If you are like me and are transitioning careers to a development role or beginning your coding journey, you might find it overwhelming. I know it was for me. "Where do I even start?" was a question I often asked myself. And it's true, there is a massive quantity of information out there to filter through. On top of all this, you have to keep up with the latest trends, news, and updates, to make sure you are learning the right things.

Many of these resources also provide useful tutorials, or offer online courses as part of their business, either paid or free. Even if you don't have time to code along with these tutorials each week, I know that personally, just watching the videos puts my mind in a place where I can reference back to this information. That is to say, it teaches me where to look when I run into a similar problem in my classes or on the job.

There are thousands of resources offering tutorials, news, and other information on learning to code out there. Lucky for you, dear reader, you don't have to filter through all this information yourself. You don't even need to find people to filter it for you. that's right, in no particular order, I will describe 5 resources that have helped me personally in my code journey.

1. Fireship.io

Fireship.io is a youtube channel by Jeff Delaney that focuses on tech news, high-level introductions to new technologies, and code tutorials for beginners and beyond. Dubbing itself "The gateway drug for developers", I have personally found Jeff's teaching style to be concise but quite effective.

While his content is primarily focused on web development, It's also really impressive how many different types of programming languages and technologies he has covered in his channel. From front-end frameworks like React and Vue, to dives into the many various database paradigms, to deeper dives on more advanced topics, you can learn a lot just by watching a 2 or 3-minute video each week. it also helps that he is really funny.

What I find useful, beyond the tutorials on his channel are his weekly Code Report videos. These provide a high-level roundup of relevant tech news in a short format that anyone with a busy schedule can keep up with. If there is one channel you check out from this article, make it this one.

2. Zero to Mastery Web Dev Monthly Newsletter

Zero to Mastery is a company created by Andrei Neagoie that delivers video courses on platforms such as Udemy. The courses themselves are updated regularly, quite comprehensive, and cover a wide variety of topics such as web development, data science, machine learning, and UI/UX, what I have found most useful from them is their blog and especially their monthly web development newsletter.

The newsletter is free, concise, and well-organized, which is useful for someone with a short attention span like me. That being said, the newsletter packs a ton of content into a relatively short space, with short summaries and links to relevant web development news, links to useful web developer resources (such as this instant JSONs graph visualizer), articles about web development as a career, and broader industry news. I make a point of reading this newsletter each month.

3. Kevin Powell

Kevin Powell is pretty much my one-stop shop for all things CSS-related. His youtube channel, which has been going on for over 5 years, is a treasure trove of useful CSS tips, tutorials, and guides, for all skill levels. Many times in the past when I have struggled with implementing certain features in CSS, I have turned to Kevin Powell's videos. He is definitely part of the reason that I got through my introductory web developer classes so easily.

I actually recently had the great fortune of having Kevin come in to give a talk at one of my classes. The talk he gave was super informative, well-delivered, and full to the brim with practical, useful information. In the question period after the lecture, he came across as super knowledgeable, yet down-to-earth and nice at the same time.

I personally enjoy his short-form tutorial videos the most. they are typically structured as a code-along, with a number of practical examples. There are so many of these videos, too, seemingly one for every practical use case and conceivable example. It almost seems like whenever I search for a CSS concept, he is in the top results.

4. Be a Better Dev

I have been doing a lot of work on AWS lately, as part of my capstone project at my local college. My program, while well-taught and intensive, did not spend a great deal of class time teaching DevOps. Having entered the project with minimal experience and knowledge in AWS, or cloud services in general, I have found myself turning time and time again to Be a Better Dev. Daniel from Be a Better Dev focuses on introductory to advanced cloud computing (with a focus on AWS), design principles, and databases.

Most of the components of the (admittedly fairly simple) AWS Apps my team and I are developing for our capstone project have comprehensive tutorials available on his channel. These tutorials are up-to-date and well-explained, with a mix of practical and theoretical components. But beyond tutorials, the cloud news and deep dives on AWS concepts have proven very useful to my team and me. Definitely give it a look if you are interested in learning more about AWS.

5. ArjanCodes

Even though I have mostly been working with Javascript in my college program, I still write a lot of Python as part of my job and intend to continue doing so in my future career. My program was also relatively light on theory, instead focusing on practical skills. For these reasons, I find myself watching ArjanCodes's Channel.

ArjanCodes is a channel that focuses on two things: Python and software engineering. I have found that he teaches best practices and design patterns quite well, and explains more advanced Python concepts like decorators, concurrency, and structural pattern matching in a straightforward way, with practical examples.

As someone who has very little formal education in these more advanced concepts, ArjanCodes's channel has been a lifesaver.