Beyond a Coding Bootcamp
Having spent years in discovering the aesthetic values in composing western art music and being exposed to music notation or recording software and their offsprings, I finally showed the courage to take advantage of technology that has penetrated all parts of life.
Most self-taught developers, by nature, face frustration and loneliness during their journey, unless they have a mentor or a developer friend. Moreover, they may end up being lost among the tutorial madness. Flipping through books or clicking video tutorials distract many people from becoming a professional software developer. So, finding your path through this pile has become a skill by itself.
Bootcamps, on the other hand, or talented instructors might be coming to your mind as an efficient solution to this. Well… I agree with that, but there are a few issues with them. There are some well-known problems with traditional bootcamps: On one side, they might be following old-school technologies in their curricula. On the other hand, they are usually too expensive to enroll, beyond the reach of students or new graduates.
As the problem slightly reveals itself, I hope every person who is experiencing the same challenges would be lucky enough to find the perfect match for their professional software development career aspirations. Kodluyoruz, a leading social enterprise that teaches software engineering skills to high potential people for free, has shown the power to solve the above problems.
Kodluyoruz and its activities
With a ground-breaking vision to change the fate of the technology sector in Turkey, Kodluyoruz has been actively preparing students for the most-wanted tech positions. They already have more than 1,000 graduates by now and most of the graduates land in a job by the end of the bootcamp. Besides, it has provided bootcamps even in the smaller cities in Turkey, which is much more difficult to achieve. With its last move, Kodluyoruz has succeeded to translate Harvard’s legendary CS50 course into Turkish. Upon this fantastic work, around 30,000 people applied to this program.
Luckily, I had a chance to be accepted to the React Bootcamp, backed by Insider Inc., in March 2020. Being in the last week of the bootcamp, I think I need to let you know of the experience I’ve had in this wonderful compulsory-online learning environment. As the Covid-19 hit the world with an unprecedented effect, the bootcamp staff decided to move to online platforms to continue the bootcamp.
React Bootcamp and my observations in brief
Commencing one week later than the announced date due to the infamous Covid-19 crisis, the bootcamp has been a great break-through in most of its students, as I observe. We had a talented and friendly instructor, Mehmet Yurtar, we have enjoyed hands-on React learning. Having such an instructor is not that possible on other platforms. Teaching assistants, Nisan Tarhan and Özge Aydın, have also put a great effort to help us learn, especially during the late-night talks through Discord, Telegram, and Google Meet, which is frequently visited by the instructor himself to encourage us.
Another good side of online learning is that you can access the recording of the classes any time to consolidate your knowledge. This helped me a great deal, especially during the weekly project assignments. Although frustration has shown itself during the assignments, our precious instructor has frequently reminded us of the value of hands-on learning in software development. Besides, with a need for a deep understanding of ES6 conventions during the creation of a React App, we found ourselves to be learning even more JavaScript than ever.
Besides being equipped with a cutting-edge React or JavaScript-related technologies such as React-Router, Redux, Middlewares, Styled-Components, Reactstrap, Formik, Yup, and many others, we were also offered a meeting with some of the finest software engineers from Microsoft Seattle office: Ahmet Engin Bayrak, Alp Onalan, Irem Gokce Aydin, Mehmet Tatlicioglu and an entrepreneur Levent Hemdemir. Their insights into the world of software and its predictable future was worth listening to. This meeting, I strongly believe, will have a huge impact on the career of my classmates in the future.
Lastly, I should express my views on this visionary initiative itself, which was launched by Gulcan Yayla, Aykut Ibrisim and Emre Sarbak. On the macro plan, such initiatives will surely help the human labor force to keep up with the exponential growth of the technology itself. As for Kodluyoruz’s contribution to its hosting country, Turkey, more specifically, I need to say that they spot the need for qualified software developers in the sector. This hypothetical need for qualified developers is well supported and proven by both the Turkish Government’s plan to train a million software developers by 2023 and analysis by UK-based Michael Page recruitment agency which was prepared upon OECD’s Better Life Index.
With all these, I believe that there is nothing left to be covered in this tiny article but to congratulate Kodluyoruz and its all-supporting staff for their effort and time.
