The secret to learning coding: finish a project, not just exercises

CodeAcademy and CodeSchool are just two popular websites among the dozens that offer free or affordable programming courses for beginners. They are great platforms. The only problem, says Song Zheng, a software engineer at Google, is that 90 per cent of the people who do these courses fail to actually learn how to code. This is because instead of starting out with a project in mind, like creating a website from scratch, they simply go through the exercise and earn badges with the goal being to complete the course rather than complete a project.

“This is why you will not be hired if you list CodeAcademy and/or CodeSchool badges on your resumé,” he warns.

So what to do if you're starting out? Zheng recommends freecodecamp.com, an online community where beginner developers can help each other out, work on projects together and build up some experience by helping out nonprofits.