Teach yourself to code. Why we started Code And Beers.
Code And Beers is a concept that came about quite organically. I think it’s better you understand how first rather than why.
How?
My name is Mike, I work as a full stack Ruby On Rails developer for 1ROOF. We’re a tech product but I am currently the only developer in the team (such is the life of a startup). With this being the case though, my time is hugely divided between working with Marcus our marketing guy, Josh on operations, Hugo with business dev and Max on the product itself. Sometimes it gets tricky to focus…
When i’m not working with Max on the core product, it is often little bits and bobs such as changing text, colours and submitting sitemaps that need doing… This stuff is important for sure, but it slows us down in being able to focus on the beast itself. Josh has been keen to learn a bit of code to help out, but it was the moment Hugo unknowingly came up with a slightly terrifying idea that Code And Beers was born.
“Mike, do you want to teach us all how to code, so we could help the build a bit more?
What? Sudden thoughts of doing some lesson planning on the side of 1ROOF work emerged, what should I start with? What is the best way to teach? Do we do 1-on-1? In the end the best answer was NO.
Why?
I’m pretty much a self taught developer. I did an Information Systems degree with compulsory modules of HTML, CSS and a world of very scary PHP, but I had limited knowledge. I pursued the many resources available online and taught myself Ruby, then Rails, and now I do it for a living!
The point is, I could come up with lesson plans, research the best things to learn and ways of teaching, but the better solution was for our team to self-learn. Even if I did find the time to teach, for every hour I would spend demonstrating, the team could have experienced something a lot more beneficial and learned a lot more by self-teaching and throwing themselves into the deep end.
As with everything, however, self-teaching requires some dedication and a lot of motivation. Having a mentor or a friend to talk to, as I did, who actually knows what the hell is going on when that f*&#ing syntax error is staring you in the face for 5 hours, is pretty invaluable. We agreed on a couple of hours a week where we would sit down and continue self-learning together, safe in the mind that I, or any other full time developers we could get along, would be on-site to lend a hand. Or better yet, learners could help each other out and cement their understanding.
The concept was born. We wanted a weekly session where people teaching themselves to code could come to a completely free, open and friendly environment where everyone there was doing the exact same thing and feeling the exact same pain as you, and you could help each other out.
Essentially, it will hopefully prove how efficient you can be at teaching yourself by throwing yourself into the deep end. You are forced to deal with the sh*t parts right from the beginning, but by creating this community, we hope there will be a lot less sh*t and a lot more actual learning!
What’s Next?
So far we have done three very small, chilled-out trials at Bathtub 2 Boardroom with the team and a couple of others who were keen to try it out. It’s been interesting testing the waters, seeing what conditions people work best in, how much to be on hand for help and how much to let people push through and discover the solutions alone (*cough* stackoverflow). Here is an interesting article Joost, one of our trial members shared about self-learning.
I have literally just found this article too which probably demonstrates a LOT better than I can the importance and the concept of our learning community. Although, it does look like a bit of a promo…
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Anyway, moving on.
We are giving ourselves a week to iron out the details, gather some beer and snack sponsors (By the way, no, you don’t have to drink beer. We just wanted to emphasise that this is also a social event! We got plenty of other coolers including water for ya!) and define the format of how we are gonna run this thing.
It’s not an intensive ‘workshop’ or ‘lecture’ which makes a lot of newbies run a mile, because more often than not we are scared and embarrassed about learning something new. You are totally cool to just come for a beer and chat to one of us about coding and what it can do for you/where it can take you, even if you don’t fancy starting yet.
OUR LAUNCH!
So we have a date! WEDNESDAY 29TH APRIL at Launch22. It won’t be perfect, but it will be fun. Come with no expectations and I am positive you will leave smiling.
In short, we will have drinks and snacks around. Bring a laptop if you want to code and we will run through what we are about for 5 mins, invite you all to the online community, put you up on our slack channel and let the good times roll.
It is limited to 30 places only because we think we probably can’t handle any more than that (no not because of the beer). So jump on quick. It is a free event, so if you don’t think you can make it then please don’t press attending. We’d love you all to commit when you can. TICKETS HERE
For any more info check out our very basic online community at www.codeandbeers.com. We have an about page :O! Any other questions shoot me a tweet @MikeLHolford. Our site will hopefully turn into something pretty useful for people learning to code. A list of super useful resources, slack channel access, potential deals for community members on any paid resources, and a mini stack overflow for self learners ;). In the future, everyone will be able to host their own CAB (edgy we even have an acronym now) events and use the site as the central community.
Would love to know what you think so PLEASE get in touch. Even if you think it will never work and we should stop wasting our time.
If you have any friends that could be interested then it would be awesome if you sent this over to them or just recommended below. ☺
Hopefully see you there!
Mike
