“If you can’t code, you are dependent on someone who can”, said a Business Insider article from last year. Learning to code can be useful especially for entrepreneurs looking to establish a digital business or want to be able to create their own website and apps.
SME South Africa speaks to Lorraine Steyn, a technopreneur and founder of Khanyisa Real Systems, a software development organisation about the best free online resources for beginners.
Steyn has worked extensively for over 20 years in the technology and business solutions space, including tutoring young students to code.
“Are our youth not aware of the resources available to them, or are they not finding them as useful as we’d hope?”
Here are Steyn’s top 5 free and useful options for all ages to learn to code.
1. Code Academy – Offers about 10 languages, including Python, JavaScript, PHP and HTML + CSS.
2. Khan Academy – very strong Maths and Science modules as well as Computing. They also have short computing courses that are great if you don’t have a lot of time.
3. Plural Sight – I love PluralSight for a great range of developer courses and they now offer their kids courses for free, covering HTML and Scratch in a fun way. For the adults, you’ll still need to subscribe for access to the most comprehensive list of quality computing courses available.
4. Code Wars – Learn to code through martial arts-styled challenges called “Kata”. A fun way to master JavaScript, Python, Ruby, Java or C#.
5. Coursera – Access to well over a thousand courses from various well-known universities, and all free. We live in awesome times!
