Code bootcamp done, now what?

Code Bootcamps are great for jump starting you into a new career. Before you think it is going to rain money, you need to realize you actually still suck at coding. But hey… Having worked with more than a few developers from boot camps no worries. I have a few tips to help you suck less.

Learn UI/UX basics

This especially applies if you come from a javascript focused accelerator like Hack Reactor. Many early stage startups don’t write full specifications on how an interface is supposed to behave under certain conditions. Having a clear understanding of different states that a screen can be in is helpful because a designer can focus on the bigger picture and leave some implementation details to you. If you are going into a large company this may not apply, but it’s always a good skill to have in your back pocket.

Action Items

1. Learn the basics of typography & font hierarchy
2. Design Thinking Challenge — View Airbnb through a couple different lenses. As a user who is looking for something to do in their hometown this weekend. As a user who is going on vacation in a couple months and needs a place to stay. How was your experience? What can be improved? Bonus points if you actually book something #summer17amirite.

HTML/CSS

You should be able to put together an interface exactly how it looks and as the designer intended. Nothing is more frustrating to a designer than when the person implementing can’t see the difference between 10px and 20px. If you just finished an accelerator program, spend some time implementing the interface of a few of your favorite companies. Focus on the details & measure the margins and don’t focus too much on whether to use positioning, floats, flexbox etc… Time, emulation & experience will correct all of this for you.

Action Items

1. Find a design that doesn’t contain many assets from a site like dribbble or behance or choose a site you like to use and code it to pixel perfection.
2. Learn the difference between using a framework like bootstrap or foundation and frameworks like bourbon.
3. Email me josh [at] bitriot dot co and I will happily review & give tips on best practices.

Zoom Out

Toy problems and algorithms are terrific for building fundamental understanding of coding. But when you move into a larger team, you need to begin thinking about the system as a whole. Will your code adversely affect another part of the system?

For those going into more back end roles here’s a simple example of bigger picture thinking. You need to add Stripe payments but eventually you may want to use PayPal or another gateway. You might want to quickly drop the Stripe boiler plate in your controller and move on, but not so fast. With a couple extra steps you can optimize for flexibility in the future.

For example:

class PaymentGateway
  TAX_AMOUNT = 0.0875
  def initialize(amount:)
    @amount = amount
  end
  def charge
    raise "not implemented"
  end
  
  def tax
    @amount * TAX_AMOUNT
  end
  
  def total
    amount + tax
  end
end

Now we have a generic class we can implement our Stripe specific code.

class StripeGateway < PaymentGateway
  def charge
    # Stripe Stuff
  end
end

And later we can add more gateways and not worry about specific implementation details running throughout our code.

class PaypalGateway < PaymentGateway
  def charge
    # Paypal Stuff
  end
end
class User < ApplicationRecord
  def gateway
    if paypal?
      PaypalGateway
    else
      StripeGateway
    end
  end
end
# Simply
user = User.find(1)
user.gateway.new(amount: 100).charge

Action Items

1. Learn Sandi Metz’ Rules
2. Watch this video on refactoring

Congrats on learning how to code. Now go out and build something.

Email me josh [at] bitriot dot co and I will happily help you.