Free resources for underprivileged learning to code

From my personal experiences, Glitch( https://glitch.com/ ) works pretty well.

It removed the hassle of setting up the developing environment and have built-in hosting. It also provides a fun, experimenting atmosphere which reduces the fear of non-tech -savvy students.

Text editors: Atom.io, Notepad++, Sublime (you never really have to pay for it)
Hosting: They could try using Heroku which has a free tier. It has some limitations but it would be good for learning. I believe Nanobox might have something similar.

As far as software goes, I'm not sure of any free resources out there. I know Invisionapp is releasing Studio soon for design, there's a chance they might have a free tier.

Free stuff which is awesome:
VS Code - https://code.visualstudio.com/ - awesome free editor, cross platform and very powerful.
FreeCodeCamp - https://www.freecodecamp.org - great interactive tutorials on front-end dev as well as examples of projects to work on. Also has some back-end stuff but it's all javascript
Ubuntu - https://www.ubuntu.com/ - free operating system with everything you'll need to start dev work
CodeAcademy - https://www.codecademy.com/ another interactive tutorial site but with more language choice than FreeCodeCamp.
GitHub - https://github.com/ - great for version control, but more importantly in this situation (where I assume computer access and reliability might be limited) a good way to store all code to make it easily accessible from any device you might be working on
DropBox - https://www.dropbox.com - not really about coding, but a good tool for people with changing and limited circumstances. Provides a similar function to github in terms of making your data accessible but also works for non-code stuff.
PyCharm Community - https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/ - the best (imo) python IDE if you want something more than just a text editor. For the most part VS Code can do most of what you want, but this is good too!
Slack - https://slack.com/ - communication tool which might be good for keeping the kids connected and as a good medium for communication.

Are you looking for free material as well? If so, I created a 4 part video tutorial on JavaScript/Google Maps API and published it to YouTube. The project source code is completely free and available on Github. Here is the link if you're interested: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lVhDux1vmIU

Gsuite and Atlassian offer free licenses to non-profits:

https://www.google.com/nonprofits/products/apps-for-nonprofits.html

https://www.atlassian.com/software/views/community-license-request

Also, it looks like there is some great info for non-profits on AWS: https://aws.amazon.com/government-education/nonprofits/

Learning python language may be a good start for beginners. There are multiple online offerings, so that no software is needed other then a web browser. Check trinket.io It is targeted for education and has free accounts. For more advanced applications consider pythonanywhere.com which provides free hosting option.

https://www.theodinproject.com is an incredible resource. It's a program that primarily teaches Ruby and Ruby on Rails, but also HTML, CSS, Javascript, and even Git and Github. The program pulls from various free sources on the internet, and complies them into a curriculum. It's absolutely awesome and free from A-to-Z. It's built to feel like a real curriculum, and even has a course on how to get hired as a developer (final course). What's awesome is that people actually get jobs as developers by completing the course, even if they never had prior programming experience or bachelors degree.

Sorry I word dumped, but I'm excited as I come from an underprivileged background and was introduced to coding through The Odin Project. I'm still going through the program but I would highly recommend it! Hope this helps.

Thimble by Mozilla
https://thimble.mozilla.org/en-US/

Neocities
https://neocities.org/

I have used Cloud9 (https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/ ) with similar non-profit groups before. It got bought by Amazon, so now it looks like it's hosted on AWS and requires an AWS login. It is essentially every tool developers need (terminal, IDE, hosting, etc.) built into a browser window.

For the database-curious that want to learn about NoSQL: MongoDB provides free online education via MongoDB University (university.mongodb.com) and free hosting on MongoDB Atlas (mongodb.com/cloud/atlas)

Not to hijack the thread, but what's the non-profit and any advice you'd give to someone wanting to start an equivalent program?

Sounds like an awesome cause! I've been working on curating programming tutorials for a side project that might be useful to you. You can filter the results by free. Here is the link:

https://hacksource.xyz

If they are building websites, you can develop and build fully functional websites directly on your own computer without having to put it on a server (until you want to launch it, that is). Vagrant is a service that allows you to quickly boot up linux virtual servers on your computer: https://www.vagrantup.com/. There are a lot of pre-built "boxes" that you can choose from that allow you to get started quickly.

Also, Sequel Pro is a great app for interfacing with MySQL databases. Despite the "Pro" in the name it is free: https://www.sequelpro.com/.

If they are doing 3D design/gaming/apps/etc, there is Blender (https://www.blender.org/) and Unity 3D (https://unity3d.com/). Unity also supports making 2D games.

Gimp (https://www.gimp.org/) is a free alternative to Photoshop.

Design software:

• Sketch is free for "Academic institutions". I'm not sure about their conditions. But your project sounds like one they could decide to support. Try contacting them?
• Figma is free for individuals. Your students could probably qualify for free team licences too.