I am an IT guy, mainly focused on management and windows system admin stuff. I am slowly realizing I cannot avoid learning to code, to at least some degree. I have more or less 0 knowledge in coding, best thing I have done is write a 130 line .bat script that I wrote to do a common daily task on one of my 2012 servers.
Anyways enough backstory, onto my question. Has anyone used codecombat.com for learning some basics into coding? If so how well did it help you grasp the basics/baseline? If not could anyone who uses Python go take a look and tell me their thoughts?
I have done maybe 30 levels in python so far and wonder if it's worth my time to continue. I was planning on doing everything codecombat has to offer, then heading to https://www.codecademy.com/learn/python to learn more. After that was planning on picking up Automate the Boring Stuff with Python.
PS: Yes of course I could look up reviews on google and have done so, but I would like to see what the Tek community thinks on that website and my rough plan overall.
Tried it a bit for the sake of fun. Wasn't that great. Seemed a bit to arbitrary. Didn't seem to teach much from what I vaguely remember, was more of a laugh. Would recommend the codeacademy course on python, the free stuff is enough to get you started, then you can just go on and learn the bits you need or want to.
I do a fair bit of latency sensitive programming in c++ and computationally heavy scientific programming in python for work and here's my two cents.
Back when I was teaching myself how to code in python, there was none of this stuff. I taught myself by just reading the python documentation and poring over what I thought to be well written code (e.g. the original bit torrent source code). Now today things are obviously more accessible. I think those sites are a good way to get your foot in the door. However, every person I've met to date who's only learned from those types of websites have been sub-par at best.
My sister has been recently teaching herself, she started off by using treehouse however quickly took my approach and hasn't looked back. She told me the other day that her rate of learning increased dramatically after doing it.
I also agree with the above, the codeacademy course was more of a starting point. I never completed the course, I got bored of it after a while and just went into writing things I wanted to see if I could write for the sake of a challenge, used the doccumentation for anything I didn't already know how to do. Tkinter and PIL, for example, I never learnt how to use on the codeacademy course. Completing that course won't teach you everything, you've got to, at some point, get into writing stuff for the sake of seeing "Can I do this?".
I'm in the exact same boat as your except I'm less a systems admin now and more a security analyst but I still do both. Im still trying to find a way to learn python. I just never have the time really.
If you find something let me know. I'll do the same.
Probably one of the best ways to learn is to write code which actually accomplishes something. Its way more rewarding too. Keep writing more batch scripts to automate your work. If you get stuck on something just googlefu.
ps. To answer the question; I don't think anyone has ever actually learned much from code combat. These kinds of exercises are meant to be so easy anyone can do them and gradually advance. They get boring really fast from what I've seen.
I just started my first computer Science course 2 months ago, it's almost entirely focused on learning to code in Python 3. I just spent a few minutes on CodeCombat and Codecademy for you.
CodeCombat seems OK if you absolutely insist on learning to code not seeming like work, I see what it's doing so far and am sure it would teach me something if I continued to the later lessons. But it's more of a game with near-code pseudo-code in it.
Codecademy seems better because it actually simulates the response you will get if you make a mistake, not just: "Your hero has been slain" However, the biggest headaches I've had in my first 10 hours of coding have been mostly due to syntax errors, and syntax can change from version to version. Codecademy says it's teaching you "Python" I can tell it's syntax is different and will cause errors in Python 3.5.2(One of the most recent versions) So you may learn a bunch of stuff from it, but may also have to unlearn a bunch of things as well.
Automate the boring stuff wit Python is free so you don't have to pay for it, but if you just want to support the author, sure.(Although, the majority of his book is just a re-use of what other authors have written for free ( Think Python: How to Think Like a Computer Scientist writtenby Allen B. Downey, Jeff Elkner, and others) and an updated version here: https://www.py4e.com/book.php It's what I'm using, and along with https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Python_Programming and https://docs.python.org/3.5/tutorial/ I think you're all set.
I agree with @tsuser1729, those methods seem fine, but they also seem slow. But I'm not objective, I'm spoiled being taught if, elif, and else by a doctorate of cryptography.
Thank you all for your replies! I agree jumping in and writing something is my best bet. But that is difficult to do with no knowledge to start from.
Based on your answers, I think Ill still do Codecademy to get some starting knowledge. Then even as you and Codecademy say, is to then write something of my own(like a Reddit Bot for example).