checking :

For Web: Free Code Camp, Fireship(yt), web.dev, TOP, codecademy

Mobile App: Hyperskill(Free Kotlin Course), Flutter/dart docs and yt tutorials, MS .net shows

Data science: DataCamp(Freemium), Kaggle, CognitiveClass.ai, dataquest.

just a few i can remember now....

but what ever path you choose (Cloud Computing, Game development, Systems programming) there's lotta free content to learn from, you just have to search.

Collapse
 
gingerkiwi profile image
GingerKiwi • Edited

Scrimba, especially the Frontend Developer Career Path.

Plus:

  • select YouTube (eg Kevin Powell for CSS)
  • using the Pomordo technique
  • doing the #100DaysOfCode challenge.
  • VSCode for writing code. Use handy extensions like Emmet (code completion), coloured brackets, …
  • GitHub for sharing your code and Git for version control
  • Obsidian for documentation in markup (keep your notes in here. It formats code blocks including colour coding)
  • Start documenting your journey by posting your daily learning to LinkedIn
  • Andrew’s Coffee Chats for a great bimonthly Zoom for new Devs
  • Dear Junior Devs for support and building a professional network

I’ve done Udemy, coursera, university courses, CS50, and LinkedIn Learning.

SCRIMBA is interactive, project based, and a comprehensive curriculum with a really supportive online community and weekly (optional) synchronous Town hall meetings.

The platform is built on VSCode - the industry standard code editor. You can - pause the “scrims” (videos) and interact with the code,

  • see the results in an integrated mini browser,
  • download the project and open in vs code,
  • voice record your own scrim to share, and
  • save notes.

There’s free community code reviews on the discord community.

The final couple of modules in the Frontend program focus on getting a job. Doing just the short LinkedIn module plus applying things from Andrew’s Coffee Chats has resulted in recruiters contacting me for technical writing jobs (my focus while I’m working on my web dev skills)

As a former teacher I can see the thought that goes into the curriculum.

You can start with some of the free courses (eg Html and CSS) to get a feel for things.

scrimba.com/learn/htmlandcss

scrimba.com/learn/learnjavascript

There’s also brand new React Router course for those of us more along our self teaching paths.

scrimba.com/learn/reactrouter6

@bookercodes Can answer lots of questions.

Collapse
 
mikhasev profile image
Mikhail Mikhasev

i love Scrimba. Really the only one that worked for me. Freecodecamp and Odin probably are good to, but my motivation is lacking. Scrimba is the best fit because you code and solve challenges in each scrim. + creators are really nice people. I love scrimba townhalls. Worth every penny!

Collapse
 
andyrosenberg profile image
AndyRosenberg • Edited

As an aid to written resources and videos, I always recommend Exercism. They have great exercises in just about every language.

Also the school I started with has a bunch of free resources:
free books

Collapse
 
chrisgreening profile image
Chris Greening • Edited

I usually recommend Youtube and/or Udemy for getting the

  • syntax
  • basic control flow
  • simple project ideas
  • etc.

but with a followup emphasis on being curious all the time, diving into project-based learning, and getting their hands dirty in the code ASAP (while also emphasizing not to get discouraged if they don't know something or if they make mistakes, every mistake is an opportunity to learn)

I also recommend seeking community on DEV, Twitter, etc. even if to just get exposed to and inspired by others talking about learning, building, etc. Validation and support is sooo critical when you're starting out

Collapse
 
frankfont profile image
Frank Font

Coffee and a positive attitude.

Collapse
 
mikeyolang profile image
Michael Otieno Olang

I do prefer YouTube. I think YouTube has a lot of beginner videos for programming at your disposal. The big challenge is maybe knowing the best channel to follow. I would also suggest the documentations

Collapse
 
calinzbaenen profile image
Calin Baenen

In terms ov tools, Rust and Cargo.

Sure, it'll be hard to get into for people who are new to programming, but after them getting up and lifted, they will stay motivated to keep programming because the workflow is good.
The design ov crates are easy to follow along and using Cargo do things is such a breeze.

In terms ov learning programming, I would go with Sololearn or W3Schools.
(... And DEV, depending on if you can get seen or not.)

Collapse
 
ilyasbabu profile image
Ilyas Babu

I would suggest to use VIM from the beginning, since it would be difficult to later switch from another IDE to VIM. One great thing I have ever done in my career is switching to VIM from VSCode.

Collapse
 
theoriginalbpc profile image
Sarah Dye

The Learn to Code with Me blog is great for new programmers. I also recommend new programmers take Colt Steele's The Web Developer Bootcamp course because his teaching style is great for understanding coding concepts.

Collapse
 
symon profile image
Symon Michael • Edited

IMHO:

It all depends on what you want to (or think you might want) to do. I second the vote for YouTube, especially if you're on a budget. You'll probably have to wade through some things that don't seem to fit your particular learning style, but it's worth the effort - there is great info and most of it's free, so you can experiment with things without spending any money.

Beyond that, for continuing education I've found Udemy to be great, and they seem to be running pricing specials all the time. Most recently I've also been working my way through Mosh Hamedani's excellent focused training because I have to level-up at work (codewithmosh.com). I'm a DevOps guy who leans more toward the Ops side of the coin, but these tutorials have been fairly easy to get through and understand.

(and yeah, I finally made my peace with VSCode as a working tool. Just take your time with it, it truly rocks!)

-->S.

Collapse
 
xzerberusgates profile image
xZerberusGates

I would recommend learning how to use chatGPT. You can use an extention AIPRM .
AIPRM has a prompt called HTML & CSS Hero. This prompt acts as an expert in HTML and CSS. It isn't 100% accurate so take that into consideration. But, overall the information provided is high quality and learning how to effectively communicate with the prompt really makes it a great value.

One high-quality and concise HTML tutorial that I can recommend is HTML on web.dev. I see a lot of video based tutorials and enjoy them but this text-based tutorial is worth the read.

Finally, I would recommend DevURLs. This is a news aggregator for developers. You can search for something specific, or go through articles on various blogs/websites ( also customizable)

Collapse
 
nricks profile image
nricks • Edited

I would just say whatever you do, read on the daily. even reddit is growing a lot on me lately.
chatgpt with time might become one of the best teachers you could ever ask for, but never really rely only on online sources, finding a real person that can mentor you and inspire you is far more important on the road to becoming the best you could ever be, especially in programming, where there can be a lot of stress and it's the brain doing the heavy lifting.

Collapse
 
andrewbaisden profile image
Andrew Baisden

ChatGPT because its almost like having a senior developer sat next to you.

Collapse
 
jonashdown profile image
Jon Ashdown

1.) find an easy problem to solve, choose a programming language to solve it, find a cheatsheet to help learn the language (devhints.io might help), find some some docs on the language of choice. understand the syntax and constructs of the language.
2.) Reflect on what you built, improve it
3.) Find a harder problem, read up on BDD/TDD and version control. Use BDD/TDD to implement each requirement of the solution.
4). Reflect on what you built, improve it
5). Learn the command line and IDE of choice

Collapse
 
pearldere profile image
Pearl 🧚🏾‍♂️

I would recommend YouTube to learn code concepts.
And Exercism to practice the concepts.
Visual Studio Code for IDE.

Collapse
 
xanderyzwich profile image
Corey McCarty

Automatetheboringstuff.com for anyone learning how to code from nothing. It's the best book that I've ever read for breaking down the dev process.

Collapse
 
ebuka1anthony profile image
ebuka anthony

100 devs is the best out there

leonnoel.com/100devs/

Collapse
 
trapajim profile image
Tobias

I think cheat.sh/ is a great ressource.
It's easy to look up things quickly and with /:learn you even can get a guide / tutorial.

Collapse
 
urwissen profile image
Lars

scrimba.com for the best interactive learning experience.

Collapse
 
kael007 profile image
Kael

Thanks I've picked up some good suggestions from here.

Personally I use YouTube for knowledge and for a project I am currently working through The Cloud Resume Challenge which I'm enjoying.