Personal Experience at Coding Dojo : MIXED

Below is a real email to someone who was referred to me. He's seeking info on Coding Dojo . I offered my time for a phone conversation which quickly turned sour, as he accused me of trying to charge for my consultation and I was very offended when I deliberately spent valuable time in the afternoon to answer lengthy questions that originally filled a page in my email. 
He brought up a great point, why can't I just answer his questions straight up? I can't and I won't (many in the meetups do). It's too easy for me or any one from one of these camps to say: oh I like it, or oh I hate it, and never give an objective analysis along with the subjective experience.
So I put my two cents down here for all to see. My experience at the Coding Dojo was obviously MIXED, yet there are some very good segments of the curriculum and relevant parts of the package that many may benefit from. Yes, I have some weird philosophy here.
But that is why the information is valuable to others, because I actually take time to think it through and remove my personal emotions from this.

Exciting news: 1. I commissioned a collaborative post professionally written on Twitter Bootstrap that I paid for and vested time for but will share freely here in a couple of days
2. I am also going to research Hack Reactor in great details in the next couple of days and compile objective data on the bootcamp, and demystify the price tag and what makes its curriculum special. Super excited!

"I was just writing actually. To be honest I was offended. But I was writing you with info about Coding Dojo anyway, because I believe all are entitled to important information. 

Here's the thing the bootcamp choice really depends on your interest, background and many factors. Everyone will either tell you their experience sucked or is great. There's a lot of social psychology driven people to give such answers.
My answer is very complex:
1. Coding Dojo wasn't ready curriculum wise for its first class, though in many areas it was. The support for recruiting isn't ideal, nor is it for alumni. In general Coding Dojo still lacks glamour. That been said, its speaker series has been beyond expectation, and continues to do so.
2. Coding Dojo is a good place to learn PHP, mySQL and other more traditional skills. Last time I heard / experienced, Rails wasn't a strong point. The mySQL course here is by far the easiest and most relevant of all.
3. The price tag of course remains to be favorable as does the timeline, hence many students chose it for price, availability and proximity to the South Bay.
4. Staff is one key factor to consider. I would say the Coding Dojo staff is helpful but lack of total professionalism. It can exacerbate the first point I just made.  There's a bit of turnover concern in terms of staff change and experience.
5. Overall experience really depended on the segment of curriculum: the front-end was very effective, though lack in design thinking, the database was great as I mentioned, PHP scripting was excellent with great exercises, Rails was bit lacking, project support bit lacking, and alumni support is missing.
As all experience goes, it's hard to say good or bad. It's important for all of us to consider factors that are native to the bootcamp and also important to ourselves.
hope you find this helpful.
I am also posting this to my blog so more can see. Btw, I have lots of info on my blog for Coding Dojo already. You just haven't searched :) http://codesum.blogspot.com"

x

Learn the f**king JavaScript

I briefly mentioned before that JavaScript is the king, not Weasley, but why? One reader asked the question with audacity. It's simple, JavaScript is the language of the web, Ryan, co-founder of Codecademy said so when asked why Js was the first track on the interactive learning website.

The first time I heard Ryan's interview, it did not sink in. The first time I saw that a multi-million dollar project is entirely built of SQL database, JavaScript and transaction-based JavaScript and SQL procs... but then there is all the modern concepts of web development: box model rather than table cells. But what really changed is the way people handle all the interactions of users.

Pick Google Map, users don't give a damn about the back-end. For them, it is just binary, it is good or bad, e.g. iOS iPhone Map = bad, iOS Google Map  = good! When it comes to accuracy, users often only see black and white. After all there are n't many to compare and contrast in terms of options of apps.

But many discussions and talks have been said about interactivity, user interface, user experience, graphics...

On the web part, JavaScript handles all the interactivity. Imagine that HTML is a muffin, a dark chocolate muffin, CSS is the icing on the cake that makes a lame looking muffin a glossy cupcake. But JavaScript is like the thing that makes those effing muffins dance.... well we don't care about dancing muffins, or cupcakes, but surprisingly, we like our web to jiggle, to shake, flash, and flip and somersault. We want modals, lightbox, carousel, slides, HTML flipping presentations.

That's when JavaScript comes in handy for all front-end developers, or all front-end designers that want to be more of an engineer. And did I mention JavaScript really is the default language of browsers? Pretty sure browsers cannot just C without aim. And JavaScript already has enough cross-browser issues, cough IE. Can we take more?

jQuery is like Rails in the sense that beginners love it, and super advanced programmers love it. When you agree on the second level, you have reached enlightenment. If you think jQuery is just easy, then you have not unleashed its power.

So you can use JavaScript to manipulate the HTML DOM, and twig the CSS, but it didn't use to be case that you can do much damage to the database or the data that is being displayed. Spaghetti codes are required for lines and lines to manipulate some simple data. Not any more, Node.js renders javascript backend ready, and many frameworks including those backed by Google are emerging to take over the world. Heard of Angular.js or Ember.js? How about that Backbone.

Did I mention that JavaScript is not easy to learn? It's also simple to get started, but the possibilities are endless. It's almost more relieving to use Rails, because there's the Rails way of doing things and the Ruby way of doing things. When it comes to JavaScript, just the best parts, then you are on your own. Makes it the most flexible yet entangled language to learn on your own. Start small but time to get started on Js for sure.
 

traveling and a brand new checklist

I frequently visit family in China, and this  year there's no difference. I will lose access to Youtube, blogger, twitter, facebook essentially all my social network. In exchange I get a glimpse of the unusual life of netizens in China. To be honest, it does not bother me in the short term. Internet has enabled much collaboration and information access between China and the rest of the world. It's truly an enabler despite that many may argue about its shortfalls and imperfection.

WeChat, QQ Tencent, Ren Ren, Sina Weibo... these are the technologies that get Chinese to chatter and share their thoughts.

For me, it really does not make a difference. I am mostly a visitor any where. it's like traveling to any other country, a visitor is there to observe absorb, and may be not in one day wishing to change all the technical landscape.

This time though, as I am packing the usual, I choose to have an unusual checklist:

1. jQuery codes
2. Handlebars
3. Underscore
4. jQuery books in ebook or Kindle format for easy traveling
5. JavaScript books, ebook and kindle
6. Ruby OOP books, ebook and kindle
7. Rails installer
8. Git enabled, and all dependency enabled computer

Yes, I am getting my local machine ready with source codes, books, and libraries so that i can continue to develop on my local no matter where I travel. I still bring my laptop and many gifts for relatives. But for the first time, my laptop has endless possibilities despite slower and more limited internet.

用中文谈高科技编程和未来

我突然想起了自己以前的博客居然有好几万人在2000年－2012之间网络还比较平淡的时候来访。真是一个让人欣慰的事情。更让人觉得有意思的是现在中国的高科技软件矽谷竟然包括在环山四川的成都。成都人上http://www.codecademy.com 还开发游戏，甚至晋身全球超级网络和手机游戏之家。四川人真的很牛。

这就开发了我的想法，其实这个博客的内容也应该有中文的内容。向心急的中国家长美籍华人和蓬勃的年轻人提供他们期望的信息。而且这些信息要通过不同的平台来发放：
1.新浪微博而不是twitter
2.优酷而不是youtube
3. 博客大巴，新浪博客而不是blogger
4. 人人而不是facebook

这不是问题，而是一件很有意思的为中国人而存在的平台。很好，那下一步codesum.blogspot.com 和codediv.com都会尽量为大家提供中文的咨询。欢迎大家提供宝贵的意见。

A day at Hack Reactor - for backbone.js by Girls Develop It

Girls Develop It hosted a half day backbone.js session that will extends another half day tomorrow. This weekend course is well worth the price. 

Hack Reactor is centrally located on market street near Westfield mall at a safe environment (gets tad sketchy at night).

Furnitures are new and fancy, fake leather chair, monitors and clean desks. Much better than Dev Bootcamp San Francisco in an old building. It reminds me of Coding Dojo. The kitchen is nice clean and friendly too(coding dojo doesn't have a kitchen). No creaking floors. Big plus

I will add a profile page on http://codediv.com too. And will post it here soon. I wasn't credited to write about hack reactor before, since I was yet to visit.

Backbone.js though is hosted by Girls Develop It but taught back Backlift's Cole. Cole is a steady spirit, a true developer with plenty of philosophy and tactical approaches of his own. Backlift allows one click install and hosting integrated with Dropbox.

Make no mistake, Pamela Fox was not idle whatsoever. She chimed in... More than chimedin... Going around helping students, pointing out real world application and usage of backbone and best practices.

Fast paced indeed but it was a solid experience. Going through backbone code school and quite a bit of JavaScript beginner+intermediate background will help a lot. But rails will be super helpful too. Underscores methods remind me of ruby.

Jquery is a must. But really you just have to focus on the selecting and basic Dom manipulation

CodeDivWeekly newsletter including tips and free video casts now available

Go to http://www.codediv.com  now you can sign up for our newsletter for free! Weekly very short email including a couple of tips, new technology alerts and also updates for existing subscribers. It's free for all.

If you are considering Code School my referral link here. I am learning a lot on Code School myself, I would love to get a kickback and support the free episodes and more education, so I can explain complex concepts in layman's term for more people!






If you are using TreeHouse , did you know that now Treehouse features a job board! Great news, it is a brand new feature.

Just a bit flatter - MVP, Flat Design and Bootstrap on Codediv.com

On my new personal coding tutorial website Code Div , I started fast and quick prototyped the website within 2 hours of exploring the idea, with the help of Twitter Bootstrap and Flat Design. If there's one thing I learnt from Stanford is rapid prototyping. Even our education system - the quarter system- is a constant chasing of cloud.

How to get to the MVP (minimal viable product fast) is perhaps on the mind of every Silicon Valley entrepreneur. Growth Hack... what is that?

The best talk I have heard at Stanford was from material science and design school: prototype generates discussions, and help obtain feedback. Without MVP, we are all but idea people... brilliant, but that's about it. Later on use of MakerBot and 3DPrinting reenforced the idea of using prototyping.

How it is possible that I got the website up and running in 2 hours? Previous I built a Rails Twitter App in 2 days. Okay it wasn't really like Twitter, but that thing worked with 140 characters and allow you to post comments like no other!

I'd be happy to go into details but here's the quick and dirty tip collection, so that the blog post does not run on:

1. Twitter Bootstrap as the first pass of design standard for a new born website
2. Flat Design that focuses on clarity of the information, comparison, call to action, and color schemes that still speak personal, startup, without screaming enterprise and boring, but requires very little design money
3. MVP focus on the core functionalities, even if the backend is not ready yet! My view of the backend is that, without a good architectural solution, the back-end does more harm than good. Until the website is ready security wise to take people's passwords, just DON'T.
4. Do not reinvent the wheel. If there's one thing I learnt as a consultant is that, tested and credible solutions win in Production (deployed websites), experiment in hackathons, but don't go crazy on your real website.

Some flat design pics from CodeDiv.com
This is the 2nd iteration.

The list flat design is worth quite a mention, because it is night and day compare to a flat ordered list, even if styled partially with Twitter Bootstrap. Imagine, the above image, compared with below, the bare bone list....

• 1 Currently costs $5 for an entire year. May increase later
• 2 Cloud hosted video library updated frequently
• 3 Extra media, infographs distributed via MailChimp & Youtube
• 4 Limited time offer of personalized contents & page
• 5 Gears towards new beginners of web development
• 6 Payment info securely handled by PayPal, no info retained
• 7 No sketchy automatic renewal
• 8 Purchase is final, refund will NOT be granted
• 9 Planned topics: HTML | CSS | JavaScript | jQuery | AJAX
• 10 Planned: Ruby | Ruby on Rails | PHP | CodeIgniter
• 11 Planned: jQuery Mobile | PhoneGap | API
• 12 Priority topic: plan for web development bootcamps
• 13 Priority topic: navigate the career world, in-depth analysis
• 14 One-time annual subscription for $5, expires after one year
• 15 A growing collection of video & media resources

Yikes don't even bother with the blob below

And at one point all jumbled up like : Currently costs $5 for an entire year. May increase later. Cloud hosted video library updated frequently. Extra media, infographs distributed via MailChimp & Youtub Limited time offer of personalized contents & page Gears towards new beginners of web development Payment info securely handled by PayPal, no info retaine  No sketchy automatic renewal Purchase is final, refund will NOT be granted Planned topics: HTML | CSS | JavaScript | jQuery | AJAX  Planned: Ruby | Ruby on Rails | PHP | CodeIgniter  Planned: jQuery Mobile | PhoneGap | API  Priority topic: plan for web development bootcamps  Priority topic: navigate the career world, in-depth analysis  One-time annual subscription for $5, expires after one year A growing collection of video & media resoureces