It’s hard to stay focused when there are so many awesome out there to learn. I want to get into Wordpress and build mobile apps for iOS and Android. Swift is especially intriguing… I spent a little time exploring Objective C in a CodeSchool course last year, but I’ve heard that Swift takes its cues from languages like Python and Ruby that have a simpler and more readable syntax.

I would love to get back into Python and explore Django more, too. There’s so much we could do with RaspberryPi in our school Coding Club!

But there’s time to branch out later on… For now, I want to focus on gaining depth and experience in the tools I already have: Ruby, Ruby on Rails, JavaScript, jQuery, HTML5, CSS3, and SASS.

With that in mind, I signed up for FreeCodeCamp at the end of December. FCC focuses entirely on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It starts with about 100 hours of coursework and challenges to get campers up to speed on the basics, including introductions to Node, Express, Angular, and MongoDB. After that, campers pair up to work on real projects for non-profit organizations.

I’d already done a lot of the coursework on Codecademy and CodeSchool before, so I’ve got 39 of the 53 challenges done already. I’m studying Angular right now, and I can’t wait to try it in one of the Rails applications I’m working on.

I’m also working on the Coderbyte challenges. I’ve pair programmed with two different people so far, and it was great to hear different ideas for how to approach the problems.

There’s a very active community in the chatroom, too.

For anyone interested in learning web development, I definitely recommend checking out FreeCodeCamp.