Hours. Of. Practice. We have previously explained how to learn the basics of many programming languages in a few minutes, but sooner or later you'll have to cross swords with more complex guides and tutorials. Fortunately, the Exercism portal has everything we need: each of the 67 available languages has a "track" with dozens of exercises, introductory videos, dedicated forums, and a large amount of additional documentation.
The situation hasn't changed: if you want to learn to program, the hardest step is the first. Almost all languages have a "Hello, World!" but regardless of its superficial simplicity, you must feel comfortable with its structure, its syntax. If the spark doesn't appear, move on to the next language, explore another option. Many professional programmers insist on the need to adopt new technologies, and that same flexibility is what inspires the Exercism platform, with thousands of exercises spread across 67 languages to learn to program for free, from the beginning.
How to Learn Programming for Free with Exercism
Like other platforms, Exercism asks you to create an account to save your progress, but if you already have GitHub credentials, you can use them instead. The main access section is Learn, where you'll find the "Language Tracks" category.
Exercism divides the exercises into "training tracks": the exact number of exercises depends on each language, though the most popular ones have a larger amount of material (e.g., 24 COBOL exercises versus 137 Python ones).
You can participate in more than one track at a time, but exercises will remain locked if you don't advance in the correct order.
On top of all that, there are community videos, introductory series, interviews with many of the creators and maintainers of these languages, and of course, access to the official forums, backed by a Discord server.
To finish, Exercism is free and is funded by user donations, but the premium mode ($10 per month) includes features like dark mode, additional slots to access mentors, and integration with ChatGPT.
The only limitation? All content is in English, but that hasn't stopped us before…
Official site: Click here
