Free resources for starting out: assembling your own route

Why there's no list of links here

Specific sites and channels change, close and date within a year. It's more useful to understand which types of material you need and in what order — then you can assemble the route yourself and refresh it when something stops working.

What you need at each stage

1. One structured course on fundamentals. There are plenty of complete free courses for the common languages — from large platforms, from universities, and from the communities around the languages themselves.

The job of this material is to give you an order of topics, not to teach you everything. Pick one and finish it without hopping between sources.

2. Official documentation. The most underrated resource. Beginners fear it and read retellings, although the original is usually more precise and more complete.

Reading documentation is a daily skill at work, and it's best trained from the start.

3. A problem set for practice. Programming problem sites are free at the basic level. Not for competition — to get your hands used to the fundamentals.

Don't overdo it: twenty or thirty simple problems is enough; beyond that your own project teaches more.

4. Open source code. The best textbook on how code is written in reality. Take a small project in your language and simply read it, trying to understand how it's arranged.

5. Communities. Chats and forums around your language. Useful not only for questions but to see what practitioners argue about.

In what order

Course fundamentals and problem practice run together from week one. Your own small program starts as soon as basic syntax stops frightening you, without waiting for the course to end. Documentation enters when you hit the first question the course doesn't answer. Other people's code at around month two — earlier it just frightens you.

What replaces paid feedback

This is the main thing free learning lacks. Options:

Communities. Post code and ask for a look. Be specific: not "review this" but "did I split this into functions sensibly".

Open source projects. Send a small change and you'll get review comments. That's the most honest feedback there is: from people who care about the result.

Building something with other people. This covers feedback, discipline and team experience at once. It works better than paid review, because you read each other's code continuously rather than once a week on assignment.

What doesn't work

• Watching without repeating. An hour of video with no practice is nearly worthless.
• Collecting materials instead of studying. A folder of a hundred links is soothing but teaches nothing.
• Hopping between courses. Each new one starts from the basics, and you cover variables for the third time.
• Studying alone for months. Without people around, the average time to losing motivation is about three months.