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Do yourself a favor. Learn to code. Here's how.

I’ve said this to my non-techie friends countless times. It’s no secret that being able to code makes you a better job applicant, and a better entrepreneur. Hell, one techie taught a homeless man to code and now that man is making his first mobile application.

Learning to code elevates your professional life, and makes you more knowledgeable about the massive changes taking place in the technology sector that are poised to have an immense influence on human life.

(note: yes I realize that 3/5 of those links were Google projects)

But most folks are intimidated by coding. And it does seem intimidating at first. But peel away the obscurity and the difficulty, and you start to learn that coding, at least at its basic level, is a very manageable, learnable skill.

There are a lot of resources out there to teach you. I’ve found a couple to be particularly successful. Here’s my list of resources for learning to code, sorted by difficulty:

Novice

Never written a line of code before? No worries. Just visit one of these fine resources and follow their high-level tutorials. You won’t get into the nitty-gritty, but don’t worry about it for now:

Dash - by General Assembly

CodeAcademy

w3 Tutorials (start at HTML on the left sidebar and work your way down)

Intermediate

Now that you’ve gone through a handful of basic tutorials, it’s time to learn the fundamentals of actual, real-life coding problems. I’ve found these resources to be solid:

Khan Academy

CodeAcademy - Ruby, Python, PHP

Difficult

If you’re here, you’re capable of building things. You know the primitives. You know the logic control statements. You’re ready to start making real stuff take shape. Here are some different types of resources to turn you from someone who knows how to code, into a full-fledged programmer.

Programming problems

Sometimes, the challenges in programming aren’t how to make a language do a task, but just how to do the task in general. Like how to find an item in a very large, sorted list, without checking each element. Here are some resources for those types of problems

Talentbuddy

TopCoder

Web Applications

If you learned Python, Django is an amazing platform for creating quick-and-easy web applications. I’d highly suggest the tutorial - it’s one of the best I’ve ever used, and you have a web app up and running in less than an hour.

Django Tutorial

I’ve never used Rails, but it’s a very popular and powerful framework for creating web applications using Ruby. I’d suggest going through their guide to start getting down-and-dirty with Rails development.

Rails Guide

If you know PHP, there’s an ocean of good stuff out there for you to learn how to make a full-fledged web application. Frameworks do a lot of work for you, and provide quick and easy guides to get up and running. I’d suggest the following:

Cake PHP Book

Symfony 2 - Get Started

Yii PHP - The Comprehensive Guide

Conclusion

If there’s one point I wanted to get across, it’s that it is easier than ever to learn to code. There are resources on every corner of the internet for potential programmers, and the benefits of learning even just the basics are monumental.

If you know of any additional, great resources that aren’t listed here, please feel free to tweet them to me @boomeyer.

Best of luck!

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1. expect them to educate you on issues relating to racism, race, and cultural appropriation. 2. whatever you do, DO NOT google to find answers first. the thousands of articles, videos, blog posts, films, and books produced by black people about anti-black racism are not important. you must ask a black person. any black person.  3. however, when they speak about their experiences of racism, don’t believe them.  4. challenge them when they try to tell you that you can’t do certain things, such as saying words they don’t want you to say (for example: bae, yasssss, or yall’s favorite, n*gga).  5. repeat. 

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Me (duh)

altblackgirls

blackgothgirls

bgwithseptums

blackgirlscolorfulhair

alternativeblackgirls

fuckyeahblackgoths

altgirlsofcolour

darkskinnedandtattoos

blackgirlsinked

colourdgirlswithink

prettyblackpastel

...

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my hopes for the final season of parks and rec:

- more donna storylines - more donna storylines - more donna storylines - more donna storylines - champion!!!  - more donna storylines - donna donna donna

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What most people think causes homelessness:

Poor money management

What actually causes homelessness:

transphobia

a racist criminal justice system

the ‘war on drugs’

health care and insurance costs

the current federal minimum wage

bankers being dicks

no federal law protecting paid parental leave

etc…

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Dear Black Women, Femmes, & Girls

Dear Black Women, Femmes, & Girls, I breathe and sing your essence, your fullness, your entirety, your existence, into humanity. I hold every single dimension, every contour of your spirit, in compassion, understanding, and care. Though your lives may have been captured, stolen much too soon, ignored for much too long, you survive, thrive, and live fully beyond the physical, your spirits infinite & transcendent in all of us. My life’s work is and always will be dedicated to the collective imagining of our freedom. Everything about our blackness, our black femmeness, our black womanhood, our black girlhood, is worthy, magical, and golden. Your infinite wisdom has always served as my blueprint for freedom in every way imaginable and I will continue to honor you today and every day. I am touched, consumed, & moved by your energy in my bones; Lifting me, filling me, feeding my spirit, curating my dreams. My life. Is dedicated. To Black Women, femmes, and girls. Always and forever. Your heart is my heart. Your skin my skin; your life, my life; Thank you infinitely for your reflection. Each and every day that I live, I fight. For you. I fight for Marlene Pinnock, Mia Henderson, Islan Nettles, Lamya Cammon, Vanessa VanDyke, Gabby Douglas, Renisha McBride, Marissa Alexander, Rekia Boyd, Latasha Harlins, Islan Nettles, Yaz’min Shancez, Payden McConnel, Tiffany Edwards, Aiyanna Jones, Yvette Smith, Tarika Wilson, Tyisha Miller, my mama, my sisters, my grandmama, you, and so many others. I value you. I see you. You are human. And you absolutely matter. Love, your sista, Danielle

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wtf is this world

Grandma testifying that her 7 year old granddaughter was murdered by a white police officer.  The police officer didn’t even look affected and he wasn’t even convicted. 

I felt her pain.

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How will we uphold the infinite value and worthiness of black women, girls and femmes today? Here are some things you can do, and this is by no means an exhaustive list: Write about it: Silence is not a luxury that black women, girls, & femmes can afford. Write the truth. That all black women lives mater. Expose the transantagonist/misogynist reality that continues to disallow black women’s stories from being told. Tell the black women, girls, & femmes around you that you love us infinitely. Tell us now. Tell us before it is too late. Tell us because black women, girls, and femmes need love too. Laverne Cox recently echoed Cornel West in expressing that, “Justice is what love looks like in public”. We need some justice today. We need some justice right now. Wee need some justice always. Listen to the black women, girls, and femmes in your community. Hold a convening for us to express our needs and concerns for safety and protection. Center OUR lives. Examine and evaluate your priorities: If you are going to rallies & protests for Mike Brown and Eric Garner but not Islan Nettles and Aniya Parker, then you need to ask yourself some questions about the bodies you believe do and do not deserve your compassion. Hold your folks accountable: If you notice that your loved ones/favorite authors/speakers at rallies are up in arms about the killings against black men and boys but not when it comes to black women, femmes, and girls, speak on it. Now. Today. Remember, this is urgent. Ask yourself. What are you actually doing to demonstrate solidarity with black trans women who are disproportionately subject to violence, homicide, and abuse amongst all other LGBTQ and black communities across race and gender? If it is isn’t much, then you have some work to do.

support the work i do with this lovely blog! Danielle Stevens, “Ain’t I a Human? Ferguson and the Neglect of Black Women, Femmes and Girls” (via feministspitball)

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i wrote this because our stories are never told. my life is dedicated to black women, femmes, & girls. 

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i wrote this piece because it is urgent and it is NOW. My heart is for black women, femmes, & girls always & forever. 

When we are complacent about the violence against women, femmes, and girls of color, we send the message that our lives do not matter, that the lives of black women, femmes, and girls are disposable, that our lives hold no value, and that our deaths & negligence are all in a day’s work. Dismantling oppressive power structures that inflict violence upon black women, femmes, & girls absolutely depends upon each and every one of us. It is URGENT that we centralize the livelihood and self-determination of black women, femmes, and girls in our freedom work and continue to transform ourselves intentionally to unlearn habits that uphold misogyny and misogynoir (anti-black misogyny against black women, femmes, and girls). It is crucial that we demonstrate solidarity with black women femmes and girls and critically examine the ways we are complicit in anti-black misogynist violence.

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When we are complacent about the violence against women, femmes, and girls of color, we send the message that our lives do not matter, that the lives of black women, femmes, and girls are disposable, that our lives hold no value, and that our deaths & negligence are all in a day’s work. Dismantling oppressive power structures that inflict violence upon black women, femmes, & girls absolutely depends upon each and every one of us. It is URGENT that we centralize the livelihood and self-determination of black women, femmes, and girls in our freedom work and continue to transform ourselves intentionally to unlearn habits that uphold misogyny and misogynoir (anti-black misogyny against black women, femmes, and girls). It is crucial that we demonstrate solidarity with black women femmes and girls and critically examine the ways we are complicit in anti-black misogynist violence.

i wrote this piece because it is urgent & it is now

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…so yall niggas dont make hot cocoa with water?

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fucking real & sad & fucked up 

Azealia Banks on Iggy Azalea & black cultural appropriation. (source)

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I believe in free education, one that’s available to everyone; no matter their race, gender, age, wealth, etc… This masterpost was created for every knowledge hungry individual out there. I hope it will serve you well. Enjoy!

FREE ONLINE COURSES (here are listed websites that provide huge variety of courses)

Alison 

Coursera

FutureLearn

open2study

Khan Academy

edX

P2P U

Academic Earth

iversity

Stanford Online

MIT Open Courseware

Open Yale Courses

BBC Learning

OpenLearn

Carnegie Mellon University OLI

University of Reddit

Saylor

IDEAS, INSPIRATION & NEWS (websites which deliver educational content meant to entertain you and stimulate your brain)

TED

FORA

Big Think 

99u

BBC Future

Seriously Amazing

How Stuff Works

Discovery News

National Geographic

Science News

Popular Science

IFLScience

YouTube Edu

DIY & HOW-TO’S (Don’t know how to do that? Want to learn how to do it yourself? Here are some great websites.)

wikiHow

Wonder How To

instructables

eHow

Howcast

MAKE

Do it yourself

FREE TEXTBOOKS & E-BOOKS

OpenStax CNX

Open Textbooks

Bookboon

Textbook Revolution

E-books Directory

FullBooks

Books Should Be Free

Classic Reader

Read Print

Project Gutenberg

AudioBooks For Free

LibriVox

Poem Hunter

Bartleby

MIT Classics

Many Books

Open Textbooks BCcampus

Open Textbook Library

WikiBooks

SCIENTIFIC ARTICLES & JOURNALS

Directory of Open Access Journals

Scitable

PLOS

Wiley Open Access

Springer Open

Oxford Open

Elsevier Open Access

ArXiv

Open Access Library

LEARN:

1. LANGUAGES

Duolingo

BBC Languages

Learn A Language

101languages

Memrise

Livemocha

Foreign Services Institute

My Languages

Surface Languages

Lingualia

OmniGlot

OpenCulture’s Language links

2. COMPUTER SCIENCE & PROGRAMMING

Codecademy

Programmr

GA Dash

CodeHS

w3schools

Code Avengers

Codelearn

The Code Player

Code School

Code.org

Programming Motherf*?$%#

Bento

Bucky’s room

WiBit

Learn Code the Hard Way

Mozilla Developer Network

Microsoft Virtual Academy

3. YOGA & MEDITATION

Learning Yoga

Learn Meditation

Yome

Free Meditation

Online Meditation

Do Yoga With Me

Yoga Learning Center

4. PHOTOGRAPHY & FILMMAKING

Exposure Guide

The Bastards Book of Photography

Cambridge in Color

Best Photo Lessons

Photography Course

Production Now

nyvs

Learn About Film

Film School Online

5. DRAWING & PAINTING

Enliighten

Ctrl+Paint

ArtGraphica

Google Cultural Institute

Drawspace

DragoArt

WetCanvas

6. INSTRUMENTS & MUSIC THEORY

Music Theory

Teoria

Music Theory Videos

Furmanczyk Academy of Music

Dave Conservatoire

Petrucci Music Library

Justin Guitar

Guitar Lessons

Piano Lessons

Zebra Keys

Play Bass Now

7. OTHER UNCATEGORIZED SKILLS

Investopedia

The Chess Website

Chesscademy

Chess.com

Spreeder

ReadSpeeder

First Aid for Free

First Aid Web

Wolfram Demonstrations Project

Please feel free to add more learning focused websites. 

*There are a lot more learning websites out there, but I picked the ones that are, as far as I’m aware, completely free and in my opinion the best/ more useful.

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omg 'ANDROGYNOUS' DOES NOT BY DEFAULT MEAN MASCULINE PRESENTING OR MASCULINE OF CENTER. our tendency to conflate the two is deeply rooted in patriarchy & femme-antagonism and it doesn't create room to affirm the lived experiences of folx who who imagine and embody their expressions/identities beyond hegemonic understandings of gender.

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when non-black men of color hold protests taking about Eric Garner, Mike Brown, & Trayvon Martin,‬ under the pretense that ‪#‎blacklivesmatter‬ but ignore you when you ask why the murders of black women, femmes, and girls like Aiyanna Stanley Jones, Deshawnda Sanchez, and Islan Nettles aren't centered. u r screaming ur priorities loud & fucking clear.

when cis women deny the humanity of trans women by telling u the murders of black trans women do not fit into mainstream narratives of state-sanctioned anti black violence bc it is 'derailing' and because it was rooted in 'homophobia'....what.

...We are actually out here picking & choosing whose deaths to grieve.