7 Awesome Resources To Sharpen Your Coding Skills

With a growing emphasis on STEM jobs like never before; and many governments from all over the world facilitating and fueling the startup culture, learning to code is fast becoming a must-have skill in your arsenal.
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Coding - That word can scare away a lot of people. It is also the thing that confers special "nerd" status to some people.

With a growing emphasis on STEM jobs like never before; and many governments from all over the world facilitating and fueling the startup culture; learning to code is fast becoming a must-have skill in your arsenal.

The good news is that learning to code is easier than ever before. It is no longer necessary to painstakingly follow through a brick-sized book to work wonders on your screen (or fall asleep on your keyboard!).

Today, there are amazing online sites and tools that not only make it easy but also extremely engaging for the learner, which it is neither too early not too late to start.

Here are some amazing free resources:

CodeCademy is fast emerging as the leading resource for coding resources. They are focused on building a great learning experience and their interactive learning feature easily makes it one of the best options to get started or advance in this skill. They focus on taking all their cues from the real online world rather than a classroom.

Khan Academy makes learning anything look easy. They have online classes for everything from kindergarten to space technology. It's a treasure-trove for learners and teachers alike- and they also have a great feature where parents can monitor what the child is learning replete with statistics on proficiency levels in the subject. It's hardly surprising that they have some of the most comprehensive programming tutorials.

PythonGuru is an online resource that designed specifically for learning the programming language Python. Peppered with plenty of easy-to-follow examples and quizzes, Python Guru covers it all from beginner to advanced stages of learning the programming language.

EdX is a collaborative effort between two of the world's leading educational institutions- MIT and Harvard. With such a pedigree, it's no wonder that EdX is one of the leading providers of online education and they cater to needs ranging from earning credits in high-school to providing skills needed to advance in your career. While many of the courses are free, they also have options that help you earn credits for specific courses for a fee.

Open EdX is a sister initiative that calls for contributions from a wider community to help provide a solid open-source learning platform.

Udemy is another great repository for online learning that hosts online courses from experts all around the world. The courses are neatly categorized into levels of proficiency and free or paid offerings.

Hosted by the world's leading University, MIT OpenCourseware aims to remove obstacles to learning for people from all over the world by putting virtually all MIT content online. They offer advanced courses in programming and many other streams.

If you are building a business and are looking for creative ways to use open-source software for your application, GitHub is the place to look for. They host some of the largest collections of hosting services for personal projects, open-source software and third-party tools for easy integration. Their community boasts of some of the most advanced developers in the world.

These resources make it fun and interesting to learn, especially becasue most of them come with the added support of a robust online community. Having the great online support with the added advantage of pacing it on your own schedule in the privacy of your own home, obviously makes for a killer combination.

Which one of these are you going to try?

About the Author:

Devishobha is the founder of Kidskintha- where parenting is inspired by kids. It's a specialised content zone for two important facets that touch a child's life- Parenting and Education. Get your own FREE eBook "53 Timeless Parenting Hacks To Raise Happy Kids" here.

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