We're very excited for this to be happening, and we hope to watch each other grow and learn together. A big thanks goes out to Innovation Depot and Coworking Night Birmingham for hosting us this evening.

This is the info to access the wifi:

• Network Name: "InnovationDepotGuest"
• Password: No password is needed
• Check in here so we can stay connected

Heres a bunch of free or low cost resources that will probably get brought up or mentioned through out the meet up. I always find it funny that we're in the Information Age, yet it's hard to stay focused on one singular, resource. If you don't get anything else out of this meet up, I hope these 3 suggestions will help you.

1. Make at least one friend tonight that seems to have similar goals as yourself.
2. Pick ONE AND ONLY ONE course.
3. Work through that course together and motivate each other.
4. Stay connected with us on our Slack Channel!

If I could start over from the beginning, this is the one article I wish I would have read before embarking on this coding journey. If there was a second one it'd be this one.

A MOOC is a Massive Open Online Course. Typically, there will be some mix of video lectures, slides, and projects. Due to the grand scale (they call it massive for a reason) of these sites, it's really easy to get lost amongst all the courses available, so I'll post links to ones that I have experience in. The quality of these courses are incredible but most of them are not free. Fortunately, there are a few work-arounds to get heavy discounts.

1. Udemy - This is by far my favorite platform. DO NOT EVER PAY MORE THAN $10 FOR A UDEMY COURSE. Seriously, they run specials all the time. I'm sure you've seen the banners that say 'Only hours left to get courses at $9.99!' Don't believe them. Prices will go back up for about two weeks and then drop again. All courses have preview lectures, and I would definitely recommend going through the preview lectures before you buy a course. There's been times that I've bought a highly rated course, only to find that the instructors accent drove me crazy or his goattee distracted. Always remember, the best course is one that works for you.

   • Rally Coding by Stephen Grider
     Stephen Grider is awesome. His site RallyCoding lays out a track of Udemy courses that he teaches
   • The Complete Web Developer Course 2.0 by Rob Perceival

2. Coursera - this is my favorite MOOC. The full stack web dev course taught by Jogesh Muppala is awesome. I would say this was the course that made me have that light-bulb moment where web development started making sense.

   • Courses range in price from $29-$49 a month however, if you don't care about a certificate you can audit most of the courses for free if you use this link

These are tutorials that are completed in a browser. They're really nifty, and most everyone that I know gets their start through one of these.

1. FreeCodeCamp - A little less hand holding than CodeAcademy and 100% free. They provide a guided path, and I highly recommend them. They also write awesome articles medium.com. Also, at some point someone is going to reccomend to build a portfolio of projects. The take home projects section is great for that.

2. CodeAcademy - This will give you the gist of a programming language. It’s great to get your toes wet, but there is a ton of hand holding (even with the free form projects), and guided learning, so it really makes new languages approachable.

   • CodeAcademy is mostly free, but there is a premium option that ranges from $19.99-$39.99 a month (depends on how long you commit to it) or $199 for a guided path.

These are tutorials that you will build locally on your computer within a text editor like VSCode. These are really cool, because you'll actually get to see what your projects look like on a real web browser like Google Chrome.

1. Treehouse - I personally haven’t used it, but LeAlan Carter, Senior Web Developer at Remine is a big fan of the course. It's a good mix of video instructions with local projects, lectures with quizzes, and a few in-browser projects. A Note About LeAlan: If you are ever thinking about giving up, or that you're never going to understand functions, loops, or arrays, read this blog post he wrote.
   • Treehouse has a free trial period for seven days, and then $25-$199 a month there after.
2. The Odin Project - One of my personal favorites. Completely free, and has a clear, concise learning path. It relies a lot on personal research, and the material covers several important, but not well documented topics like Test Driven Development.

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr