How to get started with SheCodes?

This guide will be packed with useful information for learners about how to get started with SheCodes! Whether you're learning coding for beginners or a coding expert, this is your roadmap for the world of professional web development. Here you can connect with coding, find out the opportunities that await you - and also the potential for fun and creativity that coding brings!

There is a lot to cover so let’s learn with a step-by-step approach!

To begin with, let’s define what a professional web developer is, with help from SheCodes founder and instructor Matt Delac. Matt has over a decade of experience as a web developer, working with companies such as Google and Airbnb.

Next, we will explore what programming is! There is a lot of general misunderstanding out there. You might have seen movies that show hackers (and hacking) but the truth is that coding is not so much like that. There are important differences between features like front-end development, back-end development, and full-stack development. Why does code have multiple languages? You might have heard of coding languages like HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Let’s find out together what makes them unique and essential in their own way!

We will learn about the tools and techniques that coders use on a daily basis. You will need to learn some of them if you want to learn how to code. Some of these coding tools are free, more accessible, and easy to use than you might think. It’s not rocket science! 🚀 

Through this page, you will see there are videos of Matt taking you through the different features we talk about here. These videos are taken from the free SheCodes Express class, a 60-minute introduction session that is also super-useful for anyone interested in learning more about coding and what it can do for you. If you’d like to see Matt in action, you can reserve your spot via the link or watch the videos embedded in this guide. 

There are many options here for you to learn how to code - we have a variety of different classes and workshops, and we will explore which one is the best for you.

What we want you to take away from this guide is the message that coding is fun. It is a valuable skill - companies all around the world are going digital and even if your career isn’t directly related to tech it will likely involve some online elements. Learning how to code is useful for your CV, one that employers are impressed by, and can unlock a whole range of new opportunities for you, whether you want to freshen up your current career or make a switch to a new type of job.

Let’s get started with SheCodes! 

First of all - what is SheCodes? Why do we teach coding only to women?

Matt Delac, the founder of SheCodes, realized that after working in Silicon Valley he met a lot of people who didn’t know anything about coding. There were a lot of myths around:

❌ Coding is too complicated for beginners to learn.
✅ Everyone has to start somewhere - if you find the right coding class for you, that is tailored to teach coding for beginners, you will be able to learn.

❌ You have to be good at math to be a developer or engineer. 
✅ A lot of developers are quite bad at math! You sometimes use mathematical characters in coding but it’s not the same thing. 

 
❌ Coding is a logical skill.

✅ Coding is actually very creative! 

❌ Coding is boring.

✅ Coding can be really fun - you can get creative, put on some music, and go with the flow!

❌ You have to go to university for years to learn how to code.
✅ You can learn to code in many different ways. You don’t need to know everything about computers, or computer science, to learn how to code. 

 Why do we target only female students?

When Matt began learning how to teach and write code, he came across a graph that revealed a lot. It would have looked like this - with a huge gender gap between men and women who enter front-end web development and software development. Sadly this graph shows that the gender gap is getting even wider - progress still needs to be made!

Several years on, we’re delighted to say that SheCodes has taught over 100,000 women at least the basics of code. It began in a small room in Lisbon with coding classes of ten students. More and more began to apply until the in-person coding bootcamps expanded to cover 80 people. To accommodate as many students as possible, SheCodes moved entirely online.

You can check out a lot of cool photos on the website from those in-person coding classes by following this link!

SheCodes has a very international student base. A lot of students come from the USA, UK, or Australia but we have plenty of students from countries where English isn’t the native language. All of our workshops are in English but you don’t need an advanced level to study with us - don’t be turned off by that. We’ve had students from over 190 countries around the world study with SheCodes. So whatever you learn today and in any future workshops with us, will be applicable wherever you are.

That’s the beauty of coding. There are no borders! 

Matt Delac is from France (you may have picked up his accent if you’ve studied in any of our workshops!) He has a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Montreal. But he attributes his coding skills to his first experience of work - moving to Australia for a job as a full-stack engineer. He also became an open-source contributor which helped to get his name out into the industry. If you’re not sure what ‘full-stack’ and ‘open-source’ mean, don’t worry - we’ll cover those definitions later!

Here you can find out more about Matt - in his own words! 

Matt moved to the US with the goal to build his own company. He joined a school called Y Combinator which helps developers convert ideas into successful businesses. A lot of businesses you use every day are built by developers - think of Airbnb, Google, Reddit, and Dropbox. There is a cliche that developers are antisocial people but it’s not true - and a lot of them have built successful companies!

Before SheCodes, the first company Matt started is called UpLabs.com. You can explore the website by clicking the link but the key point is that the site has received millions of hits - and is completely automated.

That shows you the power of learning code! 

First, let’s work our way through some well-known coding definitions that you may have heard before. You can follow the guide and watch Matt’s explanation of different coding terms here.

Job titles are a good place to start. Think about all the different roles you’ve heard of that are connected to coding.

These are really all the same things. We don’t have any official titles in the coding world; job titles often change depending on the market or location.

There is a difference between junior developers and senior developers. Usually, junior developer jobs are entry-level and senior developer jobs have an intermediate level of experience - let’s say 3 to 5 years.

Every time we write code, we write it for a specific platform. You usually specialize in one platform. You may think you don’t know what a platform is, but you do.

The most common platforms are used to browse the web - browsers like Chrome, Edge, Opera, Safari, Firefox, etc. Developers are essentially building and writing code for browsers.

The web is a great place to start out writing code. It will already be on your computer. You can access it via a browser - we recommend Chrome - and most computers will run it with no problems. You don’t need to go out and buy an expensive new Mac for this.

Next, you might have heard about programming languages. Every time we write code, we use a programming or coding language. It is just like when we speak. Maybe you speak French, Italian, or Spanish for example.

  So when we write code we have different languages like Java, C++, C, Swift, Python, JavaScript, Go…

A lot of these languages have their own strengths and weaknesses. Some of them are better for different purposes.

So you get the idea. Some companies prefer different coding languages depending on different factors. Some languages are better for specific platforms.

Remember: All coding languages use English. In particular, American English.  🇺🇸 

Also, many coding languages look similar to one another. This may seem confusing but it also makes it much easier to learn multiple languages. If you have to switch to another one - maybe for business or career reasons - you can switch in a matter of weeks.

The best language to start with, if you want to learn how to code, is JavaScript. It’s a safe bet. It’s a language that was developed years ago but has adapted a lot and is used regularly on most websites like Facebook. It’s everywhere on the SheCodes website too!

Another common term you might have heard about is the front-end and back-end. These are two very important distinctions in coding. Any website has two types of developers - a front-end developer and a back-end developer. What’s the difference?

Front-end developer: they work on what you see and what you can interact with. This includes images, video, and any interactions. They work more creatively, with styling and color schemes. 🖼️

Back-end developer: they work on what you don’t see. They work on the server side to make sure that everything on the website is functioning as it should, at the speed that it should. They make sure information is securely stored. They are more analytical, using data - some back-end developers actually do like math! 🧮

Both of these jobs are paid well and highly demanded. If you know both front-end and back-end development then you’re a full-stack engineer like SheCodes instructor Matt!

Don’t be fooled - being a full-stack engineer doesn’t mean you get paid twice as much! It also takes a long time to learn.

They are very powerful and they are in the middle of nowhere. Usually, they’re owned by a huge company like Amazon, Google, Facebook, or Microsoft. The servers are stored in warehouses in remote places with no risk of natural disaster, and no conflict - for example north of Virginia in the USA, Alberta in Canada, and the Netherlands in Europe. If you want to become a back-end developer don’t worry - you don’t have to move to those places! You can work on them remotely from anywhere in the world.

However, with SheCodes, you will learn front-end development. It’s the best place to start. It’s more fun, it’s approachable, and even if you want to learn back-end development, knowing front-end is always useful.

Whenever we write code for the front-end development of a website we have to use three distinct languages:

 

These are the three languages that our browser understands. HTML and CSS are markup languages, not programming languages like Javascript. This means that they are essentially very simple languages.

If we take the analogy of a news website… 📰

HTML adds the headlines, the text, and the structure of the page.

CSS adds styling, colors, fonts, sizes, typography, and spacing.

Javascript is what makes everything work. It will take care of the page’s behavior. What happens when you search, why something pops up when you click something. 

You might be surprised how easy it is to start coding - you don’t need to download or purchase a lot of different software to learn how to code. 

You might have seen lots of photos that show people coding in exotic locations on the beach. In reality, the ideal coding setup isn’t so much like this:

But more like this:

You will likely have two screens open if possible but really coding is a job, like any other job. It’s possible to have remote working and flexibility but to sit on a beach with a cocktail is a very idealized image!

Matt will explain more about tools & technologies here while you read: 

We use coding editors to write code. They can be very powerful tools. We highly recommend Visual Studio Code (VS Code). It’s made by Microsoft, it’s free to download, it works on Windows, Mac, and Linux and it’s very useful to learn with.

We will open VS Code and do some live coding with it. Whatever you code with VS Code, you can view it in a browser - this is great for testing out your website as you go.

This is also why we recommend working with Chrome. If you build something that looks great in Chrome, it will most likely look great everywhere. Chrome is used by 65% of all internet browsers globally. Chrome also has a feature called developer tools. You can right-click on ‘Inspect’ in the browser and view the code of the page. You can view how any page is made on any website. You can experiment with the code and reload the page so it reverts back to normal. This is an amazing tool for marketing and design.

GitHub is another amazing tool. We can store our code here as a secure backup in case something bad happens to your computer. You have two options - one, to keep the code private, or two, to upload it as open-source. This means you are making the code public. You can do this to get some visibility and attention from potential employers or other developers. A lot of developers have uploaded their code and been approached by big companies in this way, using GitHub.

Companies also use GitHub to promote their own code. Facebook, for example, decided to open source React, which is code that they built and use on Instagram (and Facebook too). It’s one of the most popular open-source projects around now. Once they open-sourced this, a lot of companies started using it - companies as diverse as Walmart, Uber, Skype, New York Times, Airbnb…and SheCodes!

The benefit of Facebook open-sourcing its code is that it can attract developers to give advice, help them fix bugs, and eventually recruit them. A lot of companies are using this strategy to hire skilled developers. 

In code, we have what we call frameworks. A good analogy here is to imagine a book… 📖

A book will organize text in a similar way to how a framework organizes code. You have a cover, a contents page, chapters, a blurb, and maybe references. It arranges the text in a recognizable structure.

A lot of companies expect developers to learn frameworks to make code easier to maintain. A famous example of a framework is Bootstrap- it’s made by Twitter, used by Twitter, and is open-source. They help websites look good on any device - even just basic HTML and CSS will be structured to function well on tablets, TVs, desktops, laptops, on phones. This brings up another useful term:

Responsive design -  creating web pages that look good on any device!

React is another good example of a widely-used framework. React is specifically for the JavaScript language. We mentioned it further up but to confirm again - it is also open-source and is used by a variety of companies; not only Facebook and Instagram but also Twitter, PayPal, Dropbox, and Netflix to name a few. SheCodes and UpLabs use React! JavaScript can get very complicated and messy quickly - React is a powerful tool to help you get the best out of it.

React is flying high in popularity. Look at the Google Trends from the USA (the trendsetting country for tech) over the past five years. Always trust the data!

There are lots of career opportunities connected with React. Junior React developers are well-paid but you have to learn JavaScript first of course.

API is another term associated with coding that you might know. APIs allow us to talk to other applications using code. It’s a way for two applications to communicate. An API can allow you to send an email to a server (like using Google, Mailchimp, or Dropbox), talk to Spotify to set up a Beyonce playlist, make a bank transfer with the Bank of America, set up an Uber ride - all just using a line of code. The uses of this are almost limitless.

So you can build businesses and applications around code. There is a whole world of technology here - a communicating ecosystem - that JavaScript can open up. It sounds complex but trust us - it’s not rocket science! 🚀 

There is no better way of demonstrating what it’s like to code than to show you. In this segment of the guide, Matt will guide you through the tools we’ve already spoken about - VS Code, Chrome, and GitHub - to show you the full coding experience. 

You might think that you only need to learn how to code if you want to become a front-end developer. But that isn’t the case. Tech companies like Google and Apple are mostly creating jobs outside of development. Most of the people they hire will be in IT recruitment, sales, tech support, product development, product design, product management, and user experience (UX)…the list continues. There are many jobs that tech companies hire for other than web development, where knowing how to code is a valuable skill.

Matt will explain more here!

Even sectors that are ‘traditionally’ outside of tech are often hiring for tech roles now. Many manufacturing companies use software to run their products and require - you guessed it, software developers. Matt, the founder of SheCodes cites an example of a friend who works for Volkswagen and has found that as the cars now require software to run, it is becoming a much more tech-oriented company.

Even if you’re not pursuing a career in web development yourself, it is very possible you will work with developers on a day-to-day basis. If you go to meetings in the future and hear your colleagues discussing APIs, GitHub, and JavaScript - it will be useful to know what those words mean!

Only good things can come from this. Developers will love you for knowing those specific coding terms! Learning how to code will improve your communication skills, and working relationships, and advance your career. It’s a huge plus if you can tell recruiters and companies that you learned how to code and that you can prove you know how to code.

And remember - it’s a global language. 🌎 

JavaScript is the same in California, France, Italy, the UK, Canada, Australia, Japan…

Matt has lived in 12 countries thanks to learning how to code. Professional developers have the freedom to remote work and can make a great income to match. There is a lot of demand for skilled coders.

Anyone can do it. It doesn’t matter how good you are at math, how old you are, how expensive your education is, or how much you like to play with computer hardware or the brand-new cool laptop you have.

If you’re motivated to learn, want to have fun, can commit five hours a week, and have a basic, functioning computer - you can learn how to code. Thousands of women already have with SheCodes.

You can browse their reviews by following this link. 

Where should you learn how to code?

We really believe in learning by doing. There are a lot of free or cheap resources out there like Udemy or YouTube but many of these are just videos. You can watch a video on how to write code for hours but you also need to get hands-on practice. It’s like learning how to dance salsa and watching a video of people doing it without taking a single step. 💃

Matt will take you through the different options here: 

At SheCodes we believe in providing support. There are a lot of coding forums and question-and-answer websites out there like Stack Overflow that are useful but not especially reactive. You might be waiting days for an answer and it’s not guaranteed that someone will explain the why. You could encounter a coding problem and have someone help you fix it but without any explanation of how to avoid it in the future.

This is why a lot of coding workshops have such a low completion rate - sometimes only around a 50% completion rate.

SheCodes has a 92% completion rate. SheCodes workshops provide the opportunity to learn by doing, with real-time tech support. The workshops are based on methodologies that Matt applied from years of teaching on-site classes.

Let’s talk through some SheCodes features that we think make us stand out from the rest.

🗓️ Weekly deadlines - in each class you will be given hands-on coding challenges to complete and apply your skills.

⏰ Flexible learning - We suggest committing five hours per week to our workshops but you can log in and do the classes whenever you want in that time. There are no live classes. Everything will work around your schedule as long as you want to learn.

🔧 Accessible tools - every tool we use in our workshops can also be used by you, at home, for free. These are tools like GitHub, VS Code, and Google Chrome.

🪜 Step-by-step approach - we don’t jump into the most complicated subjects immediately. Week by week, you will learn about a specific topic in order. You will have time to learn and practice before moving on to the next topic.

📺 Videos and challenges - Each class comes with a video where Matt will guide you through that week’s topic. It will usually be quite short - 8 to 12 minutes long - and then a small and fun challenge will follow that you have to solve! After you complete it, you will unlock a solution video that explains to you how and why the solution works.

✏️ Homework - at the end of each week you will have homework that is a slightly bigger exercise than the small video challenges. You can do this on your own time. When you’ve submitted the homework, the SheCodes team will review it to make sure you’re on the right track. 🙂

🤗 Community Support - you will have access to a Slack channel where you can communicate with other women in the SheCodes community who are also studying with us at all levels. If you have a problem or you get stuck, you can put your question to the community and get help anytime!

🏆 Verified Certificate - When you complete a SheCodes workshop, you’ll get a verified certificate (signed by Matt!) that you can share on your LinkedIn. SheCodes' partnership with LinkedIn means you can officially showcase it in your profile and add it to your CV. This will let employers know for sure that you know how to code!

We have different types of workshop options. We don’t call them courses as they’re more hands-on than that, and more collaborative, with a level of support beyond most coding bootcamps. Remember - you don’t need any kind of coding background to start one of our workshops. We welcome beginners, women from all backgrounds, and anyone who is motivated to learn how to code.

The workshop we most recommend is one we recently launched. SheCodes Max is a brand new program of workshops that are designed to give you the most complete experience of coding. It’s based on years of learning about what our students want and how we can give them the most valuable skills for a career in web development. With SheCodes Max, you get:

✅ More combined workshops than any other SheCodes package. You will have access to 8 workshops and, on completion, have 8 sophisticated projects to add to your coding portfolio including websites, apps, and landing pages.

✅ SheCodes Next, a career and job-hunting guide devised by Matt Delac, your SheCodes instructor and professional developer, to help you land your dream job after SheCodes. 

✅ Priority support from the SheCodes team for homework and technical help.

SheCodes Max will teach you about all the things in this guide - responsive design, the React framework, APIs, GitHub, Bootstrap - and set you up so you’re ready to start looking for jobs where you can apply your new coding skills. You can check out more about this workshop option by following this link.

If you want to get a flavor of learning how to code, SheCodes Basics is a good option. It is a three-week introduction to coding that will give you knowledge of HTML, CSS, and a little JavaScript and help you code a landing page. You can still study Basics first and then sign up for SheCodes Max if you decide that coding is for you.

The next section of the guide will focus on a Q&A - or an FAQ - of the best or most frequent questions we receive! 

Here we have prepared some of the most common - and most interesting - questions that we’ve received from SheCodes users in the past. You can read through the guide and hear Matt take you through the answers! 

A designer is usually someone who works on the graphics - they draw designs but have to work with developers to make this functional using code. 

 

You can focus on learning the front-end without learning back-end development. However, if you want to specialize in something like React, knowing back-end development would be helpful.

No. It’s better to start with front-end development for these types of hands-on workshops.

No. We have tools to help us, like Google Chrome and VS Code, so you don’t need to memorize everything!

Yes! It’s always good to have proof that you can code. SheCodes can help you with this - at the end of each workshop, you will create a new project that you can showcase in your portfolio for potential employers.

Here are some examples of particularly well-designed and interesting projects from four of our workshops.
 
 SheCodes Basics landing page, coded by Kirsten Fraser

SheCodes Plus weather app, coded by Ella Feliciano

SheCodes Responsive portfolio website, coded by Stefanie Poole

SheCodes React dictionary app, coded by Mandy Savoie 

A lot of students get visibility along with their new coding skills. You will have a full portfolio of projects to showcase and a verified certificate. You will also have access to a community of fellow developers and graduates. You can explore our Success Stories by following this link to check out what graduates say about the next step in their career after SheCodes.

No, we don’t think so. Matt himself says that if he had to do it all again, he wouldn’t do a degree. Often computer science degrees can be slightly outdated by the time you complete them. It’s now less likely statistically that companies are looking for developers who have computer science degrees so this requirement is losing demand when it comes to searching for coding jobs.

Yes - you will be able to work more effectively with other developers and knowing what is possible (and what isn’t possible!) in the code will make you a better designer for the user interface.

Once you’ve learned the fundamentals, you can become a better programmer through practice - it’s no secret! 

You can find all of the prices if you check out the workshops page here.

If you start with SheCodes Basics, just VS Code and Google Chrome. You will have to download more with the more advanced workshops but it will be free - we don’t ask that you pay for any software.
 

We try to be different from a typical coding bootcamp. SheCodes is focused on fostering a community of active learners with dedicated technical and customer support. You can read more about the differences here. 

Yes - lots of our students have full-time jobs or are parents. If you have these commitments or others like this, our workshops are flexible. We recommend you set aside five hours per week but we’re happy to leave you to organize that time. SheCodes is designed to accommodate busy lives!

No. We have had students in their 60s and we expect interest from all age ranges. Everyone can learn how to code!

We offer discounts to students and people who are unemployed. You can click on this link here to apply for a discount by contacting us.

Yes absolutely - if you can commit the time to do it, you can work more than five hours per week.

Yes, you can upgrade so that you don’t have to repeat Basics. We offer SheCodes Max at a special upgrade price if you’ve already completed Basics - you can follow this link to find out more.

No - working through Basics will set you up for future workshops as we install a lot of the software you will continue to use and share a lot of tips.

You can do them on your own time, as long as you try to meet the recommended deadlines at around five hours per week. 

 And that’s it! If you have any more questions you can:

 
📧 Email the SheCodes team at [email protected]!

✍️ Reach us through the contact form at shecodes.io/contact

You can sign up for our workshops any day of the week though Monday is the best day to start. If you think that you know someone who can really benefit from SheCodes workshops like your mom, sister, friend, colleague, your daughter - please recommend us!

Thank you for reading this guide - I hope it sparked your interest in coding and helped introduce you to this new world. If you remember a few things from this guide - that... 

1) coding is fun 🥳

2) coding is not rocket science 🚀 

and 3) there are always opportunities for anyone to learn how to code 👩‍💻 

- then we’re happy!