Yo programmer duders, lil advice needed!

Hi duders! I'm trying to find some good books with projects to help me practice (and in some cases learn or relearn) html 5, CSS, and Java script.

I am using both code school and code academy but I was looking for more to practice with. Plus I'm the odd type of person who learns best with multiple examples and hands on stuff.

Anyone have any textbooks they could recommend? Or heck any that you maybe tried and they were no good so I should avoid?

Thanks!

@naoiko: I've always seen the O'Reilly books around in people's offices (the ones with the animals on the covers). Have you tried looking up the nearest college and calling their bookstore? You can see what they carry for various classes. All my textbooks are fairly outdated at this point.

@freedom4556: I actually hadn't thought of calling a college book store and asking. Thanks!

@naoiko As someone who recently "learned programming" I would also pitch a slightly different method to learning. In my experience books are mostly good for referencing stuff. All the information is out there on the interwebz anyway, tons of forums and also the all mighty Stack Overflow. I'd say pick something you want to build, then research how to break it down into smaller problems and start building it piece by piece. If you're struggling with a technique, use an online compiler and try to strip the issue down to it's fundamentals.
I'm only saying this as someone else who identifies very much with "learning by doing". I find that techniques and ideas stick with me much better if I'm solving actual problems in a sort of real world context:)

Sorry if it's slighly off-topic but I hope it's food for thought!

@slasktotten: Solving actual problems in real world context is great but many times you just get stuck in a loop of reinventing the wheel. You need some guidance to be at least somewhat effective.

@rethla: this is very true! But I'm not sure you'll get that kind of guidance from text books though? Once again just my opinion and I'm not saying it's the only thing one should be doing "to learn". :)

All I wanted to say was don't get books hold you back from learning :)

Jon Duckett books.

@slasktotten: you should learn patterns you won't learn it on your own.

I use pluralsight, it has beginner up to advance courses on a lot different languages. I have personally found it great.

It's a bit expensive though, I had to get my work place to pay for my membership.

Visual Studio Dev Essentials is free and pretty cool. Comes with 3 months free Pluralsight among various other things. I don't really use books now because they're expensive and any of the "let's learn X" are out of date so quickly.

If you're just looking for a way to practice HTML and CSS and can't think of anything you want to build, you can always try and copy the look of another website. If you get stuck you can just look at the sites source code for help, though chances are the site will have been built with some form of framework(s) so it might be confusing.

In the past I've run through PHP tutorials on YouTube and was quite happy with those....so my only advice is that YouTube could be a (free) option.

I will totally be looking into to trying all of these! I'm game for ANY advice at this point so keep em coming if ya happen to think/find something else. =) I will for sure check out visual studio dev essentials and give pluralsight as try. I will as well try the method of copying a website and using the sites own code to check my work if I goof. Honestly hadn't thought of doing that oddly enough. Also YES! How did I forget youtube! I'll check into that too. Thanks duders!

https://www.reddit.com/r/dailyprogrammer/ and maybe codewars - I haven't tried either but hear decent things about them.

Just to throw this out there, Safari Books Online offers online textbooks and reference guides on a lot of topics, including programming. Some employers offer access to it for free, but an individual plan runs about $40 a month. It isn't the cheapest solution, but the plus side is you get access to everything. They also have video tutorials on a lot of these topics. For example, I just did a search on Java and they have a number of lessons, including a 17 hour lecture series on an overview of Java. Again, it ain't cheap, but this is an option to get you access to a lot of different resources.

Books tend to get out of date rather quickly and it's always best to type the code yourself. That being said I'd recommend the following (in no order what-so-ever) :

Skip anything from W3 schools. I block their search results in google because their code is garbage. Take notes when you watch and follow along by coding. Don't just repeat their steps, try to understand what was done and predict what they will do.

And finally never stop learning. Good luck! Reach out if you need anything else.

I sadly don't have textbooks as I've never learned like that. I would personally suggest tackling problems that are more programming specific. Algorithms especially is what I think helps the most. Learning how simple sort algorithms or pathfinding and then implementing them in some language helps a lot more than learning some js basics and then going for "new hotness" framework of the month. I say this to all the people I guide at work. Do not become a product/language person as you will be left behind.

Also the best thing I personally find especially once you start working is developing clean coding habits and studying anti-patterns. Also not sure why it's not more widely used, but learn regex. Even if it might not be worth it in most your projects it will at least teach you about how to think about the input your are processing.

Edit: For funsies