Learn how to code for free

Always wanted to learn how to code? You're interested in building apps or websites but don't know where to start? Or you think this will cost money? For that purpose there are many guides available online.

Which language?

There are many programming languages. The best know is PHP, which is used to build websites. But there are also many different languages used to write applications for an operating system that's running your smart-phone, tablet, laptop or desktop computer. Learning to write applications is less difficult than it seems. As with many things in life, it's starting to learn something new which is the hard part. Once you're on it, you'll be learning fast.
So decide upon what the first thing you want to approach.

PHP

Great for websites. Most websites are built with PHP, from Facebook to Moneyless.org. It's not the "cleanest" language though and it has some quirks. But if you mainly want to build websites this is your choice. Also note that highly prevalent platforms such as WordPress and Drupal are built in PHP, so if you want to quickly get started building your own website these would be a good choice.

Python

Python was created by a Dutch mathematician. It's very clean and organized. A great language for learning how to code. You can

Ruby

Ruby is beautiful. But not used a lot.

JavaScript

JavaScript is well known to make things move on webpages, inside the browser. In recent years it has grown into a widely language, especially with the advent of Node.js, which lets you run JavaScript on a webserver as well so you can build entire websites with it. It's a great language to learn, but it can be hard. "Callbacks" are very common, which make it hard to grasp. It's not the best language to start with, but once you have the basics nailed down it's a good second language if you want to build websites.

Java

Funny enough Java doesn't have anything to do with JavaScript. Java is very common, it runs on most modern machines and most Android apps are written in Java. Consequently it's a good language if you want to build apps, or if you want to work in big corporations, where the language has become very popular.

Free resources

There are a lot of platforms to find good resources to learn how to code.

Codecademy

A good platform to learn to write code is http://www.codecademy.com. There you can take courses on basic HTML, CSS as well as Javascript, PHP and Ruby on Rails.

Youtube

You can learn anything on Youtube these days. A query for Learn Python gives me 778,000 results today, number #1 was created by GoogleDevelopers. So definitely quality there.

CodeCombat

Through gaming: CodeCombat

CodeCombat is a free software role playing game that will teach you programming while playing.

Related information

Read more about:

Free wiki hosting

Wikis are great ways to structure knowledge together with other people. Wiki means fast in Hawaiian, which is for a reason. I've written a little overview of free wiki software, now it's time for free wiki hosting. Unfortunately spammers have also found ways to use wikis, mainly for black hat SEO linkbuilding purposes. This makes it pretty hard to keep a community wiki running.

Free public transport

unused bike

In most places it's still a far stretch but there will be a day that public transport is freely accessible. In some cities it's already happening and for some people in some Western places, but free public transport is still something to work towards.

Free wiki software

Hardly anyone who surfs the internet has not seen Wikipedia. Still many people are unaware of the etymology of the name. The term wiki was actually coined by Ward Cunningham in 1995 when he wanted to create a website for common programming patterns. He chose the word "wiki" which means fast in Hawaiian, a dying language. Ward's wiki was a big success and is still used today. Six years later Jimmy Wales started Wikipedia, which was actually a side project of Nupedia, which was supposed to be a serious encyclopedia written by professors and PhDs.

Basic income

basic income

There's a good case to be made for a global basic income. An unconditional basic income for all means that every citizen would get a fixed amount of money, every month or every week. This would alleviate poverty and even that would already create so much prosperity that it's worth striving for.

Free weed: drugs ain't funny

It might sound funny, but there are ways to get free weed if you don't have money. The first thing to add of course it that drugs are bad. You should not use drugs, even if they are free. But if you are going to smoke weed anyway you might as well do so without losing money. Here are some tips.