Practice Pre-work
Reading
Pre-work is material that ensures you have the necessary foundation required for the course. Starting lto learn before the program is like training for a marathon. You don't show up the day of the race and start; you need to train beforehand. In our program, your brain is the muscle that needs to train, this pre-work is training for your brain.
Starting in the Back
Our full time program begins with work on the back-end of a website. That is, all of the code that deals with keeping track of data, storing it in a database, searching, sorting, collating, and delivering information to the front end of a website.
Websites are served from a web server running some back-end language, such as
Ruby, Python, or .NET. During the course, you are studying a back-end language
to learn more in depth. There are plenty of back-end languages to choose from.
Each language has its strengths and weakness. We have chosen to focus on C#
and .NET
.
Explore C# ("c-sharp") & .NET
.NET
is a robust framework built by Microsoft. While there are many languages
that use the .NET
ecosystem, C#
is a common, flexible, and ubiquitous
language.
There are several resources here that can help you learn some basics of C#
and
.NET
. We feel that this
four hour video from freeCodeCamp
and Giraffe Academy is a great start.
If you do nothing else in this section do watch this video. Don't try to type
along with the video or even worry about understanding everything that is
happening. Concentrate on the big ideas, write down new terminology, and get
familiar with what it sounds like to discuss code.
For an interactive tutorial, check out LearnCS.org
For a longer, and more technical introduction, this video from Microsoft: C# Fundamentals for Absolute Beginners is worth viewing.
If you have 30+ hours to dedicate (and it may take you much longer) you can work through a lesson at Code Academy.
Fundamentals and Front-End Development
Start With the HTML and CSS
Start with some HTML and CSS. HTML and CSS are essentially what the web is all about. HTML and CSS are what the user sees and interacts with the most. Since these two languages are fundamental, this is the best place to get your feet wet.
Basics
- https://internetingishard.com/
- http://learnlayout.com/
- https://learn.shayhowe.com/html-css/building-your-first-web-page/
- CSS Tricks
- freeCodeCamp
Advanced
Add Some Life With JavaScript
JavaScript allows you to create interactive and dynamic websites. This is what brings our websites to life. This will also help us learn the fundamentals of how computers run lines of code. JavaScript runs on the client side, which means the users computer. Every website that you have visited, uses JavaScript in some way.