How to Take Advantage of the GitHub Student Developer Pack
Tags: webdev, beginners, github, javascript
Published: 2023-05-12 17:44:38

Nearly a decade ago, GitHub launched their Student Developer Pack. A valuable initiative to provide students with access to essential tools and high-quality paid resources to enhance their learning experience. If you're a student, this article aims to help you maximize the benefits offered through the program, ensuring you make the most of the available opportunities.

To access the offers available, start by visiting [this page](https://education.github.com/pack). Click on the register button and then click "get student benefits" to sign up for the pack. Verification requires your student email to confirm the message sent by GitHub. Once verified, you'll be able to access over 80 offers on the site.

While this article may mention Ruby or JavaScript, the resources cover many mainstream languages and stacks. So, without further ado, here's a curated list of standout offers.

### Educative.io
With their offer, you get access to 60+ written programming courses on [Educative.io](https://www.educative.io/) for free. It used to be their entire library a few years ago, but you still get good courses despite the limited amount.

One piece of advice, though, especially if you're brand new to coding, is that it is beneficial to learn to set up your dev environment, and you won't learn that with Educative.io, as they have you code in their embedded IDE right there in the browser.
But you'll find great value in the courses once you account for that.

### GoRails
A good way to learn to code is by reading and writing a lot of code. And [GoRails](https://gorails.com/) helps you on the reading front, as you're essentially watching somebody build software. You'll notice certain interesting decisions and patterns, which can become options for you when building your own software. 
GoRails has a lot of videos covering various aspects of [Rails](https://rubyonrails.org/), and you get 12 months free plus an invite to their private Discord server.

### DigitalOcean
[Digital Ocean](https://www.digitalocean.com/) is a simple cloud hosting platform built for developers. I recently [wrote a guide](https://dev.to/samuelodan/how-to-deploy-your-rails-app-to-a-digitalocean-droplet-using-dokku-eh7) on how to host your Rails apps on there. 
Once you claim your offer, you get $200 of free credit for a year, which should be enough to cover your hosting needs throughout its validity.

### Namecheap and Name.com
[Namecheap](https://www.namecheap.com/) and [Name.com](https://www.name.com/) are big-name domain registrars, and in partnership with GitHub, they each offer one free domain name registration and a free SSL certificate.

### JetBrains
You've probably heard of IntelliJ. It's one of the most popular IDEs (not just among Java devs), and it was made by [JetBrains](https://www.jetbrains.com/). They have Development tools for whatever technology or platform you use, and their offer grants you access to all their IDEs (Including RubyMine and Webstorm) while you're a student.
Fun fact: they are the creators of the Kotlin programming language.

### Frontend Masters
[Frontend Masters](https://frontendmasters.com/) has over 150 high-quality video courses from renowned Devs, including [Sarah Drasner](https://twitter.com/sarah_edo), [Kyle Simpson ](https://www.google.com/search?q=kyle+simpson&oq=kyle+sim&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8) (author of You Don’t Know JS), [Brian Holt](https://twitter.com/holtbt), and [ThePrimeagen](https://twitter.com/ThePrimeagen) (the Vim evangelist, haha!).
You get all their courses for 6 months. Glad they haven’t nerfed their offer. 

Despite what the name suggests, Frontend Masters also covers backend web development, DevOps, Linux & the command line, Machine Learning, Computer Science, Vim, and mobile app development. 

### Icons8
[Icons8](https://icons8.com/) provides photo, illustration, icon, and music assets for designers, and their offer nets you a 3-month, all-access subscription.

### Replit
[Replit](https://replit.com/) is an online integrated development environment (IDE) that allows users to write, compile, and run code in various programming languages directly from their web browser. It provides a collaborative coding platform where multiple users can simultaneously work on the same project.

Their offer grants you private repls for 6 months.
If you want to see what your programs can look like on there, [here](https://replit.com/@Samuelodan/chesscli) is a chess game I wrote and hosted there last year. Although it's a CLI app, you can also run simple web apps there.

### Interview Cake
[Interview Cake](https://www.interviewcake.com/) is an online platform that offers resources and guidance for coding interviews, particularly for software engineering and technical roles. It provides a structured curriculum and practice materials to help individuals prepare for technical interviews at top tech companies.

It's pricey, but I've heard good things about it. You can get 3 weeks of access for free.

### Dashlane
[Dashlane]() is a top-rated password manager with loads of features. Here's an [excellent review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/dashlane) from PCMag
You can get 6 months of premium. Okay, that's not entirely true. You get all the premium features except the VPN, but it's good value nonetheless.

### 1Password
[1Password](https://1password.com/) is another popular password manager. I haven't used this one, but many people swear by it, so I'll include it. 
You get 1 whole year of free access. Here's [a review](https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/agilebits-1password) for good measure.

### Mailgun
[Mailgun](https://www.mailgun.com/) is a cloud-based email service provider that offers email delivery and management solutions for businesses and developers. It provides a set of APIs that allow users to send, receive, and track email messages effortlessly.
You get 20,000 free emails and 100 free email validations each month for up to 12 months.

Phew! That's the last one.

Most of these services are worth the money, even if you're not a student. So, consider checking them out.

Alright! That's been it from me. If you think an offer should've made the list, let me know in the comments below.
Thanks for reading.