Northwest Chicago JavaScript Lightning Talks

I like to attend lightning talks since they give a bunch of mini info sessions crammed into one night. I did not take notes on this one since I just wanted to listen and take in as much information as I could. There were four speakers and I really enjoyed this session and how people shared so many different projects they were working on.


Below info taken from: https://www.meetup.com/Northwest-Chicago-JavaScript/events/241124693/

Working with Objects: Thoughts from a Javascript Newcomer
by Jason Cohen Jason will discuss his arithmetical expression parser/calculator and compare JavaScript to other languages he has used. 

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ROC Commerce: Dynamic Forms with AngularJS by Ernesto Pye 

A short demo of ROC Commerce's dynamic forms functionality, powered by AngularJS and ASP.NET, with an extensible API-driven schema, and customizable client-side form components.

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Mobile App Development for the Enterprise - the Hybrid Edition by Mary Grygleski 

This is a high-level technical overview of the hybrid approach that was taken for the first enterprise-grade Mobile App at the wireless company where I work. Angular 1 was chosen for the UI/UX frontend implementation that would be "wrapped" and enabled for the target mobile runtime platforms by Apache Cordova, while NodeJS was selected to serve as the Backend-for-Frontend (BFF) service layer. 

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PouchDB and Couchbase Replication for the Offline-First Web by Steve Schwarz

Naperville Open Hack

This is one of the closest meetups to my house, but I always seem to miss it for some reason. Often it conflicts with another meetup, and since it is only once a month I have to make sure to catch the post and put it on my calendar.

So when I finally made it to attend I was so happy that I did. I met another coder who is working on Free Code Camp, and we talked about our progress and where we were on the projects. This is one of the first times that I was actually able to help someone else which felt pretty good.

After he left, I started speaking with another person there about Java. I mentioned how I posted my code for my simple Tic Tac Toe game online, and someone gave me feedback that I need to turn the game into one using objects. He was able to give me a lot of good advice as well as point me to the book Thinking in Java. I started reading this book over the weekend and it is the best description of objects and classes that I have read yet. It actually tells you what things are doing and breaks them down. I was so looking for this when I was reading Head First Java. That was one of the things I did not like about HFJ, it refers you to pretend you are using a remote control when I would rather they just tell me what is really going on behind the scenes. So, I plan to take this information and redo my Tic Tac Toe game into one that uses objects and has a GUI.

This was a great meetup! I do plan to attend again and really felt I learned something from this one.

Coding Bootcamps....

I don't think I had mentioned this in my blog, just at meetups, but my job plans to outsource our help desk within the next six months. So in order to speed up my learning to code, I decided to start investigating coding bootcamps again. I had looked into a few a while back but ultimately have two top contenders.

Northwestern Coding Bootcamp is in Chicago, IL (about an hour from me) and is the better priced option. The downside is they do not have Java, which I have a strong interest in. The bootcamp is $10,000 but you get $1000 off if you pay in full ahead of time. They have the backing of the university so it must be a good program, but the bootcamp is so new there are not many reviews online to find out more about it. Northwestern does have paid parking available for all except the Chicago campus day program. https://codingbootcamp.northwestern.edu/full-time

The Software Guild in Louisville, KY is $13,750 with a possible $2000 women in tech scholarship. They are working on renewing it for 2018 so it is not official yet. It is more expensive and it would require housing, but it is more in line with what I see myself doing in the future. They have really good reviews from previous students. With this bootcamp, if you take the Java course, you also get access to the .NET curriculum which is a plus. And they offer an online Android course if I decide to complete that in the future. https://www.thesoftwareguild.com/

I only applied to one other and was denied. The Recurse Center, which is in New York and has a very low acceptance rate about ~10%. The Recurse Center is free and they prefer people who already know how to code and just want to work on projects and improving their skills or learning a new language. However, some who are new to coding have been accepted.

I do want to mention that I investigated the majority of bootcamps in Chicago. I spoke to many alumni at the meetups I attended, read reviews, and still visit many of the campuses when they offer free courses. They all offer very similar front end and full stack programs, Most are higher priced between about $14-$18,000. There are many reasons I decided against most of these: the cost, no Java (when I attended the Chicago Coder Conference just about every booth was looking for Java developers plus I have a strong interest in learning it), poor or expensive transportation and parking, expensive temp housing in the area, and one had too easy lessons.  The instructors and course material seem similar. I did find it to be true that those with the more difficult acceptance rate tend to have better final projects and higher paying job placements advertised. I watched several final presentations and was impressed most by those from Full Stack Academy.

I am leaning towards The Software Guild for numerous reasons: going away from my family I can spend more uninterrupted time learning to code, they are a well established bootcamp having been open longer than most others, they are on the top of many lists of the best bootcamps, the instructors are all developers with many years of experience (not just former students), housing/parking are affordable, my already underlying interest in Java, and the entrance process is not too easy where anyone can get in.

I have been accepted to both Northwestern Bootcamp and The Software Guild both of which start in January and I will update my blog with more info about my decision in a future post.

Wakatime

I just found out about this great coding tracker called Wakatime. You can find it here https://wakatime.com/.

You simply add a plugin to your IDE and it tracks both time spent coding as well as what you are working on, in my case Java or JavaScript etc.

Change of Course

After quite a bit of thought, I decided to close the Beginner Java Group I had hosted at the Bolingbrook Library for the past six months. The attendance was very low and intermittent as well as there were just too many skill levels to keep working at a good pace that worked for everyone. I did meet many great people along the way and plan to continue to keep in touch with many of them as well as see them at other local meetups and conferences. After that difficult decision, I took a couple weeks to refocus my learning plan.

I decided to continue to learn Java as well as continue to work on Free Code Camp. Free Code Camp has a ton of learning support and I have found it easier to keep going learning to code within this group supported by message boards, chats and You Tube videos. I have also found a Java Group on Facebook that has tons of resources "Java Software Development Group" so I plan on using a lot of the resources from here, CJUG, IJUG, books, and the Spring guides to keep learning Java. It is still hard to plan not knowing what languages I will be working with at my first junior developer job, but I know a lot of the languages and skills are similar/transferable and I still feel I am on a good path.