How expensive it is to learn coding?
Tags: codenewbie, linux
Published: 2021-01-24 12:05:51

Someone asks me if learning code is expensive. My answer is no. 
I think that if you are young and you are starting a specific school it may be better. In my case, I have only a light background with coding. I started only one year ago to go in deep with coding. I have only an old laptop I had recovered using Kubuntu Linux, my favourite Distro. I was scared just by the cost that could have an education in this field. The only thing I was pretty good to do was to build a pc using recycled parts of other PCs.
###**Resources**
So I tried to jump in learning to code. In the beginning, I start with a resource I think everyone use: Freecodecamp. This resource gives you some ideas about how coding works. Technicals are important, but thanks to Freecodecamp, you start to use Twitter in a different way and meet other developers. Most of them are people like you that are starting this adventure. But Twitter is full of senior developers who uses Twitter to give suggestions about everything concerning Coding World. This is a great resource you can use to learn something new every day.
I spent some money to buy courses on Udemy, but you can find a lot of free courses searching for MOOC. English is a must-have skill, but you don’t have to let this stop you. You can find a lot of courses in your language. 

###**Hardware Requirements**
Let's talk about hardware requirements.
As I said, I start with an old laptop. It was a good laptop with 4GB Ram, i5 processor and a 500GB HD. Not the best but it works. I gave him a new life installing Linux as OS. I used Kubuntu that was my favourite distro. 
Because of COVID, I had to give my laptop to my daughter for school to let her follow school online. So I recovered a desktop pc with the same features of the laptop. Only two weeks ago, my wife's chief gave to me two PCs that he wants to throw away because he wants to renew his office. In those PCs, I found two 250 GB SSD and 16 GB RAM. He gave me monitors too. So, I worked for two days and I upgrade my pc using the stuff I found in those PCs.


###**OS**
Talk about the OS is hard. All of us needs different features.
I'm a Linux User since 2012, so for me, this is the best OS I can use for coding. During the last year, I talked with a lot of Twitter friends about which Distro is the best for coding. Let's say one thing: if you want to switch from Windows to Linux, choose a user-friendly distro. If you have to waste time in the installation procedure, you will be very frustrated. I have tried a lot of distros and my Twitter friends suggested me others. A few months ago, when I switched to desktop pc, I've installed Debian 9. It's called the mother of the distros and is very good. In my experience, I think this is not for a newbie. You must have faced Linux World before using it. Two weeks ago, when I built my new "Frankenstein PC", I wanted to finish as soon as possible, so I used a Live USB I had prepared for a friend. So I installed Linux Mint 20.1 Ulyssa, the newest Linux Mint release. Now I'm trying this distro but I think it may be perfect for a Linux newbie who wants to enter in Linux world but is good also for a Linux expert. You can easily install all the tools you need to start coding.


###**Tools**
Tools for coding are free! You can have all you need to start coding simply installing it. No more costs. I don't want to talk about useful tools here because you have so many choices that you can try them and find the best for you. 

###**Conclusions**
Don't be scared about how much expensive could be learning to code. This is almost free. It depends on how many courses you buy, but your commitment to study is what really matters. The Dev Community is made by people who help each other and this is what you have to do. When you learn something, write somewhere about it. It may be very useful for someone else.

Thanks for reading this long post. If you have any suggestion, please feel free to comment.