Summer Academy Ruby on Rails Project Showcase

This summer, students from around the world converged on Shopify HQ in Ottawa for HackerYou’s first-ever Summer Academy program. This full-time Ruby on Rails course was unlike any educational experience these students had had before.

It was an intense summer of learning, professional development, and personal growth — but it was also a great opportunity to get to know some of the folks behind Shopify and meet like-minded developers-in-training from around the globe.

While a handful of students had some existing coding knowledge, most had very little dev experience — and everyone was new to Ruby. We started from the start — installing Rails and setting up a GitHub account. Over the weeks, we watched their knowledge grow and their skills expand. They went from Hello World to building out their own versions of Twitter and Flickr, to building the sophisticated apps you see here in this post.

CODE DOJO (click here for demo)

Our first app comes to us from Sam Power, Tyler Sangster, Najwa Azer and Elaine Archer.This international team decided to build an app to solve a real-life problem of their very own: how on earth do you sift through the incredible volume of coding educational resources online to find the content that’s best for you? Code Dojo is a tool that allows you to search, filter and sort online coding tutorials, guides and courses based on subject, format and provider. Once you’ve found the right resources for you, community reviews help you make an informed decision.

CURRI APP (click here for demo)

This app is the brainchild of Ahmed Omran, Alexander Miloff, Nachiket Kumar and Paula Franzini. Like the group that brought you Code Dojo, this team decided to focus on a problem they understood well: student-teacher communication. Curri was born out of a desire to simplify the way students and teachers communicated about learning progress. The team understood the frustrations that many teachers and students experienced and wanted to create a simple solution for this common pain point. And thus, Curri App was born!

S.A.M.

Simple Appointment Manager was developed by Lucas Moore, Andres Ibarra, Andrea Del Rio, and Kate Hudson as a way to help you keep track of all your appointments with service providers.

This app allows to you make sure your schedule is properly updated with everything from your next doctor’s appointment to your upcoming session with your tennis coach. This online booking and schedule management tool is intended to be a one-stop-shop where thousands of service providers can be managed.

SMART PROVIDER (click for demo)

It’s no secret — Canada’s population is aging, and it’s taking a toll on our health care system. The team behind Smart Provider got to work creating a tool that would allow homecare nurses and doctors to manage their case loads more efficiently and provider better care to more people.

Smart Provider was created by Ron Victorino, Kathleen Gatti and Freddy Rangel.

CALENDR (click here for demo)

Our final group project came from Harman Dhillon and Tom Wark. Harman and Tom teamed up to tackle the problem of inconvenient scheduling systems in medical offices.

They wanted to go a step beyond a simple appointment booking platform and incorporate a feature that allows patients to be notified when a new appointment becomes available that might better suit their schedule.

YOU SHOULD READ THIS (click for demo)

Created by Karen Anderson, this curated quarterly reading lists prompts users with a series of fun questions designed to get a sense of their interests and preferences, and sends them to a unique book recommendation based on their response.

We asked Karen to tell us about the experience of building an app, and this is what she said: “HackerYou gave me a great high-level overview of the structure of an application and the individual components required to pull it all together. I designed my simple app to grow-up in to a ‘sampler’ project — i.e. a basic MVP that I can keep adding elements to as I continue to learn.”

BET2GOAL

This app, created by Gael Rivaud, is an online social betting game for sports. The platform allows you to connect with members of the online community and place bids in an auction.

MAGNETIC POETRY (click for demo)

This app created by Kate Hudson needs little introduction. Built in Rails, this fun app allows you to arrange virtual magnets on an online fridge. You can even add your own words.

We asked Kate about her experience building out her first apps: “HackerYou was a rewarding experience for me because (with guidance) we were able to create small applications relatively quickly” she explained. “Programming is mostly, if not entirely, solving problems and as a beginner, the multitudes of errors can be discouraging. It was very encouraging to be able to show people a working example applying concepts we were learning from the instructors. It was really awesome to be able to go from zero programming experience to making a tangible application that people can interact with.”

ARTIST SUBMISSION APP (click for demo)

When they began Summer Academy, part of Paula Franzini and Ahmed Omran’s goal was to develop an artist submission app for a local art collective’s upcoming 2013 exhibition. Together, they built the app that allows artists to register a profile and submit their work for review.

When we asked Paula about her favorite part of HackerYou, she shared these thoughts: “Reliving the experience of being part of a close-knit, intense and fun group of students, studying and relaxing together. The group — including the wonderful coordinators, mentors, and instructors — was a wonderful mix of fascinating people with diverse backgrounds. Two months ago they were a bunch of strangers to be shy in front of — now I feel like I have many new great friends.”

Working with the same arts organization, Paula also took on her own individual project, showcasing the artists and the art of a local exhibition, Vanier Quartier Numerique.

We couldn’t be prouder of the amazing accomplishments of HackerYou’s first-ever full-time cohort. Over the last two months, they have put in a tremendous amount of effort, and the results are impressive. We now have newly-minted entrepreneurs building out products, and students going on to exciting new jobs (including one with HackerYou!).

If you’re interested in learning more about the students, their work, and their projects, feel free to connect with Heather at heather (at) hackeryou.com.

Congratulations once again to the inaugural class of HackerYou Summer Academy!