Newly updated for today’s #tedxpoynter conference, the Life and Code Learn to Code Resource Guide has 90+ resources for beginner and aspiring programmers.

This is a list of resources you can use to begin to write your own programs, written with journalists in mind.  I focus mostly on free resources that are available to anybody online, and resources useful to people starting from scratch. I will be adding to this over time.  If you’d like to know about new additions, subscribe to this blog (or follow us on Tumblr).  If you have additions or corrections, please leave a comment below. You can also follow me on Twitter, where I am @lisawilliams. 

Livestream for TedxPoynter -- talks about journalism's future

There will be a livestream for TedxPoynter, so even if you’re not here in St. Petersburg, FL, you can still hear all the great talks live.  Check it out here tomorrow on Friday, June 1.  

(Psst!  I will be talking at 3 EST!)

jasonsadler:

TEDxPoynterInstitute - Jason Sadler - Don’t Say the V Word: Instead Be Shareable

I hope you enjoy my TEDx talk from the Poynter Institute in October, 2011. Let’s all stop saying “the v-word”.

patman162:

One of the key points I took away from this infographic was that “The difference between winning and losing in a data-driven world will be the ability to reduce the ongoing costs of managing increasing volumes of data with the ability to extract value from it.”

Browse more infographics.

Please Learn to Write

An interesting and useful response to Jeff Atwood’s “Please Don’t Learn To Code.”  

I have a hard time with the idea of one person telling anybody not to learn something — unless the knowledge that’s being acquired is inherently negative, like “how not to care about dropping bombs on civilian populations”  or “how to be more effective with your racism and homophobia,” or, horrors: “how to use the BLINK tag.”

(Source: hillbillyplease)

Reid Dossinger: Please learn to code 

I don’t actually think the piece on Coding Horror is as bad as Reid seems to think it is.  

I do think that the “real coders” v. “people doing Codeyear” thing is going to end up looking exactly like “bloggers v. journalists,” only much, much smaller.  

Steve Meyers rounds up the reaction from a journalism point of view, tackling the newly-perennial “should journalists learn to code” question  (My answer?  No, absolutely not.  Only if you want to have fun and enjoy some shred of job security.  Otherwise, carry on with your badass narrative journalism, friend).

llysakowski:

chartsnthings

A (personal) blog of data sketches from the New York Times Graphics Department. Maintained by @KevinQ. 

A really great blog showing the process and sketches that create the amazing infographics produced at the New York Times. Don’t forget to subscribe.

futurejournalismproject:

A Finely Curated List of Data Tools

A fantastic resource for getting started in — and advancing — your work with data from some of the best in the business.

Via Datavisualization.ch:

Datavisualization.ch Selected Tools is a collection of tools that we, the people behind Datavisualization.ch, work with on a daily basis and recommend warmly. This is not a list of everything out there, but instead a thoughtfully curated selection of our favourite tools that will make your life easier creating meaningful and beautiful data visualizations.

As Benjamin Wiederkehr writes on their blog, “It includes libraries for plotting data on maps, frameworks for creating charts, graphs and diagrams and tools to simplify the handling of data. Even if you’re not into programming, you’ll find applications that can be used without writing one single line of code.”

FJP Pro Tip: Jump in and start playing. If you’re just getting started, check out our short videos with Bitly data chief Hilary Mason for her advice on working with data.

My friend Kwan Booth asked if there was a version of my Startups for Journalists presentation that had audio.  This is the one!