7 ms·

Catalyst: a new front-end developer training program

70 points by shawndrost 14y ago

douglascalhoun 14y ago
Congratulations to Shawn and Tony for launching this new venture! I know you guys have taken big personal and professional risks to follow this dream (you know, quitting your jobs, putting up your life savings, professional reputations on the line, etc). From the hard work and pure hustle I've seen so far, I've got great confidence that you will be successful. Huzzah!
- shawndrost 14y ago
  Thanks Doug :)
smit 14y ago
This looks very interesting but why is the start date november? Its a little inconvenient. Why not make it January to start at the beginning of the year?
- douglascalhoun 14y ago
  I'm sure there will be more courses in the future. I think they wanted to get their first cohort started as soon as possible.
- datalus 14y ago
  They also mention there's a new class starting every month. What I was curious about and didn't see mentioned specifically was the cost of tuition if any? EDIT: Well I need to read more closely as well, I found the answer: Tuition: We’re still deciding on the total price, the payment plan options, and scholarship details.
  - sharksforcheap 14y ago
    We are still figuring out the details of our pricing scheme, but one thing we are committed to is not letting finance problems stop us from accepting a good applicant. If you are at all worried about the price, I would suggest applying and we will try our best to find a way to make it possible to attend.
jrockway 14y ago
Name conflict: http://www.catalystframework.org/ http://www.catalystframework.org/
deleniti_0 14y ago
How is this different than Dev Bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com http://devbootcamp.com), other than the front-end focus? The homepage says Tony, one of the four staff, used to work there.
- shawndrost 14y ago
  Hey there -- I'm Shawn, a cofounder of Catalyst. Our experience is that students and potential employers are asking for a longer program, so ours runs for 12 weeks instead of 9. We think class size is a big determinant of educational outcomes, so we think students might be interested to know that we'll have 15 students in our cohort (vs 60 in DBC's if I recall correctly). Our hours are longer -- 10-9, six days a week. We're asking you to take time off of your normal life, and we think it's important to provide a very immersive environment for you to make the most of that period. We're going to put a lot more effort into helping you with your job search process. Our hiring day is after week 10, and weeks 11 and 12 consist of preparation aligned with the jobs that you'd like to get, practice interviews, etc. Hope that helps!
  - jfarmer 14y ago
    Hey Shawn, Jesse, here. For those just tuning in, Shawn & I know each other and I help run Dev Bootcamp. Tony Phillips, one of Shawn's co-founders, was a teacher-in-training at Dev Bootcamp for 5 months and before that a student in our first, 8-week cohort. A few corrections: 1. Our current cohort has 54 students. Starting January 28th, we'll have 48 students in the space at a given time. Although it's been challenging, we've so far been able to increase group cohesion as we increase class size. Below a certain size it's very easy for students to feel isolated if they can't find at least one other student to identify with. 2. Although our core hours are 9AM-6PM Monday-Friday, most students are here 12+ hours per day, 6-7 days per week. 75% of the class was here last weekend, for example. We keep a tight container on core hours and give students flexibility on off hours. The average student is working for about ~750 hours over the course of Dev Bootcamp. Also, about 50% of each cohort comes from out-of-state, and about 20% have families and children. Trust me, they're "tak[ing] time off [their] normal life." 3. We've worked with around ~100 companies over the course of our hiring days and none of them are asking for a longer training period. If an employer is skeptical, there's little difference between 9, 10, or 12 weeks. Twitter hired one of our summer students as an intern, for example, and their initial skepticism was more along the lines of, "How could 10 weeks compare to a 4-year University CS education?" That's a rough paraphrase from a conversation I had with a head of their head of college recruiting in April. On the flip side, virtually all employers return for future hiring days and about half send employees to become mentors for students in the following DBC class. I'll grant you that we might be talking to different employers.
eranation 14y ago
This is really a great initiative, too bad most of these programs require moving to SF for a few weeks, which puts working adults / parents / anyone who wants to do a career change practically out of the picture. I wish there was something like this here in Atlanta, I know many people that would have signed up
- aasarava 14y ago
  It's not just the move that puts this program out of the reach of people with kids or other commitments -- it's the entire schedule. 12 weeks of 10am to 9pm, Monday through Saturday? This is basically a way of saying (whether intentionally or not), do not bother to apply if you are not young. Do not bother if you place too high a value on spending time with your spouse, or your kids, or your girlfriend, or your boyfriend, or your aging grandmother. Do not bother if you've already committed some of your waking hours to serving your community or your church or a part time job that you use to pay the bills. Don't get me wrong: Tech training is incredibly valuable, and is increasingly critical to the economy. And I believe intensive training has merit. This program may well produce some stars. But why can't it do the same on a 9-6p M-F schedule? What's less intensive about that? So I hope this doesn't become a model. Because we don't gain much by reinforcing the stereotype that technology is just for young single people who would rather spend the night in front of their computers than with their friends and families. If you want to broaden the appeal of Web development, let's start training real people.
  - viscanti 14y ago
    I would guess that the major alternative for most of the applicants for this program would be studying on their own. You can take as long as you'd like to learn. Doing that, you can spend as much time as you'd like with friends/family, doing community work or anything else you choose. If you're motivated (and possibly unemployed), doing whatever it takes over a 3 month period to learn how to do front-end development might make sense. But like any other decision, there are tradeoffs. This "all-in" boot-camp style takes a lot of dedication. I don't think there's much risk of it becoming the primary way people learn to code, and even if it does, one can still learn on their own as easily as they could before.
JulianWasTaken 14y ago
This is cool, but somewhat ironically your site doesn't render too well in my browser. It (specifically the nav) flickers, and doesn't render fully when scrolling long distances. It also could use some padding. I'm on Chrome latest for iOS on an iPad. Anyways, rendering aside, I love more resources, so I'll keep an eye on this.
tmanderson 14y ago
I shed tears for the companies that hire the "graduates" of this "start to finish plan." I don't care how good of an instructor you are, you cannot make a programmer remotely efficient in HTML5 (primarily the countless APIs involved), CSS3, AND JavaScript in only 12 weeks. I don't know how that job placement is going to work -- but unless these learners start as interns, I don't know how beneficial this would be for them. There's "jumping into the deep end" and then there's "jumping into the Atlantic." I get a sense of the latter with this program.
- shawndrost 14y ago
  Hey there -- I'm Shawn, a cofounder at Catalyst. I have to admit that I was also skeptical when I heard about this model, but empirically, it works. (We're not the first program of this type -- there are several others.) Learning goes really fast when you have a lot of smart, dedicated people in a room, and employers see value in graduates. Meanwhile, consider the alternatives available to our potential students. My buddy JP is probably going to be one of our first students. He had the most popular Harry Potter fansite in the 90s, and has run websites for most places he's worked in the last several years. He's gone through codecademy, but his last job was as a delivery guy. Do you really think this is going to make his future worse?
  - carson 14y ago
    Can you share the empirical evidence that it works? There is a lot of talk about these programs but not many resources on the outcomes that I know of.
    - mehulkar 14y ago
      Not sure if this counts as empirical evidence but I was a Dev Bootcamp graduate. Working full time now. I recognize the deficiencies in my knowledge and experience before anyone else does, and there are many, but I am stil learning and loving what I do.
    - philaquilina 14y ago
      I'm also a Dev Bootcamp graduate and I work at Hipmunk now as a software engineer. Something like 93% of my class (summer) got hired so I'd say there's _some_ empirical evidence. What kind of engineers we'll be in a year's time will be even better evidence and from my own personal experience, I think the results will be positive.
danielvinson 14y ago
Who are you trying to market this program to? I feel like the group of people who are willing to dedicate 3 months and have $10k-$15k sitting around is alarmingly small. I think I could benefit greatly from attending this, but only being a few years out of college and still in debt means I would be crazy to attend.
- shawndrost 14y ago
  Yeah, we're keenly aware of the catch 22 here :/ We're working on some creative solutions, but it's very expensive to put on a program like this, and many of our students will need to draw on help from friends and family. It helps that this kind of program can lead directly to a high-paying job.
mikecane 14y ago
Oh man... come to NYC. Dying here. (If anyone knows of anything in NYC, let me know. I'm out of the loop and search stinks these days...)
- shawndrost 14y ago
  Hey Mike! We'd love to, sounds like fun. In the meantime, try our buddies at http://flatironschool.com/ http://flatironschool.com/
  - mikecane 14y ago
    It seems to diverge from my goal, which is to really learn JavaScript (learning HTML5 and CSS are bonuses). Seems to focus on Ruby on Rails and hardcore web development.
- rquantz 14y ago
  If you already have some skills, consider Hacker School (hackerschool.com) -- it's in NYC and it's free.
  - mikecane 14y ago
    I have zero coding skills. Edited to add: Just read up at the site. I would need a Pre-Hacker School (Hacker Pre-School? Heh.). Otherwise the program sounds good and I'm glad to see something like that here in the NYC area.
thezilch 14y ago
I often am very sketchy on the merits of Coffeescript, but how does it have a position on a 12wk crash-course? We can't even expect a competent non-programmer to jQuery-programmer in that span of time; much less great competency in JavaScript; and now another level of abstraction? Why?
- shawndrost 14y ago
  I actually agree that there are great reasons to write plain JS, but Coffeescript is an awesome teaching tool (to explain compilers, the difference between syntax and programming, etc).
  - thezilch 14y ago
    OK, that sounds like a fantastic use of Coffeescript, as it is probably rather dry with standard, "lower level" curriculum of the same subjects. Speaking of which, is there somewhere to find "the curriculum?" I obviously made a mistake in assuming this might be another case of pushing Coffeescript for all the wrong reasons. Kudos, nonetheless, as this would be a superb addition to what is really lacking in our education with younger crowds. What is the expected out-reach to those just out of High School or in pre College-Degree status?
hoytie 14y ago
Jeez, 11 hours a day, 6 days a week? I guess a masochistic streak is an asset in web development, but this borders on unhealthy.
cancelbubble 14y ago
Have you thought about trying to get corporate sponsorship to offset tuition? These corporate sponsors would be looking for front-end devs so there would possibly be the chance of your students finding a job afterwards, your sponsors finding an employee. BTW, Yahoo did something similar to what you're doing, they called it Juku. Also, why CoffeeScript and no JS MV*? Knockout has a very low learning curve for the basics.
Morcane 14y ago
All of this sounds awesome. I've been a software engineer for 15+ years, but a wish of mine is to attend a full-blown, hardcore bootcamp in modern (web) technologies and languages. Only problem is: I'm in Europe, and probably I'm not the only one. I wish such bootcamp programs would be organized in Europe as well. Anyways, great to see this.
lquist 14y ago
I notice that you don't have a client-side framework (e.g., backbone) listed under "The Program". Is this just an omission or something that you have consciously done? Good luck with your course!
- sharksforcheap 14y ago
  Thanks so much for the kind wishes. We haven't decided on a client-side framework yet (though I do like backbone), so we were holding off until we had decided what we wanted to include in the curriculum.
davj 14y ago
Awesome, congrats to Tony and Shawn for launching. Wishing you the best! Feel free to check out http://www.hackbrightacademy.com http://www.hackbrightacademy.com for a software dev training program for women.
- sharksforcheap 14y ago
  Thanks a bunch. I've been reading good things about the new class in blogs. Keep up the good work!
chriszf 14y ago
It's like the movie Ratatouille: Not everyone can be a good coder, but a good coder can come from anywhere. While they may receive an impossibly large number of candidates, in the end, they will boil it down to roughly 15 students. That means that as long as their application process is sane, they will have found 15 good candidates who are going to be 'coding for the right reasons', whatever that means. This is different from codecademy, which says that anyone and everyone should learn to code. Instead, they're claiming that you don't need a CS degree to be a professional programmer. That doesn't mean they're also saying you don't need to be dedicated, and analytical. Ultimately, the people who enter these programs are the kinds of people who would have made it on their own, albeit on a much longer timeline. I don't see any problem with jumpstarting it with careful curation and guidance.
jcdavison 14y ago
In response to the "There is NO way a person can become a productive programmer in 10 weeks" Programming and software engineering are about solving complex problems. Most of the people who get into these programs, start with the skills required to program, ie, curiosity about solving problems with technology. Also, the goal of the program isn't to graduate soloist-rock star programmers, it is to graduate super smart well grounded personalities who can be super-atmospherically-high quality apprentice's, which is totally plausible. There is like a 10:2 engineering to all other jobs ratio that probably won't go away. Spending a small chunk of time/money (I spent 10k for DevBootCamp) versus getting a traditional 4year CS degree, which is in no way shape or form proven to be a great path to becoming a solid engineer, is a no brainer. Tony who is one of the teachers at Catalyst taught me a bunch at devbootcamp. He is incredibly smart and patient, does an extremely good job of instilling in people that they can themselves solve complex problems. I myself did devbootcamp this summer, it was a great experience and forever increased my impact as a person and technologist.
- cancelbubble 14y ago
  It also mentions on their site that those who complete their program will be "completely prepared for your first entry-level developer position". Note: entry-level.
DomKM 14y ago
The Phillips Bros. (Tony & Marcus) are fantastic. I can't wait to see the front-end engineers this course produces. If you're looking into an accelerated development training course and are confused by the many courses similar to Dev Bootcamp, Catalyst seems like the best option for front-end development. I'd wager that starting salaries of Catalyst grads will confirm this.
blauwbilgorgel 14y ago
Perhaps check the source and remove/correct some things like: !-- janky continuation of loop --> <div style="background-color:transparent" id="mc_embed_signup"> <h3> </h3> <h1 class="smallerh1" style="color:#444"> <form method="post" action="/" onsubmit="console.log('asdf')"> Interested?               <img src="http://catalystclass.com/wp-content/themes/ViewPoint/images/star.png style="padding-top:20px"> Basic stuff like adding image alt attributes and image dimensions, semantic mark-up, descriptive page title etc. I like the idea, but consider creating a cool front-end to present it, not this Wordpress theme. I think it would add to your credibility.
- sharksforcheap 14y ago
  Thanks for the suggestion, but actually I totally disagree. Spending time coding Javascript and spending time teaching or preparing to teach Javascript are two different things. If I were a student, I would want a group of guys to get a wordpress theme and reinvest all the time they saved into making the program better for me.
  - blauwbilgorgel 14y ago
    You disagree with the suggestion to clean up the code? Because teaching how to code and writing code are two different things, I agree. It is great you saved time by using a theme and hacking it a bit for your purpose. Perhaps now there is some time to make your site accessible, credible and adherent to standards, like you teach your students? You know best where to invest your time. This shouldn't take too long though. <meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' /> Is that supposed to be there? You are already indexed, but lack a snippet, due to this. Google substituted your page title in the results with your first <h1> ("Learn to code. Get a job.")
jrvarela56 14y ago
I don't think the issue here is whether this works or not. The point is that there aren't enough devs. That several programs like these are starting, and that companies are willing to hire, gives you a glimpse of the demand for developers these days. I believe this trend will continue in the near future, and people with the capacity to become hireable programmers will transfer from other professions.

70 points by shawndrost 14y ago

Congratulations to Shawn and Tony for launching this new venture! I know you guys have taken big personal and professional risks to follow this dream (you know, quitting your jobs, putting up your life savings, professional reputations on the line, etc). From the hard work and pure hustle I've seen so far, I've got great confidence that you will be successful. Huzzah!

shawndrost 14y ago
Thanks Doug :)

smit 14y ago

This looks very interesting but why is the start date november? Its a little inconvenient. Why not make it January to start at the beginning of the year?

douglascalhoun 14y ago
I'm sure there will be more courses in the future. I think they wanted to get their first cohort started as soon as possible.
datalus 14y ago
They also mention there's a new class starting every month. What I was curious about and didn't see mentioned specifically was the cost of tuition if any? EDIT: Well I need to read more closely as well, I found the answer: Tuition: We’re still deciding on the total price, the payment plan options, and scholarship details.
- sharksforcheap 14y ago
  We are still figuring out the details of our pricing scheme, but one thing we are committed to is not letting finance problems stop us from accepting a good applicant. If you are at all worried about the price, I would suggest applying and we will try our best to find a way to make it possible to attend.

jrockway 14y ago

Name conflict: http://www.catalystframework.org/ http://www.catalystframework.org/

deleniti_0 14y ago

How is this different than Dev Bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com http://devbootcamp.com), other than the front-end focus? The homepage says Tony, one of the four staff, used to work there.

shawndrost 14y ago
Hey there -- I'm Shawn, a cofounder of Catalyst. Our experience is that students and potential employers are asking for a longer program, so ours runs for 12 weeks instead of 9. We think class size is a big determinant of educational outcomes, so we think students might be interested to know that we'll have 15 students in our cohort (vs 60 in DBC's if I recall correctly). Our hours are longer -- 10-9, six days a week. We're asking you to take time off of your normal life, and we think it's important to provide a very immersive environment for you to make the most of that period. We're going to put a lot more effort into helping you with your job search process. Our hiring day is after week 10, and weeks 11 and 12 consist of preparation aligned with the jobs that you'd like to get, practice interviews, etc. Hope that helps!
- jfarmer 14y ago
  Hey Shawn, Jesse, here. For those just tuning in, Shawn & I know each other and I help run Dev Bootcamp. Tony Phillips, one of Shawn's co-founders, was a teacher-in-training at Dev Bootcamp for 5 months and before that a student in our first, 8-week cohort. A few corrections: 1. Our current cohort has 54 students. Starting January 28th, we'll have 48 students in the space at a given time. Although it's been challenging, we've so far been able to increase group cohesion as we increase class size. Below a certain size it's very easy for students to feel isolated if they can't find at least one other student to identify with. 2. Although our core hours are 9AM-6PM Monday-Friday, most students are here 12+ hours per day, 6-7 days per week. 75% of the class was here last weekend, for example. We keep a tight container on core hours and give students flexibility on off hours. The average student is working for about ~750 hours over the course of Dev Bootcamp. Also, about 50% of each cohort comes from out-of-state, and about 20% have families and children. Trust me, they're "tak[ing] time off [their] normal life." 3. We've worked with around ~100 companies over the course of our hiring days and none of them are asking for a longer training period. If an employer is skeptical, there's little difference between 9, 10, or 12 weeks. Twitter hired one of our summer students as an intern, for example, and their initial skepticism was more along the lines of, "How could 10 weeks compare to a 4-year University CS education?" That's a rough paraphrase from a conversation I had with a head of their head of college recruiting in April. On the flip side, virtually all employers return for future hiring days and about half send employees to become mentors for students in the following DBC class. I'll grant you that we might be talking to different employers.

eranation 14y ago

This is really a great initiative, too bad most of these programs require moving to SF for a few weeks, which puts working adults / parents / anyone who wants to do a career change practically out of the picture. I wish there was something like this here in Atlanta, I know many people that would have signed up

aasarava 14y ago
It's not just the move that puts this program out of the reach of people with kids or other commitments -- it's the entire schedule. 12 weeks of 10am to 9pm, Monday through Saturday? This is basically a way of saying (whether intentionally or not), do not bother to apply if you are not young. Do not bother if you place too high a value on spending time with your spouse, or your kids, or your girlfriend, or your boyfriend, or your aging grandmother. Do not bother if you've already committed some of your waking hours to serving your community or your church or a part time job that you use to pay the bills. Don't get me wrong: Tech training is incredibly valuable, and is increasingly critical to the economy. And I believe intensive training has merit. This program may well produce some stars. But why can't it do the same on a 9-6p M-F schedule? What's less intensive about that? So I hope this doesn't become a model. Because we don't gain much by reinforcing the stereotype that technology is just for young single people who would rather spend the night in front of their computers than with their friends and families. If you want to broaden the appeal of Web development, let's start training real people.
- viscanti 14y ago
  I would guess that the major alternative for most of the applicants for this program would be studying on their own. You can take as long as you'd like to learn. Doing that, you can spend as much time as you'd like with friends/family, doing community work or anything else you choose. If you're motivated (and possibly unemployed), doing whatever it takes over a 3 month period to learn how to do front-end development might make sense. But like any other decision, there are tradeoffs. This "all-in" boot-camp style takes a lot of dedication. I don't think there's much risk of it becoming the primary way people learn to code, and even if it does, one can still learn on their own as easily as they could before.

JulianWasTaken 14y ago

This is cool, but somewhat ironically your site doesn't render too well in my browser. It (specifically the nav) flickers, and doesn't render fully when scrolling long distances. It also could use some padding. I'm on Chrome latest for iOS on an iPad. Anyways, rendering aside, I love more resources, so I'll keep an eye on this.

tmanderson 14y ago

I shed tears for the companies that hire the "graduates" of this "start to finish plan." I don't care how good of an instructor you are, you cannot make a programmer remotely efficient in HTML5 (primarily the countless APIs involved), CSS3, AND JavaScript in only 12 weeks. I don't know how that job placement is going to work -- but unless these learners start as interns, I don't know how beneficial this would be for them. There's "jumping into the deep end" and then there's "jumping into the Atlantic." I get a sense of the latter with this program.

shawndrost 14y ago
Hey there -- I'm Shawn, a cofounder at Catalyst. I have to admit that I was also skeptical when I heard about this model, but empirically, it works. (We're not the first program of this type -- there are several others.) Learning goes really fast when you have a lot of smart, dedicated people in a room, and employers see value in graduates. Meanwhile, consider the alternatives available to our potential students. My buddy JP is probably going to be one of our first students. He had the most popular Harry Potter fansite in the 90s, and has run websites for most places he's worked in the last several years. He's gone through codecademy, but his last job was as a delivery guy. Do you really think this is going to make his future worse?
- carson 14y ago
  Can you share the empirical evidence that it works? There is a lot of talk about these programs but not many resources on the outcomes that I know of.
  - mehulkar 14y ago
    Not sure if this counts as empirical evidence but I was a Dev Bootcamp graduate. Working full time now. I recognize the deficiencies in my knowledge and experience before anyone else does, and there are many, but I am stil learning and loving what I do.
  - philaquilina 14y ago
    I'm also a Dev Bootcamp graduate and I work at Hipmunk now as a software engineer. Something like 93% of my class (summer) got hired so I'd say there's _some_ empirical evidence. What kind of engineers we'll be in a year's time will be even better evidence and from my own personal experience, I think the results will be positive.

danielvinson 14y ago

Who are you trying to market this program to? I feel like the group of people who are willing to dedicate 3 months and have $10k-$15k sitting around is alarmingly small. I think I could benefit greatly from attending this, but only being a few years out of college and still in debt means I would be crazy to attend.

shawndrost 14y ago
Yeah, we're keenly aware of the catch 22 here :/ We're working on some creative solutions, but it's very expensive to put on a program like this, and many of our students will need to draw on help from friends and family. It helps that this kind of program can lead directly to a high-paying job.

mikecane 14y ago

Oh man... come to NYC. Dying here. (If anyone knows of anything in NYC, let me know. I'm out of the loop and search stinks these days...)

shawndrost 14y ago
Hey Mike! We'd love to, sounds like fun. In the meantime, try our buddies at http://flatironschool.com/ http://flatironschool.com/
- mikecane 14y ago
  It seems to diverge from my goal, which is to really learn JavaScript (learning HTML5 and CSS are bonuses). Seems to focus on Ruby on Rails and hardcore web development.
rquantz 14y ago
If you already have some skills, consider Hacker School (hackerschool.com) -- it's in NYC and it's free.
- mikecane 14y ago
  I have zero coding skills. Edited to add: Just read up at the site. I would need a Pre-Hacker School (Hacker Pre-School? Heh.). Otherwise the program sounds good and I'm glad to see something like that here in the NYC area.

thezilch 14y ago

I often am very sketchy on the merits of Coffeescript, but how does it have a position on a 12wk crash-course? We can't even expect a competent non-programmer to jQuery-programmer in that span of time; much less great competency in JavaScript; and now another level of abstraction? Why?

shawndrost 14y ago
I actually agree that there are great reasons to write plain JS, but Coffeescript is an awesome teaching tool (to explain compilers, the difference between syntax and programming, etc).
- thezilch 14y ago
  OK, that sounds like a fantastic use of Coffeescript, as it is probably rather dry with standard, "lower level" curriculum of the same subjects. Speaking of which, is there somewhere to find "the curriculum?" I obviously made a mistake in assuming this might be another case of pushing Coffeescript for all the wrong reasons. Kudos, nonetheless, as this would be a superb addition to what is really lacking in our education with younger crowds. What is the expected out-reach to those just out of High School or in pre College-Degree status?

hoytie 14y ago

Jeez, 11 hours a day, 6 days a week? I guess a masochistic streak is an asset in web development, but this borders on unhealthy.

cancelbubble 14y ago

Have you thought about trying to get corporate sponsorship to offset tuition? These corporate sponsors would be looking for front-end devs so there would possibly be the chance of your students finding a job afterwards, your sponsors finding an employee. BTW, Yahoo did something similar to what you're doing, they called it Juku. Also, why CoffeeScript and no JS MV*? Knockout has a very low learning curve for the basics.

Morcane 14y ago

All of this sounds awesome. I've been a software engineer for 15+ years, but a wish of mine is to attend a full-blown, hardcore bootcamp in modern (web) technologies and languages. Only problem is: I'm in Europe, and probably I'm not the only one. I wish such bootcamp programs would be organized in Europe as well. Anyways, great to see this.

lquist 14y ago

I notice that you don't have a client-side framework (e.g., backbone) listed under "The Program". Is this just an omission or something that you have consciously done? Good luck with your course!

sharksforcheap 14y ago
Thanks so much for the kind wishes. We haven't decided on a client-side framework yet (though I do like backbone), so we were holding off until we had decided what we wanted to include in the curriculum.

davj 14y ago

Awesome, congrats to Tony and Shawn for launching. Wishing you the best! Feel free to check out http://www.hackbrightacademy.com http://www.hackbrightacademy.com for a software dev training program for women.

sharksforcheap 14y ago
Thanks a bunch. I've been reading good things about the new class in blogs. Keep up the good work!

chriszf 14y ago

It's like the movie Ratatouille: Not everyone can be a good coder, but a good coder can come from anywhere. While they may receive an impossibly large number of candidates, in the end, they will boil it down to roughly 15 students. That means that as long as their application process is sane, they will have found 15 good candidates who are going to be 'coding for the right reasons', whatever that means. This is different from codecademy, which says that anyone and everyone should learn to code. Instead, they're claiming that you don't need a CS degree to be a professional programmer. That doesn't mean they're also saying you don't need to be dedicated, and analytical. Ultimately, the people who enter these programs are the kinds of people who would have made it on their own, albeit on a much longer timeline. I don't see any problem with jumpstarting it with careful curation and guidance.

jcdavison 14y ago

In response to the "There is NO way a person can become a productive programmer in 10 weeks" Programming and software engineering are about solving complex problems. Most of the people who get into these programs, start with the skills required to program, ie, curiosity about solving problems with technology. Also, the goal of the program isn't to graduate soloist-rock star programmers, it is to graduate super smart well grounded personalities who can be super-atmospherically-high quality apprentice's, which is totally plausible. There is like a 10:2 engineering to all other jobs ratio that probably won't go away. Spending a small chunk of time/money (I spent 10k for DevBootCamp) versus getting a traditional 4year CS degree, which is in no way shape or form proven to be a great path to becoming a solid engineer, is a no brainer. Tony who is one of the teachers at Catalyst taught me a bunch at devbootcamp. He is incredibly smart and patient, does an extremely good job of instilling in people that they can themselves solve complex problems. I myself did devbootcamp this summer, it was a great experience and forever increased my impact as a person and technologist.

cancelbubble 14y ago
It also mentions on their site that those who complete their program will be "completely prepared for your first entry-level developer position". Note: entry-level.

DomKM 14y ago

The Phillips Bros. (Tony & Marcus) are fantastic. I can't wait to see the front-end engineers this course produces. If you're looking into an accelerated development training course and are confused by the many courses similar to Dev Bootcamp, Catalyst seems like the best option for front-end development. I'd wager that starting salaries of Catalyst grads will confirm this.

blauwbilgorgel 14y ago

Perhaps check the source and remove/correct some things like: !-- janky continuation of loop --> <div style="background-color:transparent" id="mc_embed_signup"> <h3> </h3> <h1 class="smallerh1" style="color:#444"> <form method="post" action="/" onsubmit="console.log('asdf')"> Interested?               <img src="http://catalystclass.com/wp-content/themes/ViewPoint/images/star.png style="padding-top:20px"> Basic stuff like adding image alt attributes and image dimensions, semantic mark-up, descriptive page title etc. I like the idea, but consider creating a cool front-end to present it, not this Wordpress theme. I think it would add to your credibility.

sharksforcheap 14y ago
Thanks for the suggestion, but actually I totally disagree. Spending time coding Javascript and spending time teaching or preparing to teach Javascript are two different things. If I were a student, I would want a group of guys to get a wordpress theme and reinvest all the time they saved into making the program better for me.
- blauwbilgorgel 14y ago
  You disagree with the suggestion to clean up the code? Because teaching how to code and writing code are two different things, I agree. It is great you saved time by using a theme and hacking it a bit for your purpose. Perhaps now there is some time to make your site accessible, credible and adherent to standards, like you teach your students? You know best where to invest your time. This shouldn't take too long though. <meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' /> Is that supposed to be there? You are already indexed, but lack a snippet, due to this. Google substituted your page title in the results with your first <h1> ("Learn to code. Get a job.")

jrvarela56 14y ago

I don't think the issue here is whether this works or not. The point is that there aren't enough devs. That several programs like these are starting, and that companies are willing to hire, gives you a glimpse of the demand for developers these days. I believe this trend will continue in the near future, and people with the capacity to become hireable programmers will transfer from other professions.