Introducing XCamp: the UCLA DevX Bootcamp
A short and sweet onboarding program for incoming DevX developers.
What is XCamp?
XCamp is a 12-hour program across 6 sessions that teaches new DevX developers the foundational skills required to be successful on a collaborative product team.
Why is XCamp a thing?
For the past 4 quarters of UCLA DevX’s history, developers have gone straight from recruitment into their product teams. This “dive straight into the deep end” approach worked well as DevX sprouted its initial roots because it let the product teams move fast.
Now that DevX is a bit more established, however, the pitfalls of this approach can no longer be hidden under the move-fast-and-break-things rug. Product managers across DevX’s 8 teams have onboarded new developers onto their teams, only to find that a handful of them are not yet proficient with the high-level skills required as a developer on a large team — for example: git, test-driven development, and deployment.
XCamp will, therefore, target exactly these skills.
- Using git and GitHub is paramount to effectively contributing to a large codebase with numerous collaborators.
- Practicing test-driven development is critical to building reliable products whose growth aren’t restricted by avoidable bugs.
- Understanding deployment architecture (at a high level) gives you a clearer picture of where your role as a (frontend/backend/data/etc.) developer fits into the overall technical product.
What is XCamp NOT?
Although XCamp will walk developers through the development of a small subset of an Express/React web application, the focus is not on Express and React but instead on the general skills of web development in a team setting. We chose this approach for two reasons.
- DevX teams use a variety of technologies in their stacks so learning particular technologies may not be useful for all XCamp participants.
- In general, learning the purpose of each of those technologies is more important than learning the technology itself.
As such, XCamp participants will write Express routes, React components, and SQL queries but only to the extent required to learn the foundational development skills outlined above.
Finally, the structure and curriculum of XCamp is not set in stone. Just like DevX’s core products, XCamp will undergo a constant cycle of implementation, feedback, and iteration as we improve it session by session and quarter by quarter. So if you have any thoughts or suggestions on how XCamp could be better, don’t hesitate to leave a response below!
