Learning how to write and understand computer code is a useful life skill and a highly demanded job skill. The future economy and culture will revolve around the increasing ubiquity of computers and the internet in everything from our car dashboards to our refrigerators, and individuals with the ability to code have no shortage of job offers. New computer science graduates are receiving multiple job offers in a poor job market, and some companies are offering $12,000 in bonuses just for referring a software engineer that gets hired. However, you don’t have to shell out thousands of dollars to attend college in order to learn how to code. There are several great free or low cost resources online that can help you become proficient at coding.

Lynda.com offers software training videos that you can watch online at any time that’s convenient for you. These videos allow you to learn at your own pace, as you can always pause, rewind or even fast-forward the lessons. There are over 1000 lessons to choose from including “Foundations of Programming”, “Objective-C Essential Training”, and “JavaScript Essential Training”. An affordable monthly subscription of $25 allows you access to all courses and it costs a little extra to access the course exercise files.

Codecademy claims to be the easiest way to learn code and offers instruction in building websites, games, and apps at no cost. You can earn badges with each new skill accomplished and track your progress and then share how far you’ve come with others.

W3Schools provides tutorials to learn programming skills for building websites. There are tutorials for various web languages including HTML, CSS, JavaScript and SQL. It’s certainly worth a try for beginners, as there is no cost for the tutorials.

Hackety Hack! is a great tool people learning to code with little background knowledge and promises to “teach you the absolute basics of programming from the ground up.” Hackety Hack! is a downloadable desktop application that teaches the Ruby programming language and is available for download on both PC and Mac. You can check out programs created by other users and even share your own. The Hackety Hack! app is free.

Mozilla School of Webcraft is another interactive way to learn web development. You can get help from friends who are also using the service and ask questions of mentors when learning the basics of computer programming. Lessons are backed by the well-known Mozilla company, and you can earn badges for demonstrated skills. Users choose their courses and learn to build a site through various challenges, all at no cost.

There are a number of helpful resources available to help you learn to code. Independent online study can be an effective way to learn these valuable skills that you can put to use immediately on a site of your own or helping companies who desperately need programmers. Check out these sites for yourself and see which one fits best with your learning style.

This article was written by Mary Davis who writes for Criminal Justice Degree Schools, a criminal justice career site with information on how to earn a computer forensics degree and starting a career as a computer forensic specialist or cybersecurity analyst.