Following -- I'm game to participate! I'm a self-taught coder (just enough to help high school students learn basics), but I'm struggling with how to challenge more advanced students. Since , so I'd like more practical practice.
I found the Codecademy and Make School style tutorials to be very clunky. They're helpful for teaching syntax, but IMO, you need previous programming experience to make some of the mental leaps that are expected of you. I'm also disappointed that a lot of Codecademy's projects moved behind a subscription paywall -- even though you can go through their tutorials for free, you come out the other side feeling like you still don't quite know what to make or do.
I'm down for that, I'm also teaching myself Python. Finished Code Academy and the MIT course on Edx.org. Now I've moved on to machine learning specific resources. I'd definitely be down for a learning to code thread. I had a buddy that was supposed to be learning with me, but he flaked out after like 4 weeks and it's made me not focus as much too. I need to get back into the groove as the best way to learn is to be doing it every day.
I made it to Week 5 of the MIT EDX class for Python, but got frustrated with spending 3 hours every night just staring at code by myself with nobody to talk to or ask questions. That said, it was EXCELLENT in terms of great projects that you needed to solve by coding/programming. But man, if you aren't MIT material, plan to double the amount of time they recommend for studying/solving.
A suggestion -- assuming it wasn't discontinued in the Gawker Media debacle, LifeHacker's "Spring/Summer University" free online class recommendations are usually published around this time of year (although a quick google shows that there wasn't a 2017 post...) They do a nice round-up of the free MOOC classes that run "live" sessions and they usually highlight both the classics and new courses.