Question of the Week: Your Go-To Programming Resources

Community Town Square
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What are your go-to resources as you’re learning to code? (i.e., podcasts, blogs, YouTube channels, books, favorite GitHub repos, etc.)

Feel free to include links or names to your go-to resources so others can enjoy them too. :smiley:

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In no particular order

  • documentation (some is better than others, but I almost always refer to it because it can often uncover some interesting side-bits)
  • respected/up-to-date reference material (books). Extra points if the respect comes from mentors, as they have a different vantage point.
  • podcasts! There’s a lot of stuff I’ve picked up from podcasts, sometimes practical and sometimes it’s just nice and refreshing to see how other tech people think.
  • long-form interviews, conferences… because long-form rocks
  • water-cooler conversation - admittedly, it’s no longer over the water cooler… but this can get me to see different angles or get me motivated in different ways when sharing something that I’ve been studying.

What this looks like:

Some podcasts:

  • History and unix: Command-line heroes
  • Python: Talk Python to me
  • Cybersecurity: Cyberwire Daily, Darknet Diaries, Down the Security Rabbithole

Long-form interviews or conferences:

  • Lex Fridman interviews (particular highlights for any developer of the major languages: C++, C, Python, JS, and one with Stephen Wolfram also stands out in my memory) but also remote-higher education shifts (with the Dean of Georgia Tech, pioneer university in remote-learning before it was cool)
  • Any conferences with Simon Peyton Jones over Haskell.

Youtube superstars:

  • MIT lectures (too many to name, they’re almost all both dense informationally and also very inspring)
  • Corey Schafer (python)
  • 3blue1brown (math, stats, ai: great conceptual imagination and communication)
  • Blackpenredpen (math again, knack for finding interesting gnarly problems)
  • Numberphile, computerphile
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As I go over many of the JS courses for a second time, I find myself referencing the MDN documentation a lot more this time around. As I was going through the first time around, much of the MDN terminology was going over my head and as such, I didn’t understand much of it. This has made me realize that, depending on where you are in your learning path, the resources you use to help you along might change as you understand more concepts. Lastly, Books! Good, in depth books. Currently for me learning JS, the “Javascript The Definitive Guide” is great.

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I recently made a video on this same topic, CodeCademy was definitely one of my go to resources.

Check it out here :point_right:t5: https://youtu.be/ldOcw9sIso0

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  1. Official documentation – It’s there for a reason! Someone spent countless hours to make and maintain it, don’t let that go to waste!

  2. Stack Overflow – Chances are, if I’m having a problem, someone else has had the same problem before me and asked about it there.

  3. Programming Discord servers – I’m a moderator over at the Codecademy Discord server, so I might be a little biased, but I find Discord to be a great place to ask programming-related questions. There are tons of servers that focus on everything from a particular language or framework all the way to general programming or data science. Often, the core maintainers for a given project are members of the server as well and you can get advice from straight from the person who’s building it.

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General resources:

  • Google is your friend! (other search engines are available) This is hands down the fastest way to get more details on an error code, a function, a specific problem etc. Being good at searching for answers is a key skill for programmers.
  • Stack Overflow is where you’ll normally end up from your search. If you’re ever stuck on something that hasn’t been posted already, the community are super helpful.
  • Documentation isn’t always that easy to read, and definitely isn’t always equal, but getting used to reading documentation is definitely worthwhile. It’ll often open you open to some alternative approaches and functions you can use.

Podcasts:

  • The Stack Overflow Podcast is a really nice general podcast on the world of programming. It’s a good place to go to keep up to date with the wider world of software engineering, and not just the area you work on most.
  • Soft Skills Engineering is a very entertaining advice show on non-technical questions about technical roles.
  • Towards Data Science Podcast (data specific) is a regular interview show with data experts from around the world.

Blogs / Other Resources:

  • Towards Data Science is often behind a paywall, but a really great place for tutorials, demonstrations, opinion and reporting on the world of data science.
  • Reddit has a tonne of subcomunities for different languages and areas, lots with beginner and intermediate showcases. I’d strongly recommend that as a way of seeing a range of code- looking only at really advanced projects can be a bit intimidating, so it’s helpful to get a range.
  • Codecademy forums (obviously): You’re already here, so maybe not worth mentioning, but people are posting there projects up here all the time. You can often gain as much from helping someone earlier on their journey as from looking at more complex examples. I’ve found reading other peoples code and giving feedback, as well as getting it on my own stuff can be really helpful!
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For Swift programming fans like me :sunglasses: , I got my inspiration from Mr. Chris’ Blog. He also has a Youtube Channel that I watch to enhance my skills I get from Codecademy. I hope this helpful :slightly_smiling_face:

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vey helpful…thanks…

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For me personally podcasts and YouTube videos are a great help as I’m learning to code. :grinning:

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for web development these have help me a lot.
:heavy_check_mark:csstrick.com
:heavy_check_mark:stackoverflow.com
:heavy_check_mark: w3School.com
:heavy_check_mark:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCezIgC97PvUuR4_gbFUs5g
:heavy_check_mark:codecademy.com
:heavy_check_mark:https://www.youtube.com/c/SteveGriffith-Prof3ssorSt3v3/featured
:heavy_check_mark:MDN Web Docs

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These are great resources! In addition to what’s been listed, I’ve been using devdocs.io for quick reference. I use Larder to save and categorize my bookmarks (this has been huge!), and I love reading Medium’s articles from other developers (specifically Better Programming, Javascript in Plain English, hackernoon and The Pragmatic Programmers). It’s really interesting some of the things you can glean from articles. I will also use the Hackr app to find recommended courses, tutorials and articles from other developers.

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Oh and not really a dev resource, but it keeps me inspired to keep learning, exploring and improving my skills for better security and awareness is Jack Rhysider’s Darknet Diaries podcast.

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My favorite resources (next to Codecademy) are w3schools, MDN Web Docs, CSS Trick, and other things that I use to enhance my webpages, such as Google Fonts, Adobe Color, and W3Validator (both for CSS and HTML).

I’d love to listen to some HTML/CSS podcasts, if they exist and/or anyone has any suggestions! Thank you in advance :grinning:

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Codecademy of course. Also, I listen to a great Argentinian coding podcast called Dev Rock.
On Youtube, I watch some Traversy Media, Coding Tech and Design Code content.

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I refer to Stackoverflow.com, Mozilla, w3schools, github explore, geeksforgeeks. I also follow a few programmers on IG who provide tips and suggestions for coding challenges. And from my codecademy learning I use the right click ‘Inspect’ feature (of Chrome dev tools) to look at the DOM and/or CSS. And I keep trying when I struggle with grasping a concept.

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In no order

  • I like to use youtube for visual explanations
  • Stackover flow when I am stuck on a problem
  • Css Tricks for layout questions
  • Mozilla developer network and W3Schools both of these sites help with understanding the new features of HTML or CSS
  • Medium.com is also a very good source for coding projects, resources, or updates on current practices and technologies
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In Order
Videos, doesn’t matter if it’s youtube or not
Podcasts also, but I don’t actually have an account to listen to podcasts on

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Youtube is always great
w3schools
StackOverflow/CodeCademy Ask page
ask a friend to catch mistakes that I may have missed

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There’s so much good stuff out there. MDN is really helpful. I use google sheets at work, so google documentation. There are so many cool scripts on the web. I’m not big on reinventing the wheel so I like tweaking something someone smarter than me has already done. If I can phrase the question right, google usually finds something I can work with. Now that I’m learning to do things correctly, I really enjoy reading others code, especially if it’s useful for me at work.

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A few of my favorites…
Zen and the Art of Programming
(10) Educational Products for Academia and Competitive Programming - YouTube

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