Learning To Code with CodeYear.com

CodeYear.com is a great idea. They will send you a weekly homework assignment that will teach you how to code. I also like the marketing push to coincide with New Year Resolutions. Sign up if you haven’t already.  I did.

Great idea, but how many people will finish and gain enough skills to actually land a job or launch a successful app?

We all know majority of new years resolutions are never met. I know of only a few reasons most people can successfuly achieve such goals – your life depends on it and/or your career depends on it.

Codeyear is a start in the right direction, but there is a lot more needed than just a tutorial. It needs to create a community support group through forums, meetups, experienced newbies and mentorship.

Augment the codeyear experience by adding taking some additional steps:

1. Set a goal – launch an app or get a job. Keep it simple, a simple CRUD or better yet, a read-only application
2. State it publicly – accountability always helps
3. Get Support – a community to answer questions, guide etc.
4. Get a coding buddy/mentor/partner
5. Fix someone else’s bugs – Coding from scratch is hard. Modifying someone else’s code is a much better starting point.

I don’t know the goals of codeyear, but lots more need to be done to build an app than some javascript. Granted with most shared hosting services, you can get a simple website up and running quickly, but it gets pretty complex with any other functionality beyond HelloWorld. Databases require some understanding of queries, relationships, data integrity, etc. What about version control? GIt vs subversion? What about hosting vs local machine dev?

I doubt many people will stick with the program.  But I want people to make me eat my words. Prove me wrong!!

I’ve signed up for CodeYear and I’m going to seek out a programming mentor, thanks alexkehayias. I “plan” on sticking with it to dust off my development skills and learn some new skills and languages. But life happens …