My experience at h4ckademy
An immersive nine-week code retreat for programmers told from the inside
This past summer I was lucky enough to be part of h4ckademy, an immersive learning experience for programmers. I spent nine weeks working on open source projects with like-minded fellows in a self-directed manner. It was awesome. Here’s a recap of my experience.
Prior expectations
While I approached the experience with an open mind, I had a few ideas of what I wanted to get out of it beforehand. First and foremost, I wanted to work in teams, learn from and collaborate with others. I also knew that I wanted to work on some sort of creative web project. On the technical side, I wanted to practice and improve my JavaScript skills, including learning some JavaScript framework, and dip my toes into data visualization. I’m happy to say that all these objectives were accomplished.
What I worked on
The first week we met the other participants, got to know each other and learned all about the projects proposed by the h4ckademy partners. We had to choose one or more of these projects to work on, or we could also work on our own ideas. As most of us, I hesitated between a few of them, but finally decided to go with WildBoard, an API-ready dashboard sponsored by Dokify. During the second week I did data modeling and testing in Node.js for this project. It was interesting to be involved in discussing the architecture for a product of this kind. I only have good words for Jose Ignacio Andrés, Dokify’s CTO, who met with the team weekly to follow up on the project and was always at our complete disposal.
But then our fellow Carlos Padial came up with the idea for FilmViz, a tool for automatic film analysis and visual comparison that would work right in the web browser. I loved the idea so much, and was so intrigued by its technical feasibility, that I ended up devoting the rest of my time to it. It was also a perfect match to fulfill my learning objectives, since it allowed me to work on data visualization with D3.js and use a JavaScript framework like AngularJS. Working collaboratively also helped me improve my teamwork skills and step up my game with Git and Github.
Things I liked
What I liked the most about h4ckademy was its diversity. My colleagues ranged from teenagers to people in their late thirties, from engineers to artists, from Spaniards to Turks. We all shared a passion for programming, but each one of us brought different backgrounds and personalities to the table. This diverse, multidisciplinary environment allowed for more interesting exchanges of ideas and a richer experience than I expected. It helped me expand my vision about programming and learn about other related disciplines.
The same happened with all the workshops, talks and related activities we had. We learned AngularJS from Carlos Azaustre, Ember from Sergio Arbeo, web scraping from Miguel Moraleda, Git from Antonio Padial, open source projects management from Juanjo Bazán, DevOps from Ticketea or functional programming from Alejandro Gómez and Pepe García. But we also got to chat with eclectic people like Sergio Galán, heard about the basics of data visualization from David Alayón, saw some cool stuff on urban spaces by Carmelo Rodríguez from PKMN, found out about new human-computer interaction devices from Juan Alonso or learned about Blender and algorithmic composition from our own Carlos Padial, Roboe (Roberto Martín) and Federico Guardabrazo. We were encouraged to give talks to our colleagues and I did so as well.
Another thing I particularly liked about the experience is that it didn’t end right after the demo day, when projects were presented to the community. We had three more weeks from then that allowed us to focus less on features and more on refining what we had already done. Our FilmViz app went through a major refactoring during this time. Refactoring sessions were held with members from other teams so that we could get external input. Some alumni from the first edition of h4ckademy came by as well, such as Rubén Antón, who helped us with the business logic and domain model, or Álex Guerrero, who showed us how to integrate Gulp into our project. The h4ckademy facilitators gave a hand too: Enrique Álvarez helped us implement promises for our automatic film analyzer and Sergio Arbeo advised us on the performance impact of CSS selectors, among other things. Of course, Israel Gutiérrez was always there, first to come and last to go, trying to make h4ckademy the best possible experience for us.
Other activities
Besides workshops, talks and coding, we also had a few mentoring sessions with some nice folks that came by to take a look at our projects, like Amaia Castro, Carlos Hernando or Salva de la Puente. They provided some interesting insights and suggestions, both technical and non-technical, as well as tons of encouragement. We also had a handful of very useful sessions with Mónica Quintana, who helped us develop our soft skills, build our digital identity and improve our employability overall. As part of this effort, Ana Carrascosa and Marina Lorenzo came by for a fun and very participative workshop about interpersonal communication. There were also weekly meetings on Fridays in order to talk about the progress of the projects, look back at the activities of the week and get input from us for future improvement.
As previously mentioned, an open source demo day was held at Campus Madrid so we could show our projects to the community. We also had one-to-one meetings with the h4ckademy partners during the demo day, which in some cases led to landing a cool job. And we even got to present a few of our projects at TechHub Demo Night.
All in all, I honestly couldn’t have asked for more. I’ve become a better programmer, improved other important skills for my employability, made a few valuable contacts and met a lot of very interesting people. For free! The best of it all is that this doesn’t end here: h4ckademy is like a big supporting family. They’re all lovely people. Don’t miss the opportunity to meet them and apply for the next edition.
