2014 is the year where I’ve chosen to finally upskill and get back into code. I started out in web design back in 1997 launching my first website on one of Yahoo!’s many hosted communities. I went on to improve my skills dramatically, picking up some php along the way and even some .net. I didn’t really develop my coding abilities beyond that, and certainly didn’t keep up with the latest web design trends (I still design using tables, not divs!) but that’s all hopefully going to change in 2014. I’m going back to school, sort of. I’m re-learning HTML and CSS best practices and bringing myself up to speed. I realise how old I sound saying this but it’s not like this is all new to me! I’m also hoping to learn Ruby, seeing as that’s a really big part of Web 2.0.
Some of the resources I’m using to help me upskill include:
Learnable.com – I paid for a yearly membership and it’s giving me access to a tonne of great stuff from Sitepoint (highly recommended!) so there’s plenty to chew on there.
General Assembly – a website I found when looking for tutorials for my team who are HTML newbies – I’ve been giving it a whirl and it’s an excellent learning resource.
Treehouse – I haven’t signed up as such but have been running through some of their videos and although there’s a wealth of information on hand, I find their videos a little distracting – seems they’ve opted for a bit of quirkiness with their videos which I don’t feel works as well as they expect. Still though, plenty to gain from this resource.
Codecademy – another famous and popular resource, I’m hoping to use this to really amp up my skills. I want to make sure I’m up to speed with HTML and CSS, I want to be able to design and develop responsively and adaptively (in particular for mobile) and I’d like to at least get my head around mobile app development for Android, especially now that I’ve got my hands on a Nexus 5.
