Reinventing The Bootcamp Idea

Fueled by discontent for the lack of real-world coding knowledge traditional academia provides, we decided to organize and run free software development bootcamp in Croatia. It's called Infinum Academy, it's a month long course in building Rails, iOS and Android from scratch. We built the curriculum using our own best-practices and 10-years worth of industry knowledge. The talk is about how we ran the bootcamp, how our company almost fell apart in the process, what we learned, why we burned twice as much time as we estimated, and how came up victorious in the end.

Transcript

1. Reinventing the bootcamp idea
2. Damir Svrtan Rails Team Lead @ Infinum
4. 0 30 60 90 120 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 INFINUM Employee growth
5. C / C++ / C#
6. C / C++ / C#
7. Infinum Student Academy
8. Goal Build a full blown app in a month.
9. 3 Classes
10. 3 Classes 4 Weeks
11. 3 Classes 4 Weeks 8 Lectures
12. 3 Classes 4 Weeks 8 Lectures 8 Homeworks
13. 3 Classes 4 Weeks 8 Lectures 8 Homeworks 15 Students Per Class
14. The Building Blocks
15. Practical knowledge
17. Mentorship
18. No official certificates
19. Employment opportunity
20. 100% FREE
21. Preparations with a strict deadline
22. A month.
23. 240 Candidates
24. 45 Students
25. Rails Course
26. A Reddit Clone
27. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
28. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
29. for i in 0..5 puts i end For loops
30. ..but in Ruby..
31. (1..5).each { |i| puts i } Enumerators
32. ..but in Ruby..
33. (1..5).each do |i| puts i end Blocks with do-end
34. -5.abs() Everything is an object
35. ..but in Ruby..
36. -5.abs Parenthesis are optional
37. this Current object
38. ..but in Ruby..
39. self Current object
40. null Non-existing value
41. ..but in Ruby..
42. nil Non-existing value
43. Ruby is weird.
44. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
45. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
46. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
48. AJAX The Rails Way
49. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
50. Devise
51. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
52. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
53. Curriculum Intro to Ruby Intro to Rails Active Record Action View Authentication Optimisations /ActionMailer / Image Upload API Testing
54. Homework
55. The Pull Request Ping Pong
56. Tools / Services
62. Be really specific?
63. Mistakes
64. Poor estimates
65. Poor estimates 300h
66. Poor estimates 300h 600h
67. “Taste the meal before you serve it.”
68. let(:post) { create(:post) } ... it 'creates a post' do post :create, post: { title: 'Hello World' } expect(response).to be_success end
69. Cover git basics.
71. 30 Graduates
72. 10 Employed
74. Student Feedback
75. “The Academy was oriented on practical work and it was the first time I had specific feedback on the code I wrote.”
76. “In a month, I’ve learned more useful things than three-years-worth of college, and I had no previous experience in the technology.”
77. Average student rating: 4,6/5
78. Linkedin
79. Conclusions
80. Comfort zone.
81. Different viewpoint.
82. Scaled onboarding
83. Build your community
85. Damir Svrtan Rails Team Lead @ Infinum Organizer @ Ruby Zagreb @DamirSvrtan www.infinum.co