Related pages

• Games in which you program

Very Important: I'm noticing that as I make progress on the Ruby on Rails tutorial and Elenco 130-in-1 guide, I'm becoming more excited. Seeing my progress and thinking about the future things I'll be able to accomplish is really motivating me in an incredible way. I'd known what Schwarzenegger said about the importance of keeping records, but I didn't expect it to happen in this situation.

- just as with the LSAT, it seems the #1 concern a person should have is remaining motivated:

General Resources:
Roadmaps:
Learning to Code: The Roadmap I Wish I Had Been Given
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years

Websites:
Codecademy - http://www.codecademy.com
CodingBat - http://codingbat.com/
The New Boston - http://thenewboston.org/
Udacity - http://www.udacity.com/
WiBit.net - http://www.wibit.net/
Misc CS Lectures - http://activities.tjhsst.edu/sct/lectures.php [the few I skimmed through were really helpful]
Great digitized books from the Atari era: http://www.atariarchives.org/
Type faster: http://play.typeracer.com/
Type faster: https://typing.io/

Books:
Great (free) digitized books from the Atari era: http://www.atariarchives.org/
Programming Pearls by Jon Bently
USACO Training Puzzles - rec'd by a Princeton-CS-major-turned-quant friend of mine making $200k a year
Project Euler Puzzles - rec'd by a Princeton-CS-major-turned-quant friend of mine making $200k a year


Amazon List - Graduate CS Books
Amazon List - Books on Algorithms

Computer Architecture
Computer Architecture by Hennessy and Patterson
The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles
How Computers Work by Ron White and Timothy Downs

Introductions to Programming
Learn to Program by Chris Pine (uses Ruby)
Harvard's CS 50 (Intro to Computer Science) Course - https://www.cs50.net/lectures/
Amazon Book List - History of Personal Computing Classics
Amazon List - Rec'd Books for Common Languages

Computer Science Ideas:
Foundations of Computer Science by Aho and Ullman - now free online!
- I'm on page 11 of the Chapter 3 pdf, p99 of the book itself. It's been slow-going b/c I want to understand as much of his math notation as possible.

• 2016.10.30 - Medium - A comment I wrote on how to teach someone how to program
  •  Hi Melinda! I’m basically self-taught and I’ve spent a few years thinking about this issue, and the recommended path I’ve arrived at is:
    
    Start by learning how to write simple programs that move the mouse around and send keyboard-presses; that’s the fastest/easiest way I’ve seen knowledge of programming translate into a real-world benefit for the person learning how to program (I’m a huge fan of AutoHotkey because it’s so easy to install and get started with, but it’s Windows-only). If the person is in the workforce and has a job where she uses Excel, then I would recommend she also start by getting comfortable with Excel formulas and writing simple VBA macros. If she’s into gaming, she should also try starting by learning to create mods (eg a Minecraft mod) rather than creating games from scratch. Once she’s comfortable with those I recommend learning how to automatically send emails, scrape websites, and build websites with Python and PythonAnywhere.com. (Python is my favorite programming language but IMO it has a steeper learning curve than AutoHotkey/Excel/modding before a total newbie to programming will feel comfortable doing useful stuff with it.) And from there, if she has some kind of specific situation where she needs to pick up another language, she can learn about other languages.
    
    Here’s a video of me and my friend walking through how to use AutoHotkey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ULy4KmAYbU

Bootcamps

Dev Bootcamp

• Dev Bootcamp (SF, CHI, $12k)
• This is the original bootcamp that spawned so many imitators. It was bought by Kaplan and shut down.

Coding Dojo

• Coding Dojo (SF, $10k)

Fullstack Academy

• https://www.fullstackacademy.com/
• Praise
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14046785

Hack Reactor

• https://hackernoon.com/confessions-of-a-bootcamp-graduate-hack-reactor-f921c441fb23
• Criticism
  • https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9494645

MakerSquare

• Praise
  • https://medium.com/@donovanwhitworth/i-attended-makersquare-in-2014-it-was-a-ruby-sinatra-rails-javascript-curriculum-then-c6e5f400cc2c
    • I attended MakerSquare in 2014 (it was a Ruby/Sinatra/Rails/JavaScript curriculum then). I do not have a college degree and I got my first offer five days after graduation. There is no way I would have been prepared to get a junior developer job without attending bootcamp. It absolutely changed my life. I went from making ~$30k a year before boot to making ~$70k, and now 2 years on I’m making six figures, and even more importantly, I love my work.
      I am the software engineering lead for my company (doesn’t mean I’m senior…. it means I go to meetings :p ), programming in Ruby, JavaScript, Java and Scala and still learning new things every day. I’m also getting a CS degree part-time now, which I would have never been inspired to attain if I did not attend MakerSquare.
      Maybe the bootcamp experience is different now that the market is saturated, but from what I hear, Hack Reactor is a well regarded program. MakerSquare was worth every penny and more for me.

The Recurse Center (aka Hacker School)

• Hacker School (NYC, free)
• This one is hard to get into. It's like a writer's retreat for experienced programmers.

Turing School of Software and Design

• https://www.turing.io/
• 7 months, $20,000
•  Praise
  • https://medium.com/@leskin/i-attended-the-turing-school-of-software-and-design-https-www-turing-io-e1dde6f58526
    • I attended the Turing School of Software and Design (https://www.turing.io) last year, which is a much longer program than Hack Reactor, 7 months, and now work as a software developer. I came from a non-technical industry, previously working as a journalist. Attended it was probably the greatest decision I’ve ever made and Turing is very transparent. They just released a report as well http://report.turing.io/. Turing is one definitely worth checking out.