Coding has become the universal language of our times. Digital technology’s role in shaping the ways we live and work will only expand, in breadth and depth, and coding will continue to be a highly marketable and valued skill.

Whether you’re interested in building your skills for a career in the tech industry or just want to create your own website, there are many online resources for learning on your own time and at your own pace. One such resource is Treehouse, and East Baton Rouge Parish Library patrons may request a free Treehouse account on the library’s website.

Treehouse offers many different courses as well as tracks. A track is a program of courses designed for a particular topic. For example, the “Web Design” track includes a total of seventeen courses, starting with “How to Make a Website” and ending with “CSS to Sass.”

Once you have created an account and chosen a course or track, Treehouse will create a daily lesson plan for you, which can be viewed in your dashboard. Each lesson plan usually includes two to three steps and takes approximately thirty minutes to complete.

Courses are taught using video tutorials and follow along exercises in custom Treehouse workspaces that allow you to create and test code as you write it. There are also quizzes to evaluate your retention of information.

For an idea of what Treehouse video tutorials are like, check out this introduction to the course “Intro to HTML and CSS.”

Ready to start? East Baton Rouge Parish Library patrons can request a free account. Don’t have a library card? EBR Parish residents can visit the nearest branch to create a library account and get access to Treehouse and many other free resources!

Written by Thien-Kieu Lam.