If you are thinking about finding your next job, but feel a bit rusty, or you are feeling board in long meetings at the office, it’s always a good time to improve your programming skills. Here are 3 free programming sites I personally visit often.
There are many lists online about programming sites. I chose only 3 I actually use.
If you got here because you are preparing for a job interview, or thinking about it, this post might interest you: How to prepare for an online programming job interview
BTW, Credit to the cover photo of the logo man practicing his fishing goes to Artur Tumasjan on Unsplash.
Why do these sites work for me?
As I mentioned above, the web is full of tutorials and websites targeted to programmers. I tried many of them, but ended up visiting most of them only once.
What make the ones here worth visiting?
- They have coding challenges in different levels, starting from a beginner level.
- Support multiple programming languages (Java, Javascript, Python and more).
- Give access to other people’s solutions or explain the theory behind the questions
- Good user experience and gamification
3 Free programming sites to improve your coding skills – the list
1. Codewars.com
Choose a language and start practicing it with challenges.
Link: https://www.codewars.com
In general
Codewars provides a free, fully gamified user experience, built on the ninja-developer jargon.
You can solve coding “Katas”, have you rating in points that escalate into martial arts score such as “Dan 3” and “Kyu 4” which are different belts in Karate (I had to google for that :)).
In total, I spent several days coding in this website, rotating between Javascript and Java languages to solve the challenges.
Supports many programming languages, for example: Javascript (ES6 is supported), Java, C#, Python, Kotlin, Swift and much much more.
What makes it unique?
Two things stand out about codewars:
First, there is an active community that creates new challenges all the time, as well as a forum that can help if someone is stuck in a challenge.
Second, after you submit your answer, you can look at other answers to get inspired and see other code styles and different ways to solve a problem.
And.. it has a dark theme! The little things that make me feel at home.
2. Codility.com
Focuses on job interview questions, specially questions used in Codality’s platform by their customers.
Link: https://codility.com/programmers
In general
I stumbled upon Codility when I interviewed for a remote-programming job, for a company that held their process in Codility’s platform. I liked it a lot.
Codility is a company focused on providing companies tools to improve their hiring process, such as remote coding interview tools.
As such, it has a section in their website dedicated to developers that want to practice for job interviews.
The programming challenges are divided into different sections: Iterations, Arrays, Time Complexity, Stacks and Queues, and more.
Each section has a nice PDF that explains the theory, and about 3-4 programming questions that relates to it.
What makes it unique?
Codility focuses on job interviews, so all the questions there are pretty similar to ones that are used in real interviews. Which is a big advantage.
Moreover, Each part has a theoretical explanation.
3. Freecodecamp.org
In a sentence: Certification based training, focuses on web development.
Link: https://learn.freecodecamp.org
In general
FreeCodeCamp is a another great free resource to improve your coding skills. It has a well organized web development course, with a “from zero to hero” approach. Teaching everything from the bottom.
Also, it has a great technical blog, I believe in cooperation with Medium.
What makes it unique?
FreeCodeCamp’s main focus is web development, and it is optimized for junior developers and people with no experience. If you do have experience, you can jump straight to the relevant lesson for you.
In contrast to the sites above, this one doesn’t focus on solving logical problems, sorting lists, or creating ciphers (there’s a challenge for it on codewars, promise). It focuses on building a working HTML+CSS+Javascript website.
On a personal note, when I give private lessons to beginners, I highly recommend this website as a resource that helps to understand what a website is. If you are also a beginner, you may find this post interesting: How to become a front end developer with no experience
Conclusion:
Like a friend of mine Ariel Weiss once said:
“Even professional basket ball players start their practice with simple dribbles and shoots to the hoop”
Before a job interview, or, you know what? Even without a job interview in mind, it’s good to get back to basics and remind yourself of data structures, algorithms, or practice a new language.
So what is YOUR favorite website? Please write in the comments below…
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