TechznBlog: The Best Websites to Learn Coding Online

The Learn to Code movement( a movement which went viral among teens) with the backing of the likes of Obama and Bill Gates, is picking up momentum worldwide and it is actually a very good thing as even basic programming skills can have a major impact on you and your Imagination and Creativity. If you can teach yourself how to write code, you will gain a competitive edge over your peers, you can think more Creatively and thus you can tackle problems more efficiently.

Don’t just download the latest app, help redesign it. Don’t just play on your phone, program it. — Obama.

There is no reason in why you should not know the basics of coding. You can automate your everyday tasks, you can program your Excel sheets, improve workflows, you can extract data from websites and accomplish so much more creative with code. You may not be in the business of writing software programs but you should know the basics of coding which will help you communicate more effectively with developers.

Gone are the days when you had to enroll in expensive computer training classes as now exist a plethora of web-based courses that will surely help you learn programming at your own pace in the comfort of your web browser.

A list of Best Sites to Learn Programming

If you are ready to take the kickstart , here are some of the best websites that offer you courses in a variety of programming languages for free. I have also added a list of companion ebooks that will give you a more in-depth understanding of the language and they don’t cost anything either.

	Online Courses	Programming Books (Free)
JavaScript	Code Academy, Learn Street, Khan Academy, Code Combat, Code Avengers	Eloquent JavaScript, JavaScript Guide, Speaking JavaScript, JS The Right Way, Oh My JS
HTML & CSS	Code Academy, Don’t Fear The Internet, Tutsplus,Learn Layout, A to Z CSS,Dash, Web Accessibility,The Hello World	Mozilla, Dive into HTML5, 20 Things I Learned, HTML Dog,HTML & CSS, HTML5 for Designers, DOM Enlightenment
jQuery	Code Academy, Tutsplus,Code School	jQuery Fundamentals, Learn jQuery
Python	Code Academy, Google,Learn Street, Python Tutor,IHeartPY	Python for You and Me, Dive into Python, Learn Python the Hard Way, Think Python,Python for Fun, Tango with Django, Django
Ruby & Ruby on Rails	Code Academy,TryRuby Code Learn,Railscasts, Rubymonk,Learn Street	Why’s (Poignant) Guide to Ruby, Learn Ruby the Hard Way, Learn to Program, Learn Rails by Example
PHP	Code Academy	PHP Programming, Practical PHP
Google Apps Script	Getting Started, Office Hours, Google Scripts Examples,Learning Apps Script
WordPress	Treehouse, WordPress TV
Linux & Shell Scripting	Stanford.edu, Explain Shell	Conquer the Command Line
Node.js	Nodetuts, Node School	The Node Beginner Book,Mixu’s Node book, Node Up and Running, Mastering Node.js
Git (version control)	Code School, Git Immersion, GitHub Training	Pro Git, Learn Git
Objective-C (iOS & Mac)	Code School, Stanford, iTunesU
Chrome Dev Tools	Code School, Dev Tools Secret, Chrome Dev Tools Tutorial,Udacity
Go Language	Golang.org, GopherCasts	Programming in Go, Go by Example, Learning Go
Java	Learn Java, Coding Bat,Java Udemy, Learneroo	Programming in Java, Thinking in Java, O’Reilly Learning Java,Think Java, Java & CS, Java for Python Devs
Android App Development	Udacity (Google Developers), Coursera, The New Boston, Google University, App Development Essentials, Code Learn, App Inventor (Visual)
D3 (data visualization)	Data Visualization for the Web, Dashing D3, D3 Tips & Tricks
SQL (Databases)	SQL Zoo, SQL @Stanford, Essentail SQL, SQL for Nerds
Everything Else	Udacity, edX.org, Coursera, Udemy^$, Lynda^$, Pluralsight^$,Treehouse^$, Open Consortium, One Month Rails^$

Teach Kids to Code

If there are kids in your family, you should download either Tynker (Available Android/iOS) or the Hopscotch app for iPad and they can easily learn the basics of programming through games and puzzles.

There’s also an app called Scratch, an MIT project that allows kids to program their own stories and games visually. Scratch is also available as a web app or you can download it on your Mac/Windows/Linux computer for offline use. Blockly and Alice are also some other desktop apps that will help you in learning the concepts of computer programming to your children.

On a related note, the following chart is from Google Trends which shows the relatively search popularity of various programming languages over the last 5 years which are trending right now. JavaScript clearly has maintained the lead.