Post: #1

Happy New Year,

I have some free time in this year and would like to pick up a new line of interest. Do any of you on here have books or internet material you could suggest for someone starting out in investing or learning code ?

Of course I have done some internet research but would like to hear from people on here too, to gain some perspective. Also if there is any online courses that can be taken to provide qualifications for this subject (Something to aspire to) then that would be appreciated.

Post: #2

I purchased the CrowdAbility training course to new private stock offerings - think how to evaluate the next UBER before it goes IPO.

http://www.crowdability.com/ see The Early Stage Playbook

Am currently reading the Kindle version of High Income Retirement by Dr. David Eifrig

Also I subscribe to and read several newsletters starting with Motley Fool...

Post: #3

For investing, http://www.joshuakennon.com and any of his writings on about.com are great. His blog is a great source of knowledge and you could get lost for days sidting through old posts and revisiting them at later dates.

Post: #4

For code, I'd pick a language* and do a basic set of examples on any of a dozen websites you can google, so you get the syntax down. As a resource, wikipedia has excellent pages on various languages and the CompSci fundamentals underlying them.

Then I'd find an open-source app or small (SMALL, don't try to read the Linux kernel) project using that language, and read its codebase so you know how it is launched, what the major components are and what the code basically does.

Don't get too deep into .NET/mono/cocoa - that stuff is not coding as much as it is rote libraries and very complicated systems of talking between your program and the underlying OS. Not very useful to learn from when learning the basics of a language.

Also I'd learn source control - particularly git, which is the primary baseline source control environment right now. (For clarity, github =/= git - git is a free-software source control program, github is a business that hosts software projects).

Post: #5

Sign up for Pluralsight ( https://www.pluralsight.com/ ) pay the $49 a month and just get into it.

Software is so in demand that I think anyone who is at least a little tech savvy can become a competent developer in a few months and land an entry level high 5 figure tech job if you put in 8-10 hours every day.

Post: #6

https://www.khanacademy.org/computing/co...rogramming

^^ Great course teaching the fundamentals of programming. Free.

Concepts of programming are very transferable from one language to another. If anyone tries to tell you as a beginner "you must learn language X, language Y sucks", you can disregard what they say.

The important thing is to try it out with a good teaching method. Not everyone enjoys programming and has the aptitude for it.

Post: #7

I've heard good things about Khan academy.

On another point Tigre alluded to: don't get sucked into too much overwrought geekery wrt coding, which language to use, etc. Coding is a craft - the point is to write programs that do useful things. Not show off how cute your code is or some useless mathematical proof.

You can find scores of omega-neckbeard forums arguing without end about "you're not a real man if you don't use Ruby/Python/whatever" or "I wrote a program that recursively draws an ASCII picture of a cat with b00b$." Those guys won't form a barrier to entry if you don't let them, and a polished, game-aware guy is a much more comfortable hiring decision for a coding req than someone who never sees the sun. Just don't get wrapped around the axle by these guys who want their relatively replaceable skill of writing code to be their entry into their own autocratic club.

Post: #8

Oh another thing - read stackoverflow for questions about the language of your choice, it's an awesome resource for questions and odds are any question you have has already been answered.

Post: #9

Thank you guys, there is a lot of information for me here to digest !
I will start cracking with this, as it looks like I'll be sticking to a job over the next few years which will only be bringing in a fixed income. If I can make some money on the side or pick up a new skill on the way, it would be greatly beneficial of my time.