I have been reached out about more details of my background and experience, especially around getting into coding, so I thought I'd make a living and breathing Google Doc turned GitHub repo to share for everyone. Enjoy!
PS - This is going to be very women centric. I like to seek out, celebrate, and support other women rocking in the technology industry.
I wrote a Medium Article on my story. And developed my own website where I try to code and share more, but it is still very much a work in progress, like myself!
- This will be a combination of what I did to get started and what I'd recommend to get started now that I know now that I didn't know then!
- SheCodes - I have provided technical assistance for this school when in-person classes were still possible. I wish I had Matt helping and explaining to me from Day 1! I started first the Google Doc and now this repo as an extension of that assistance!
- JustJavaScript - newsletters by Dan Abramov & Maggie Appleton (React) about how JS works. Sign up to receive drafts as they work on building the course. (He doesn’t recommend this for early beginners, so if you sign up and feel lost, don’t despair! You might just need to do some extra learning to make the most of it!) HIGHLY RECOMMEND! **I'm not sure if these are still available because they are iterating on this...
- Progress - I joined this community of women in tech shortly before the Pandemic and it’s been such an incredibly helpful and supportive group.
- Women Who Code - One of the first communities I joined.
- Find small local communities and/or meetups for networking, building relationships, and potential opportunities!
- Eloquent JavaScript - read most of this book early on when I was learning JS.
- Sprint - a design book, but it's really about solving problems in a week. Read and took notes!
- The Object Oriented Thought Process - a really great book on understanding the concepts of Object Oriented Programming that explains base concepts, good design 💜, patterns, and all with great examples.
- Python Crash Course - a nice introductory book to the language complete with very helpful exercieses.
- 99 bottles - next in the step of practicing OOP concepts.
- Smashing Magazine - Vitaly Friedman, co-founder and editor in chief of this website and eBook publisher, taught a master class at the design school I attended, and introduced us to his site, full of resources and content for both designers and developers, and even told us inside stories about their own redesigns.
- CSS Tricks - I visit this site almost daily. Their flex box and grid guides are AMAZING.
- 2ality Javascript blog - I find myself coming back to this blog a lot to understand more about the quirks of JS.
- SourceMaking - A good blog on design patterns for software projects.
- CSS clip-path tool - A tool to help with making/using clip paths.
- Illustrations - Open source illustrations.
- Data handling (in React) - This is a bit more advanced, and is a talk from a React Conf. A mentor has recommended this talk to me multiple times. Remember it’s ok to need to review, review and review again to fully grasp a lot of these concepts!
- JavaScript Loops - Recommended by another one of my mentors, and helps explain JS vocabulary. And it’s a presentation by a non-computer science developer!
*I’m not a huge podcast listener… It comes and goes for me, but here are a few I’ve come across.
- Ladybug Podcast - I also follow the girls on Twitter and they also have a cool book club. I have really enjoyed their perspectives as female developers. Their podcast on imposter syndrome has been very helpful and I highly recommend every (female) developer give it a listen.
- devMode.fm - Just about anything web development.
- Active Theory - Their site and work just blows my mind and gives me such motivation.
- Sarah Drasner - Also a person I follow on Twitter. She does amazing work and seems like a legit cool person.
- Personal website/portfolio site - Build your first web page about yourself or something your interested in- expand upon it, try it in a framework (if you are ready), try building one or another new one! Here’s my repo that I’ve been building in React, but if you look closely at the history, I started it before attempting the framework!)
- Feeling more collaborative? Checkout trending repos on GitHub (filtered to JavaScript). Also look out for repos with tags that say good for beginners. And don’t be afraid to poke around for projects that fit your passions!
***Lot's more information coming to share...
- Because sometimes practicing little chunks is fun and less stressful than entire projects!
- exercism - 51 languages and mentorship!