Chicago as a place to learn to be a developer

**UPDATED**

Chicago has a thriving development community that could make it a premier place to learn how to build web applications and software development in general. It’s exciting to see focus begin to turn toward bringing new people into the programming community. For beginners, though, there is an inevitable question: “what’s next?”

Events such as Code & Coffee and Ruby Hack Night provide places where veteran developers and novices can meet and learn from one another, but they lack a true structure and focus to answer questions for beginners.

Online and in-person courses, such as Code School and Code Academy, provide an introduction to web application development with Ruby and Rails. Web development is a vast field, though, so any introduction must leave out in-depth, focused understanding of specific topics.

After talking to people who have both gone through courses and people who have tried on their own to learn, it is clear that there is a hunger for continued, focused learning. We are looking to help satisfy this hunger through courses on specific topics in professional software development: our first is on test-first and test-driven development in Ruby on Rails.

We’re excited about helping, and we’d like your continued help to understand how best to do this.  So please read on and fill out the quick surveys about a testing course and a formal tutoring group.

Please help us further augment Chicago’s rich and growing developer training ecosystem. For beginners, we can provide a guide: “here’s what’s next.”

Testing Seminar

Test-first and test-driven development are fundamental techniques for a professional software developer. It isn’t just about tools, but about a mindset around testing. Through incremental, focused learning, this course will provide an introduction to the ideas around test-first and test-driven development.

Time:

24 total hours total

spread over 2 weekends, 4 days total, 6 hours per day

or

spread over 4 weeks, 3 days per week, 2 hours per day

Cost: $1,200 total
Teachers:

Class would be taught by Corey Haines and Sarah Gray, from Technical Advocates. They are well-known famous for their Technical Advocates Office Hours, which fill up in about 2 minutes every month.

Learners:

People with some basic experience, an understanding of Rails syntax

Structure:

Course will focus on the mindset of test-first development, making way for the tools to be introduced in support of the ideas.

Regular milestones to allow students to gauge their progress

provide you with skills that are crucial if you want to get a job as a developer

Included with cost is a license to the online Ruby course by The Pragmatic Studio! For lomore information, you can see http://pragmaticstudio.com/ruby
To learn more about the class please fill out this quick survey: here

Tutoring Sessions

Many people start to learn Rails or Ruby by themselves, putting an immense amount of time and effort into it. While there is a plethora of online resources to study, people often fail. Frequently this is due to getting stuck on a certain piece and not knowing where to go for help. This is more and more common, as we see the “learn to code” ecosystem grow. Even people going through structured courses find themselves with gaps in their understanding. can use access to experienced software developers to answer questions. To help with this problem, we are planning to set up a set of regular group tutoring sessions with experienced software developers.

If you are learning Rails or Ruby, whether on your own or through a course, you probably right now have a list of questions either written down or in your head that are holding you back from true understanding. This tutoring group will give you an outlet to get those questions answered.  You will see your progress increase as you begin to finally get answers to the questions that have been holding you back.

Time: 2 hours once per week, beginning in April (potentially)
Cost: $25 per session
Learners:

For people who are learning Rails and want to have a place to go to get their questions answered or clear up confusions by experienced software developers.

Beginner focused

Throughout the week would learn on their own, create questions and once a week would have an outlet to their questions

Structure:

Ratio of 6 or 7 students for every tutor

Tutors would answer questions, give advice, and help learners

Tutors will be experienced Ruby on Rails developers with an interest in helping

For more information please fill out this quick survey: here