Hi there, I'm seeking advice on how to get started with coding. I'm considering coding as my career and want to practice and learn as much on my own as I can. I'm currently in school for a separate, unrelated degree but may possible change in the future.

I'm going through w3schools slowly, and practicing code there as much as I can. I'm also working on petpages here to get some practice too. What resources did you use when starting out? What references do you still access today? And if you code for your career, how did you get to that point or what is your advice for someone starting out? Thanks in advance.

I really recommend Udemy as a place to study and get references, you can find a lot of helpful classes there for affordable prices (always wait for sales) and some of them are focused like 'building a layout and making it work' or 'make your own uber-like app' and the alike, I find those more helpful than simple diving head-on at any random technology because you usually get a complete set of tools to work with that are usually very accurate to what is used in companies rather than having to figure it out on your own, which can be super difficult for a newbie. After you have a general knowledge of what you are doing and feel comfortable with the technology you are working with you can check the technology's documentation rather than random tutorials.

My to-go tip for any starter would be: code a lot! Create random projects, even if you don't know all you need to know to create/code something, ask yourself "how can I do that with what I know right now?", try to build pages from scratch, there are free hosting sites like neocities where you can code freely and for free. If you are really serious about it dont try to customize pet pages, try to make one from scratch, it will give you a more solid knowledge of how css and html works.

Best of luck!

W3C Schools. I highly recommend starting here, a lot of it is interactive and allows you to really focus in on what you want to learn. HTML5, CSS, Javascript, etc. Some, like the Javascript, allows you to learn how to do the thing while seeing the code directly beside in real time so if you make a mistake, you can see how and why.

I used it for my college course and it was incredibly useful.

Remember that you can host things locally as well; Sticking to the basics, If you mark something as an HTML file and open it in your browser, it'll display.

Using W3C School is a great resource. When I went to college years ago for Web Design (was actually goin' for something different..) they never taught us anything about CSS or basics in HTML so I had to go and buy books and learn a lot of stuff on my own. Wasn't interested in coding but there were lots of templates to use as a base or a reference.

There are lots of forums where you can join and they will help you and some might even give you basic templates (or links to ones). You are on the right track.

wooooaaah, what a wonderful thing to hear, !! i am sorry for this late reply - i would love to hear about some of your progress!! i am a computer science student and my master's thesis kind of is about exactly that, haha! how in the hell should one learn code while not drowning in all those resources? dozens of languages, weird errors, an industry that is just not a vibe. i personally got myself into web technology through blogs which is why i love doing all this simple html and css stuff - it takes off my mind haha. while w3c is a wonderful resource to look up some snippets and explanations, i will always advise new people to start off as individual as possible. it is about your personal journey after all! i'll just paste in some cool places to start coding without many restrictions.

coding pet sites is such a good idea. this is a form of an own web space after all and i think that there is a lot of potential to see pet sites as oportunities to understand how we can present data in creative ways! a treasure chest is perfect to understand the concepts of grids, the column layouts are great ways to try out flex boxes. even the needlessly convoluted html tags on the profiles are a good start into scratching your head over badly written code! no code is perfect - and that is how it should be if you ask me! firefox has a super easy way to manipulate any site's code, so play around with it if you like! i would really not recommend going the template way. Bug wrote a wonderful tutorial with some really useful reset code, so definitely check that out.

as the others have said, definitely find something you would love to see somewhere on the web. Neocities is a beautiful community built around self-expression and your own creative ideas through code. while online tutorials will guide you through the functionality of framework xyz and how to build some kind of app, really understanding coding depends on how far you would love to go and what your ambitions are! (websites aren't everything there is in programming after all hehe) browse sites, get inspired, the yesterweb is the best way to jump into a rabbit hole full of incredible potential. Many cool guides and a thriving community that tries to not be a part of toxic technology media.

if you start to get a feel for creating basic sites, i absolutely adore this site about accessibility. It is something that is barely talked about in a time where it should be the highest priority instead of shoveling profit. when you feel confident with the tools they explain in the field guide and can hammer together something that you are proud of, you are all set to delve deeper and explore more complex web technologies, yet i wouldn't want to overwhelm you with those! one place that i truly have gotten attached to is Glitch! you can host all of your sites on there for free and their editor is streamlined, simple and super fast. i think it's a really neat way to play with the code of others and end up with something presentable in an instant without relying on buggy squarespace templates and vile wordpress dashboards, haha. and if i still haven't bored you enough, always feel free to reach out. you know, i love talking about that stuff!!

How to learn, I dunno, but I know where you should do it: codepen.io! Without any software/setup/installs/files/hosting etc. you can still make anything you want. Takes out all the friction and you can just start coding and it will show up on the screen, love it.

I really like codecademy. It's changed over the years, but it's still a really great place to learn!

I think using petpages is a great way to learn the basics of coding! Tbh I wouldn't spend super long on learning it all on your own. Depending on the job you get and with who, a lot of what you do at one company might be totally different at another. For a career I'd try to get into classes that can help determine a focus sooner than later if that's the route you choose. Personally, for coding, I like the challenge of creating something unique that showcases my characters. and I'm super artsy so I ended up learning a lot of stuff that I'd probably never use to build a website for a company but also, a company is never going to have anything as creative as what you can do on your own without limits. I think it's super cool that you want to learn more! I say go for it, have fun!

W3schools is how I learned during my graduate job as a web designer! Everyone in the office used it and introduced me to it on my first day. I've been going back to it ever since (even though I haven't worked professionally in web design for over a decade now).

If you want to code for this site specifically, like the above suggested looking at petpages will help you to get a headstart. Going through the coding of more experienced users and familiarising myself with the things they had in common allowed me to get my head around certain aspects of the coding used on Subeta.

Obviously different jobs will require different knowledge and skillsets. Professionally, I used CSS more than anything else by far, so I'd be tempted to suggest you focus mainly on that, but that's just from my experience - yours could be completely different!

Anyway, it's awesome that you are keeping your options open and considering coding as a potential career choice (it's definitely a skill that many companies crave). Out of curiosity, do you specifically want to be a web developer, or would you consider becoming a software programmer? It's much more complicated to learn but there are tons of job opportunities and the money is great (my brother is a software programmer and paid off his mortgage before he turned 30).

Either way, I wish you the very best of luck in whatever you decide to do, coding or otherwise! :)

A really great site that you can use as a sandbox for coding practice and self-expression is neocities.org! Accounts are free and I think come with like 1 GB of storage for anything you upload.

I follow a few other sites on there which use the platform as a sandbox for experimental, browser-based tools/games/etc., like this in-browser magnet poetry maker. So, you'd have the flexibility to try out more in-depth codes if you wanted to.