So today is January 2nd. Finished reading Altucher’s Choose Yourself at about 3 am and then took a nap until 7. Woke up with the “daily practice” stuck in my head [http://bit.ly/1asE4Aa if you don’t know what I’m talking about]. Anyways, this post will probably be my last profiling of Altucher because he ignored my question on the live AMA today… so I’m bitter!!!(half kidding!)… :p. But regardless, it’s more or less one of my preferred re-packagings on one of the most fundamental concepts of self development: balance and equilibrium. For those of you too lazy to click the link: mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual [essentially the pillars of success – I honestly forget which book I read this from originally]. Alright enough about that, I’m sure a lot of you probably already know about it + it’s common sense so…. onto how I incorporated these concepts into my life!

Well as a student, I’ll start off with the mental subsection first… after all school school school is priority (so they say). But what I’ll be talking about is a bit of self-learning in terms of getting started with coding (especially for the web if you read my last post) and what I think about these websites. Note: I’ve started all of these for about a month, I’ll give an estimate of how many hours below during my separate reviews – of course, the amount of time I spend on it also correlates to how attractive and easy to digest the offered content is the and overall satisfaction with the experience too!

So in List format (favorites on top):

HackerRank (5 hours) – Okay, so if you want to pass the software development interview. You know you need to master your data structures + algorithms. This site, essentially an easy mode version of TopCoder (you guys can look into that if you’re a bit more hardcore but the UI is not for me), is basically the smoothest it gets in terms of forcing you to struggle (which many of the following websites don’t imo)  yet also holding your hand a bit in the beginning. Essentially, you learn the material. There’s very little room for error as coding syntax is not very forgiving and if you can wing your way through all the exercises – I’m sure you could hand-wave your way through the initial stages of any interview (Google, FB, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon etc) as well. Anyways, this isn’t really beginner beginner friendly but honestly this is a stage anyone has to pass if they want to become even slightly competent -> if not, there’s outsourcing at elance.com and you should find your true motivation in life and start focusing on that instead. BUT, for recreational learning I highly recommend the next website…..

Team TreeHouse (30 hours+) – This website is fun. The UI is clean. The teachers are great. I love watching and learning fundamental concepts and I usually watch the easier intro vids at 1.5x – 2x speed once I get used to the teacher’s voice. I personally have the gold suscription (no I’m not under any sponsorship and the cost is hella expensive for a student) and really like tuning into their project development (coderacer) and Treehouse w/ Friends(where they interview rather successful freelance developers + maybe more – only watched a few). Overall, it’s relaxing and it’s easy to absorb. When you’re done w/ work + school – often, you’re too tired to be tackling that next brain-wrecking algorithm in C. Yet, this is still infinitely more productive than watching tv or spamming refresh on facebook/reddit/twitter. The progress really adds up. One hour a day and you’ll be surprised when you end up at the end of the month knowing your Javascript from scratch etc etc. Oh, one more thing is I like the lectures -> quiz ratio. They aren’t meant to be hard questions and you’ll almost definitely know the answers if you just half tune in to the video lessons!

Okay, these are the mediocre ones. I don’t hate them but I primarily use the first two (or at least plan to).

Codecademy (10 hours+) – This was the website I started with since there was so much publicity around it. I’ll spell out my favorite part of this website right here: it gets you coding immediately. And that is really important. Talk is useless without getting your hands dirty and that’s what Codecademy does. And to be honest, I was rather satisfied for maybe 1-2 hrs – and then I wasn’t really learning enough because there was no progression in difficulty. My opinion is that it’s too easy and even in later difficulties they basically spell out the answers for you. These are all my opinions, and I honestly prefer the above two (one for easy mode one for hard). But, I feel that for some people who like just learning to learn moreso than for practical application, perhaps you would be able to understand some of your coworkers code after completing all the exercises. I finished the Javascript section and dabbled in all the others before I moved on.

CodeSchool (2-3 hrs) – This website is really good for the right audience. It has more of a messy and adventure look geared towards kids/explorers. I prefer TreeHouse for learning the basic concepts but I REALLY like codeSchool’s introduction to ruby and deep dive into NodeJS. I’d continue the subscription if I had unlimited amounts of money, but I’m probably going to focus on the first two and stop it after this month! If you’re curious though, I’d definitely recommend giving it a try. I really dislike how they don’t have a trial period but I guess they have introductory classes for free so you could get a feel for it.

I also read a plethora of Algorithm books: and to be honest, it really drills it in you. Doing an exercise gets you able to nail the problem but reading the theory and concept behind basic and fundamental computer science will get you learning the subject on a more intuitive and personal level. Though, I rarely get past the second or third chapter though since I find these books really dry. I’m just going to list the one I own but I’m not going to recommend any in particular since I can’t seem to finish any of them.

Algorithms Unlocked – Cormen, Thomas: theoretical and tries to make it readable for the non-programmer. You basically still need a developers mindset to read this. I like it, it’s short but I haven’t gotten through Chapter 2 yet.

Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis in Java – Shaffer, Clifford: I really like how this book started out. It’s probably the easiest to understand out of all the books so far. But it’s a bit thick – so I tend to pick up my other ones more.

Algorithms (4th edition) – Sedgewick and Wayne: This is basically the textbook reference I have. And it goes into all the detail you need, I go back to this and re-read after I read a similar chapter in another book to solidify my understanding.

Algorithms – Dasgupta: This is the required textbook for our school. The professor himself wrote it, a very very very good professor by the way. Too bad I dropped out of school that quarter so I didn’t finish the course. I like how this book is short and to the point and I’ll probably actually finish reading this book when I take the course.

Oh, one book (or I guess publisher) I WILL recommend though. Is The Big Nerd Ranch: Guide to Android / Guide to iOS (two separate books) – they are really good. Taught me everything I needed for my internship @ an iOS consulting job in China this previous summer which paid very nicely (prorate to about 100k USD/yr).

I’m not really sure why I wrote all that but I’m tired now so I’ll write about the rest of it next time. Hopefully this is useful to somebody, if not it helped me organize my thoughts on how I want to tackle information in the software development area for the rest of the year. Anyways, see you guys soon!

Oh right, while I was tagging – I tagged Starbucks. Started off the morning coding there – love coding there, meet interesting people (a surprising amount of CEOs @ 6-7 AM in the morning just sitting across the table from you) and finally bought a starbucks rewards card. I only put $5 in though, being an investor at heart I hate locking my money even if it’s small amount). Let’s see if I can get that gold unlocked by the end of this month :).