Do you want to learn to code, but can’t afford the hefty fees that come with most professional courses? We've rounded up the best in-person, free coding classes in New York City.
Top Free Coding Classes in NYC
- The Flatiron School
- Coalition for Queens
- New York Public Library
- Grace Hopper Academy
- NPower
- Noble Desktop
Mobile Dev Corps is a new, four month long course run by The Flatiron School and fully funded by the city. Starting in January students will learn to build iOS apps over a 16 week course. To be eligible you must be an NYC resident, earn less than $50,000 per annum and have no prior programming experience.
Access Code, run by the Coalition for Queens equips talented adults from underserved and underrepresented backgrounds with the computer programming skills and entrepreneurial training to launch careers in the tech industry. The nine month, part-time program in mobile app development prepares complete beginners in coding for entry level engineering roles.
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NYPL Tech Connect offers free 10 week coding courses for beginners at various locations. Project Code, running over the winter 2015 is a web development course held at the Mid Manhattan, Countee Cullen and Parkchester libraries. Students attend two-hour classes twice a week and build a website at the end of the program. The library will also be offering a Photoshop course. You can sign up to receive more information here.
The Grace Hopper Academy offers coding courses for women with no upfront tuition costs. You only pay once you secure a job after graduation. The placement fee is 22.5 percent of your first year’s salary, paid over 12 months after you start working. The first program starts with a four-week part time online course before moving to the New York campus for 13 weeks. Applicants should already be familiar with the basic building blocks of coding. The next course starts January 11th, 2016.
Non-profit Npower offers this free program to young adults ages 18 to 25. The program hosts two class cycles per year, beginning in January and July, with each running a total of 22 weeks, including 15 weeks of class-based training and 7 weeks of paid internship. The courses are based at Npower’s HQ in Downtown Brooklyn and in Harlem.
Noble Desktop is a web design and app coding school located in Soho. They have an extensive list of fee paying design orientated course but also run regular free seminars. For example on Wed Dec 16, the school is running a free two hour class on getting started in web design where you’ll learn the basics of HTML and CSS. There are similar intro seminars on iOS app design and Adobe products like Photoshop and InDesign. You can check out the full list of free seminars here.
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