Personal Project Help

Codecademy

Found at: codecademy.com

Abstract:

Codecademy is a website that offers interesting mini courses for its users. The site has amassed over 50 million users all learning from their 300+ course catalog. It gives students the opportunity to choose courses that they are interested in, in a self paced environment. With the free subscription plan, students can pick any of the general topics to learn a coding skill or discipline. The premium member option provides much more intense programming challenges and deeper information.

Over the summer or during breaks, students can use this resource to stay sharp on coding skills or even learn new ones. During students first through third years, the courses we take go over the basics of different programming languages, but never fully build a production ready project. With Codecademy, students can pick a subject like machine learning, computer vision, or data analysis, and complete several projects in that discipline. The extra work will push students beyond what they just learn in the classroom, and could put them ahead of their peers in 400 level classes.

Screen Shot of Codecademy's course catalog page.
Figure: Screen shot of Codecademy.com catalog page

Tips:

  1. If you want to pursue a course that you’re unfamiliar with, then start with a “beginner” course.
  2. Take the “Not sure where to begin?” quiz if you need help deciding on a project.
  3. Use the Codecademy resources and forums with any of your questions while working on projects.

GitHub

Found at: github.com

Abstract:

GitHub boasts the most widely used service for code version control and code deployment. Becoming comfortable with GitHub is an essential skill that every computer science student needs in their arsenal. When hunting for jobs or internships, recruiters will often look at GitHub pages and repositories to see the work that students have completed.

Students can utilize summer break to build projects with the other resources provided above and upload those projects to GitHub. GutHub also offers a forums page within the site to help guide users through the process of creating their first repository.

Screenshot of a GitHub profile.
Figure: Screenshot of a GitHub example profile

Tips:

  1. Upload every project you’ve worked on to GitHub. It doesn’t matter how large or small, recruiters want to see consistent coding habits.
  2. After you get comfortable with git repositories and project management, experiment with open source projects.