Newbie Programmers' Resources

These resources will be separated by language/topic.

Tools

Editors

• http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/
• http://www.sublimetext.com/
• https://notepad-plus-plus.org/
• https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Gedit

Web Programming

• https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Learn
• http://electron.atom.io/
• http://hastebin.com/
• http://jsfiddle.net
• http://codepen.io/
• http://freecodecamp.com/

Tutorials

• https://www.codecademy.com/
• http://www.theodinproject.com/
• http://getbootstrap.com/css/

Programming Challenges

• http://www.codewars.com/
• https://projecteuler.net/
• http://exercism.io/ crowdsourced platform
• http://play.elevatorsaga.com/
• https://github.com/karan/Projects
• https://codelympics.io/
• https://www.codingame.com
• http://www.checkio.org/
• http://www.pythonchallenge.com/
• http://rosalind.info/problems/locations/ Bioinformatics
• http://www.codeabbey.com/
• https://www.codechef.com/

Ruby

• http://www.jasimabasheer.com/posts/meta_introduction_to_ruby.html

Tutorials

• http://learnrubythehardway.org/book/
• https://rubymonk.com/
• http://mislav.uniqpath.com/poignant-guide/
• http://rubylearning.com/satishtalim/tutorial.html
• http://joegardiner.co.uk/the-best-ruby-tutorials-for-a-n00b/

Beginner Challenges

• http://rubykoans.com/
• http://www.opensourcerails.com/

Books

• http://www.amazon.com/The-Well-Grounded-Rubyist-David-Black/dp/1617291692/ref=dp_ob_title_bk?&tag=rnwff-20
• https://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/

Python

Tutorials

• Learn Python The Hard Way: "instructs you in Python by slowly building and establishing skills through techniques like practice and memorization, then applying them to increasingly difficult problems."
• Official Python tutorial
• if you are new to programming, try out the Boston Python Workshop materials
• If you know some syntax already, try out NewCoder tutorials. NewCoder has tutorials on Data Visualization, APIs, Web Scraping, Networks
• Community Data Science Workshop
  • "The Community Data Science Workshops are a series of project-based workshops for anyone interested in learning how to use programming and data science tools to ask and answer questions about online communities like Wikipedia, Twitter, free and open source software, and civic media. The workshops are for people with no previous programming experience."
• Software Carpentry: Lessons
  • automating tasks using the Unix shell;
  • structured programming in Python, R, or MATLAB
    • "The best way to learn how to program is to do something useful, so this introduction to Python is built around a common scientific task: data analysis."
  • version control using Git or Mercurial.
• Data Carpentry: has lessons on Python for ecologists
• Python Scientific Lecture Notes: "Tutorial material on the scientific Python ecosystem, a quick introduction to central tools and techniques. The different chapters each correspond to a 1 to 2 hours course with increasing level of expertise, from beginner to expert."
• Django Girls Tutorial: tutorial that starts from python basics to django to deploying a django site.
• Django for Designers a Django tutorial that focuses on areas of Django that particularly affect designers, such as static files, template inheritance, and AJAX.
• Google's Python Class: This is a free class for people with a little bit of programming experience who want to learn Python. The class includes written materials, lecture videos, and lots of code exercises to practice Python coding.

Interactive Tutorials

• http://www.pythontutor.com/
• http://codingbat.com/python
• http://www.learnpython.org/
• http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python
• How to Think Like a Computer Scientist
• Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures
• Python Learn

Online python interpreters

If you want to try out python and scientific packages without installing everything, you can use these servers.

• https://try.jupyter.org/ No install or login required. Python 3, Julia, R, Haskell, Ruby.
• https://www.pythonanywhere.com/ online python environments with many packages already installed. (need account)

Books and Reading

• Two Scoops of Django: an excellent Django book
• Effective Computation in Physics
• Python for Data Analysis: Data Wrangling with Pandas, NumPy, and IPython
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python: This is a guide for Python developers that gives an overlay of the land of Python development. In the guide's words: "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Python exists to provide both novice and expert Python developers a best-practice handbook to the installation, configuration, and usage of Python on a daily basis."
• Python Books A list of about 50 free Python books
• A Byte of Python aimed at total beginners
• Building Skills in Python
• Building Skills in Object-Oriented Design (Python)
• Data Structures and Algorithms in Python
• Dive Into Python For experienced programmers
• Hacking Secret Ciphers With Python
• [1] Start Programming With Python]
• Invent Your Own Computer Games With Python
• [2] Lectures on Scientific Computing with Python by Johansson
• Making Games with Python and Pygame
• [3] Natural Language Processing with Python
• Non-Programmer's Tutorial for Python 2.6
• Problem Solving with Algorithms and Data Structures
• Python Cookbook
• Python for Fun aimed at intermediate programmers
• Python for Infomatics
• Python for You and Me
• Python Module of the Week libraries
• Python Practice Book
• Python Programming Wikibooks also link here
• SciPy Lecture Notes
• (the eff-bot guide to) The Standard Python Library
• Test-Driven Development with Python
• Text Processing in Python
• Think Python for beginners

Beginner Challenges

• Python Koans Like Ruby Koans, but for Python

SQL

Tutorials

• http://sql.learncodethehardway.org/book/

MOOCs

• edX
• Coursera
  • Jenny is doing this one: https://class.coursera.org/pythonlearn-005
• Udacity

Articles and Books

• https://medium.com/@imdadahad/3-tips-for-beginning-and-current-programmers-f6ffd23d84b1
• http://gizmodo.com/how-do-you-learn-to-code-1714925538
• https://bootcamp.berkeley.edu/resources/coding/

Coding Bootcamps

Useful Articles

• http://www.skilledup.com/articles/the-ultimate-guide-to-coding-bootcamps-the-exhaustive-list

Chicago

• http://anyonecanlearntocode.com/

New York

• https://www.recurse.com/
  • Not technically a bootcamp, it's more of an awesome programmers' workshop. They don't accept complete beginners, but otherwise the skill range is pretty wide.

San Francisco

• http://www.appacademy.io/#p-home

Meetups & Organizations

• http://www.chipy.org/
• http://www.meetup.com/ChicagoJUG/
• http://www.meetup.com/js-chi/
• http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-iOS-Developers/
• http://www.meetup.com/ChicagoPythonistas/
• http://www.meetup.com/ChicagoRuby/
• http://www.meetup.com/chicagoscala/
• http://www.meetup.com/Refresh-Chicago/
• http://www.meetup.com/refactor-chicago/
• http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Nodejs/
• http://www.meetup.com/Software-Developers-Night-Out/
• http://www.meetup.com/Windy-City-Linux-Users-Group/
• http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Open-Hack/
• http://www.meetup.com/chicagodevnet/
• http://www.meetup.com/chicago-html5/
• http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-C-CPP-Users-Group/

http://www.meetup.com/AngularJS-Chicago/

For Women

• https://www.womenwhocode.com/
• http://www.meetup.com/RailsBridgeChicago/
• http://www.meetup.com/WomanDevelopers/
• http://www.meetup.com/Girl-Develop-It-Chicago-IL/
• http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-PyLadies/

Design

• https://www.google.com/design/

Intermediate

No longer a newbie? Look here for some suggestions on what to do next.

Python

• If you are new to python but know a little about programming, try out the Intermediate Boston Python Workshop projects.