Coding Starter Kit

From answering the most basic programming questions to helping you figure out which language you should start with and free tutorials, the Coding Starter Kit is your one stop shop to learn programming.

Coding 101

What does it mean: front-end, back-end, full-stack?

Most websites have two parts: what you see and behind the scenes. Front-end is responsible for everything users see and interact with. Back-end refers to the website's internal workings: a server, an application, and a database. Full-stack developers are fluent in both front- and back- end.

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I have a coding question. What should I do?

Chances are people have asked the same question and shared their answers online. Websites like StackOverflow can be viewed as an encyclopedia while Reddit threads, such as /learnprogramming, are welcoming to beginners. You can also work with a mentor who will guide you through the problem.

How to Ask Good Coding Questions That Get Great Answers

What is open source?

Open source code is designed to be publicly accessible. Anyone can see, contribute, modify, and distribute the code as they see fit. Many open source projects are hosted on GitHub. Popular open source projects include Firefox, WordPress, Linux, MySQL.

What is open source?

What is version control, Git, and GitHub?

Version control is essentially a history of your code — you can view earlier versions to compare changes. Tools such as Git keep track of your modifications in a special kind of database. GitHub is a cloud-based service that makes it easy to use Git for version control and collaboration.

What Is Git And How To Use It

What's a code editor, and which one should I use?

A code editor is like Google Docs, but specifically for coding. The only two features you truly need is the ability to write text, and the ability to save that text to a file, everything else comes down to personal preference. Some popular ones are Visual Studio Code, Atom, and Vim.

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Free Tutorials

Split into web development, data science and analytics, and mobile app development, we've linked to the best free starter videos, tutorials, and interactive courses to help you get started.

Web Development

Web development is the art of building and maintaining websites. It's what makes every website you visit possible. Web development is composed of the front-end (user-facing side) and back-end (server side). Popular front-end languages include HTML, JavaScript, and React, with Node.JS is a popular back-end choice. Some languages, such as JavaScript, can handle both front- and back-end when used with other languages.

HTML

The most basic building block of the Web, HTML is a great language for beginners. On its own, HTML will allow you to build email templates and basic webpages. It's a good-to-have skill even if you don't decide to become a developer. HTML can be combined with CSS for styling, or scripting languages (e.g. JavaScript) to create interactive websites.

JavaScript

React

One of the most-sought after skills, React is a powerful JavaScript framework with a low entry barrier and low learning curve. It's specifically used to build the user interface (UI) on single-page applications, meaning you'll be able to create dynamic web applications. Instagram and Netflix were both built with React.

Node.js

If you want to be a full-stack developer, Node.js is a great starting point to using JavaScript for back-end development. It's a language built for performance while maintaining the simplicity of JavaScript. Node.js is mainly used for web development, but can also be used for software infrastructure and IoT projects.
Within 15 min, I was online with a seasoned engineer who was editing my code and pointing out my errors… this was the first time I’ve ever experienced the potential of the Internet to transform learning.
Tomasz Tungz
Venture capitalist at Repoint Ventures

Data Science & Analysis

Data Science and Analytics, as the name suggests, deals with data. Data Science focuses on finding actionable insights from large sets of raw and structured data. Their main goal is to ask questions and locate potentials by analysing massive datasets, often using Python. Data Analytics is more focused. They usually have a question in mind and analyse existing datasets to find solutions with languages, such as SQL.

Mobile App

With the exploding popularity of mobile phones and tablets, mobile app development has been in high demand in recent years. Native apps are apps that are designed specifically for a certain operation system,  iOS or Android, are the most common type. Android apps are usually written with Kotlin, while Swift is the language of choice for iOS apps.

Kotlin

Supported by Google, Kotlin is the language to learn if you're looking to build Android apps. It's concise, straightforward, and designed to be a powerhouse. Kotlin perfectly intergrates with Android Studio, so you'll be able to hit the ground running. Kotlin is also compatible with the extensive Java libraries available.

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