Background

To mark National Coding Week, FutureLearn hosted two events, which showed how easy it is to start learning to code. In this post, get inspired by the beginners they met and find out how to develop your own programming skills with FutureLearn’s online courses.

“Coding is overwhelming at first, but once you start, it’s like a chain reaction. You want to learn more and more. It makes you question what you can actually do.” – Nicky, coding beginner

Nicky was one of 16 programming novices who dropped by the London HQ of online course provider FutureLearn for a beginners’ coding class as part of National Coding Week.

Members of the FutureLearn team took them through an interactive, hands-on session, showing them the code behind their favourite websites, and how to manipulate it to create their own webpages. Here’s what happened:

Many attendees were surprised by how simple it was to get started and how interesting programming can be.

“Coding is a good exercise for the mind, but it can also help in your job. Anyone who has the curiosity to learn should do it. You’ll discover more interesting things than you thought possible.”

– Giuseppe, coding beginner

FutureLearn also ran a live coding Q&A on Facebook with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, which offers a range of coding courses on the site. Educators James and Laura were on hand to answer questions on teaching computing, using Raspberry Pi resources and learning to code. Their advice?

“It’s really important to keep doing things, no matter how small they are, to keep your own skills relevant. The big success stories that we’ve seen, in terms of people starting from scratch and then learning a lot of programming, are those who’ve just gone around and tinkered with things.”– Laura, Raspberry Pi educator

If you’ve been inspired to learn to code, read FutureLearn’s career advice on how to become a developer or browse all of its Tech & Coding courses.