I recently met someone (while camping for the eclipse) who was interested in getting started in programming, seemed really eager and had a similar background to me, with college (meh) and lots of tinkering and side projects. He asked if I had any resources and given how much I prefer to pay things forward and share information freely, I got his email and threw this list of resources together, but thought it sounded like some good content for the old blog just so I can keep the list updated and, you know, SEO. So without further adieu, here’s a list of a few of the resources that helped me get started early on, and more recently.

For specific starting points, I’d probably install vscode and git if you haven’t already, start going through Javascript: The Good Parts and maybe one of the + study guides, get in a habit of checking news.ycombinator.com every day or so, and start practicing problems on hackerrank.com. The learnprogramming subreddit may have an even better structured getting started guide too, so maybe give that a look too.

Version control

Just use git.

Version control is one of the best tools for software because you can save your work as you go, and always go back to any point in the past or see what you changed, as long as you were consistently committing your changes. There’s also the concept of “branches” which is a great way to go work on some new feature without losing track of what is currently considered the “main” (probably live) version of code.

• Official book: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2
• Official site: https://git-scm.com
• Haven’t tried this but it was pretty popular on hackernews yesterday: https://ohmygit.org/
• A course I found (don’t pay for certificates): https://www.codecademy.com/learn/learn-git

Editors

There are a lot of great free tools out there for working with code, so I figured I’d start with some of the more popular ways of working with code:

• VSCode: a free editor from microsoft, and probably the most popular editor out there, with lots of great plugins for different languages and environments: https://code.visualstudio.com/
• NeoVim: honorable mention because it’s a steep learning curve, but the one that I use because it’s very productive. https://neovim.io/
  • If you do want to learn vim (and neovim), a couple sites:
    • https://vim-adventures.com/
    • https://www.openvim.com/

Books:

• Network+ Study Guide - good for learning some of the core concepts of networking: https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Network-Certification-N10-008-Comptia/dp/1264269056/
• Security+ Study Guide - helpful for learning a lot of the really cool things about cryptography and security. Also been pretty helpful for my career, having some broader knowledge about security: https://www.amazon.com/CompTIA-Security-Study-Practice-Questions/dp/1394211414
• Javascript: The Good Parts - Definitely a bit dated now, but helpful for learning some of the fundamentals of javascript - https://www.amazon.com/JavaScript-Good-Parts-Douglas-Crockford/dp/0596517742
• Don’t Make Me Think - A helpful book on how to design for your users and has definitely influenced a lot of how I try to build things - https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Make-Think-Revisited-Usability/dp/0321965515
• Pro git (online): https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2

Online courses:

• https://ocw.mit.edu/: MIT Open Courseware - free lectures from MIT that helped me get a better understanding of comp sci despite not having a degree in it:

These courses might make more sense with a bit more programming experience, especially the advanced ones, but very useful. I mostly just watched or listened to the lecture videos while driving or doing other mindless things

• https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-006-introduction-to-algorithms-spring-2020/
• https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-046j-design-and-analysis-of-algorithms-spring-2015/
• https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-851-advanced-data-structures-spring-2012/
• https://ocw.mit.edu/courses/6-001-structure-and-interpretation-of-computer-programs-spring-2005/

News sites:

• Hacker news - one of the best for anybody looking to just keep up with things other engineers are working on plus industry news: https://news.ycombinator.com/
• Reddit in general is usually pretty solid: https://reddit.com, https://www.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/
• Slower site but still pretty quality: https://lobste.rs/

Sites:

• https://learnxinyminutes.com/ - helpful for seeing different languages and how they work at a very high level, mostly useful with a bit of understanding of syntax
• https://leetcode.com/ - practice problems for when you just want to practice coding, or want to practice algorithms+data structures, which is more critical for code that handles lots of data at once
• https://www.hackerrank.com/ - Another practice problems site, but I found this one more useful early on since I think it tends to have better beginner problems
• https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/ - Subreddit with lots of great resources, probably some better than mine
• https://www.reddit.com/r/learnprogramming/wiki/faq/ - Same, but the FAQ which has direct links to some good resources
• https://todomvc.com/ - A site that goes over some of the modern frameworks, with working examples you can tweak and watch how things change

Youtube:

Definitely helpful watching conference talks for popular frameworks and tools, like:

• React conf (might just search youtube for playlists too) but from 2021: https://www.youtube.com/@ReactConf-gu9cu
• JSConf for javascript: https://www.youtube.com/@jsconf_/playlists
• Gopher academy, hosts a lot of the Go conference videos: https://www.youtube.com/@GopherAcademy
• Primeagen: a relatively new popular dev influencer, might be good to watch to get some exposure to programming terms and concepts plus he’s entertaining - https://www.youtube.com/@ThePrimeagen