Applying, Interviews, and Prework

As I mentioned in my previous post, the decision to apply to coding bootcamps was fairly last-minute. Rather than talk about that, since everyone will have different thresholds for where they feel comfortable taking the plunge, I'll talk about applying itself.

Applying is a fairly simple process. First there is standard stuff like your name, email address, possibly a resume. Then there will be a few short-answer questions. They'll vary from program to program, but are often things like, "Why do you want to learn how to program?", "Why are you applying to this course?", "Tell us about yourself." and other such questions aimed at presenting a more full picture of you. One of the more fun questions that I saw was "Show us something awesome on the Internet".

Within a few days, someone at the school should reach out to you and arrange an interview. In preparation for the interview, it's likely you'll be asked to do a few basic online coding courses, most likely from Codecademy. The tutorials are pretty simple, and will start you from zero, so even if you have absolutely no programming knowledge, you should be fine. In total it won't take more than four hours, and since this is what you wanted to learn anyway, it should be pretty fun!

During the interview, you'll be asked about your background, why you want to study programming - pretty standard stuff. Then you'll be asked a few questions about whatever coding language you were asked to study in preparation. This will be pretty general or person-specific stuff, like what you liked or didn't like about the language, if there was anything you had difficulty with, and so on. You'll probably also be asked how you'd go about making a simple program. You won't have to actually write it - just tell them things like "I'd probably need to loop a question asking the user for information until they responded as requested" or whatever. Hopefully you don't have too much trouble with this! They know what you had to study on Codecademy, so you won't need any more knowledge than that. If you're worried, just take a deep breath and break the task down into the simplest pieces you can, and explain how you'd do that. You're basically going to be walking them through your thought process, so thinking aloud is fine (and probably encouraged). You'll also have a chance to ask them questions, so if you want to know what makes their school a better choice than others, or what a typical day is like, or if they have a free coffee machine, now is your chance!

So, let's say you hear back a few days later and you got in! What next? Next is preparing for the class. It is (apparently) completely fine if you come in knowing nothing, but the pre work is aimed at giving you a basic understanding of programming, and the languages you'll be learning in general. I was initially planning on writing about each week of pre work, but between moving, life, and trying to do my 40 hours of pre work, I have been a bit busy, sorry! In brief, though, here are some things that I was asked to study

• Week One
  • Internet basics - how does it work, common terms
  • Command Line - communicating directly with your computer
  • Typing - learn where all those crazy programing symbols are!
• Week Two
• HTML Basics - learn how to make a website!
• CSS Basics - now make that website pretty!
• Week Three
• Ruby - this is the first language we'll be working with. Learn the basics!
• Git - version control! Make sure that anything lost isn't lost forever!

Before closing, here is a screenshot of a website that I made during week two! Not too shabby, if I do say so myself. It is super simple, and the design was based off of something else that I'd made, but it looks pretty nice, right? Right? :D

The program begins on Tuesday, so I'll try to write an update every Saturday going forward. Up next! The first week of class!

By the way, it's unlikely anyone can tell, but I wrote this in HTML rather than using the standard blog "Compose" editor. Wow! Baby steps ^_^;