Leveraging the Codecademy free Pro trial

Before you sign up

Picking a language to learn

In high school, I had to take a career aptitude test. It was essentially a personality inventory that asked questions about activities I enjoy doing and my methodologies for critical thinking and problem solving. At the end, I was told I would be a good fit for the following careers: political lobbyist, criminal defense lawyer, and forensic accountant. 

I actually did do accounting work for a while! Though I don't currently work in those fields, I understand what it was trying to say: I like putting together logical arguments and filtering through a lot of minute detail to fortify my points.

Codecademy has their own aptitude test. It asks similar questions and then gives you some examples of careers you may excel in and what programming languages you should start with if you want to pursue that career.

Take a test drive

Codecademy offers tons of free lessons that you don't need a pro membership to access. Once you think you've found a language you want to learn, go through the free lessons and see if you like it. Don't like it? Pick another language. Rinse and repeat until you find something you're ready to commit to

After you sign up

 Currently, I believe the free Pro membership trial is 2 weeks long. When paid for annually, it's $20/mo (plus you can get a 35% discount for students, or a 20% discount with code).

Once you're signed up for the Pro trial, you'll have access to a ton more content, more advanced lessons, and portfolio projects.

The real draw for the Pro membership, are the career paths. They include paths like front end, back end, full stack, data science, and computer science. These paths take months to complete because the lessons and projects are very thorough.

It can be tempting to feel like a kid in a candy shop and immediately gravitate toward one of these huge paths. But wait!

I recommend starting with the Code Foundations path. Estimated completion time for this path is 2 weeks, but I think you could do it in less time, especially if you already have some programming knowledge.

This path will set you up for success with which ever path you choose next. If you don't have formal education in computer science or technology, this is an awesome intro course to teach you some of the basics. What I like about this course is that it makes you confident in jargon used across all programming languages.