The Best Student Developer Resources and Perks 2023

The life of a student developer can be both exciting and challenging. This unique phase in a developer’s journey is often characterised by learning, experimenting, balancing multiple priorities, and working on real-world projects. If you are off to University or college here are some ultimate freebies and free educational licenses that will kick-start your education.

Student Developer Overview

1. Academic Responsibilities: Unlike full-time developers, student software developers juggle their coding projects with classes, assignments, exams, and other academic obligations. Time management is a critical skill to master.
2. Continuous Learning: Technology and programming languages evolve rapidly. A student developer often spends considerable time learning new languages, tools, or frameworks either for personal interest, academic requirements, or internships.
3. Practical Application: Many student developers work on personal projects, join coding clubs, or participate in hackathons. These platforms offer hands-on experience and allow students to apply theoretical knowledge in practical scenarios.
4. Internships: Internships are a valuable experience for many student developers. They offer a glimpse into the professional world, provide real-world experience, and often lead to job offers post-graduation.
5. Networking: Engaging with peers, attending tech meetups, and participating in online developer communities can be vital for growth and future opportunities.
6. Tools and Environment: Student developers often have to set up their own development environments, learn various tools like version control systems, and utilize resources like Stack Overflow to troubleshoot issues.
7. Mentorship and Collaboration: Collaborating on projects, seeking mentorship from senior developers, or mentoring junior students can be a big part of their journey.
8. Staying Updated: The tech world moves at a fast pace. Student developers often subscribe to tech news websites, follow influencers on social media, and attend webinars to keep themselves updated.
9. Financial Constraints: Unlike established professionals, student developers might not always have the resources to buy premium software, attend paid conferences, or get the best equipment. They often look for free alternatives, discounts, or grants.
10. Soft Skills: Alongside technical skills, the importance of soft skills like communication, teamwork, and empathy becomes evident when working on group projects or during internships.
11. Job Hunting: As graduation nears, many student developers start looking for jobs. This involves preparing resumes, building portfolios, practicing coding interviews, and facing rejections.
12. Dealing with Burnout: With the pressure to excel academically, build a portfolio, and stay competitive, burnout can be a real concern. It’s essential to recognize the signs and take breaks when needed.

The life of a student developer is a mix of excitement, learning, challenges, and growth. It’s a crucial phase where foundational skills are built, and the groundwork for a successful career in software development is laid.

Student Perks

GitHub offer a developer pack worth $149 USD. The pack gives you access to free or heavily discounted web hosting and cloud apps. You can also access courses that will give you the cutting edge start to your developer life. If you are wanting to become a developer then you will need to show off any projects you build. Along with pack you will be able to use services such as GitHub Copilot and GitLens+ for writing easier to maintain code.

Unidays is a student app that gives you the best deals for your bank balance whether its technology, fashion, food or beauty.

The O’Reilly learning platform gives you access to their library of books and video content. Check with your institution to see if you can access the wealth of content for free.

If you frequently shop on Amazon and use their prime service then you are eligible for a discounted prime student account, which brings with it free next day delivery, Music, Video and 10% of student staples such as technology and stationary.

Software

Setapp is my personal favourite as a Mac user. For a little under $60 USD a year you get access to useful utilities such as CleanMyMac, Bartender, Paste and development tools such as CodeRunner, Dash, SQL Pro Studio and much more. You can get a free month to test drive their apps when you purchase a subscription with my affiliate link.

No need to pay for a Microsoft 365 subscription. Simply sign in with your student email and you can use their office suite for free.

Jetbrains offer you access to all of their software including pro versions. The software includes popular IDE’s such as PyCharm Pro for Python, IntelliJ Ultimate for Java and Webstorm for JavaScript and the web.

Zotero is a research assistant for collectively gathering all your documents, links, articles, books and much more. It’s sync feature ensures that all your research is accessible anywhere on the web.

Conclusion

With a host of resources from free software to heavily discounted items there is something for everyone in the list above. I wish you luck in the new academic year. In the meantime if you discover any other exciting offers get in touch and I’ll add them to the list.