When you complete your course on Codecademy, sometimes it’s a struggle figuring out where to take your coding next. Up until now you’ve had the comfort of a program that you’re following and knowing what you have to do next. With the world your oyster and the possibilities opening up in front of you, though, it can be a little harder to work out your next step. Luckily, we have some suggestions for you.

Get coding something real!

The obvious answer is to start using your new skills and make sure to keep them fresh. Start developing applications of your own, and see whether what you learnt on the course or in the classroom applies as well in the real world. If you don’t keep coding after your initial learning, it’s easy to grow rusty fast and start to forget the knowledge that you worked so hard to earn. So start writing code; Dream up a product to build and get programming it. The best way to continue after your course is to carry on learning through experience, which comes through writing code yourself or alternatively through…

Learn from others!

We don’t always have things to work on, and sometimes it’s difficult to have to juggle projects in our spare time around our work and other commitments. It’s a lot easier and a lot less hassle, then, to continue your learning experience by watching someone else do it. The best way to do this? Use Livecoding.tv. On Livecoding.tv you can watch someone developing a real product, and ask them questions as you go. It doesn’t matter if you’ve got ten minutes spare or a couple hours, there’s nothing simpler than reclining in your most comfortable chair and killing some time watching someone else show you how they code. It’s a great way to get real life experience of people using their skills to build real products, as well as getting feedback and finding out why they’re doing what they’re doing as you go. And after you’re feeling a little more confident, move on to…

Take part in a hackathon!

Hackathons are a great way to get together with teams of creative people and get coding. You have to develop a product in a small amount of time, working together with a group of other programmers and designers. It’s a fun way to improve and to get building something which actually works and has to demo well in front of the judges in order to win the competition! Working as part of a close team can be a great way to improve your skills, as well as pushing and challenging you to use your programming potential to build something cool. Just like Livecoding.tv, it’s a social experience as well as a good way to take your coding to the next level.

With these 3 great steps you should be able answer the question ‘What’s next?’ after Codecademy and push your programming to the next level!