Learning to Code

This collection was created by AlphaPlus in December 2018 in response to a literacy practitioner question about where people can learn to code.

If you would like to update, extend, expand or enhance this site for your program or work with us on another technology project, please get in touch.

Why learn to code?

Mitch Resnick, this TED Talk, proposes that digital fluency

comes not through interacting with new technologies, but through creating them. The former is like reading, while the latter is like writing. He means this figuratively — that creating new technologies, like writing a book, requires creative expression — but also literally: to make new computer programs, you actually must write the code.

The point isn’t to create a generation of programmers, Resnick argues. Rather, it’s that coding is a gateway to broader learning. “When you learn to read, you can then read to learn. And it’s the same thing with coding: If you learn to code, you can code to learn,” he says. Learning to code means learning how to think creatively, reason systematically and work collaboratively. And these skills are applicable to any profession — as well as to expressing yourself in your personal life, too.

from here

This site will link you to places to learn to code online. You can learn the basics this way and understand more how the interfaces and apps are built. You can explore this field to see if this is something you would like to pursue as a career. These sites are introductory - people who want to become developers will go onto study at colleges or universities.

From here:

Some who have set their sights on learning to program have found it to be a steep climb. Andrew Hyde, 27, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, has worked at start-ups and is now writing a travel book. He said he leaped at the chance to take free coding classes online.

“If you’re working around start-ups and watching programmers work, you’re always a little bit jealous of their abilities,” he said. But despite his enthusiasm, he struggled to translate the simple commands he picked up through Codecademy into real-world development. “It feels like we’re going to be taught how to write the great American novel, but we’re starting out by learning what a noun is,” he said.

...Seasoned programmers say learning how to adjust the layout of a Web page is one thing, but picking up the skills required to develop a sophisticated online service or mobile application is an entirely different challenge. That is the kind of technical education that cannot be acquired by casual use for a few hours at night and on the weekends, they say.