Resources for Learning Software Skills

The following is a set of resources for people looking to learn some coding skills.

Command Line Tools

One good place to get started is an introduction to the command line. While not 100% required to learn to code, all of the best software engineers I know are highly proficient in it. I’d this tutorial

General Programming

If you just want to dive in and learn some coding. Code Combat is an interesting way to start. My wife got her start there and she enjoyed it. If you want to try and study it, I’d take a look at Treehouse. They’ve got a bunch of diiferent tracks you can follow to learn different skills. In general there are some good tutorials and courses here.

Git

There are a couple of good git tutorials out there sort of along the same lines. Try-git from github is pretty good, but sort of limited/shallow in scope. If you’re just getting started it’s a fast way to learn some commands. Learn git branching is a bit more in depth and talks about the git branching model. That’s important if you work on teams. I’d also take a gander (and then bookmark) Oh Shit Git!. It’s got a bunch of answers to problems you might encounter.

Ruby/Rails

If you’re looking for something a little bit more practical, the rails bridge curriculum is a very good direction to go. After the “Installfest” section, each of the sections under rails has a small project that could be finished in a day. Their site is full of really uesful information. Also, there are RailsBridge workshops that happen all over the country. I’d also suggest the Michael Hartl rails tutorial

SQL/Postgres

If you have wants/needs to learn sql, this site seems to have some interesting exercises.

Regular Expressions

If you want to learn about regular expressions, doing regex crosswords are kind of fun and will really hone your skills.