website VS curriculum

The Collab Lab is a non-profit organization that runs a program where early career developers can apply to work together on a team to complete a project led by mentors who work in the field.

TCL Link

I recently completed a full-stack project at The Collab Lab and developed a shopping list app with 3 other developers. Throughout this journey, I gained a profound appreciation for the importance of accessibility in web development. It is crucial for front-end developers to have accessibility awareness in mind so the apps we are building can be user-friendly to all. While I don't claim to be an accessibility expert, below are the 6 simple low-hanging fruit that you can grab to significantly enhance your site's accessibility.

I had first-hand experience leaving a community because I didn't feel welcome and secure as a newbie from an underrepresented group. I realized later that this community lacked moderators to catch up with all conversations in their forum and Discord. Based on this experience, when DEV (and CodeNewbie) offered me to be one of the moderators, I accepted it without a second thought! Not only here, but I'm also one of the Code of Conduct responders at The Collab Lab community and an advisor at the Virtual Coffee community because I want to help create and maintain a safe and inclusive space in the tech community for everyone.

As a self-taught developer, there are 2 things that I always missed during my learning journey: building projects in a team and getting feedback. I thought that both things could help me improve my coding skills much faster so I started to look for any kind of experience or community that could provide me that. And one day I luckily came across The Collab Lab.

The Collab Lab repository

The landing page was built using HTML/CSS and some Javascript. How have I been learning this? A mix of AI (Claude, ChatGPT) and learning how to create a site by going through the foundational section of The Odin Project. I will also continue to go through this course and the React portion.

There were frustrations and compromises and victories, but little by little I can see my progress, and I still enjoy the act of overcoming these new challenges and learning more and more. Each day is another little lesson. I look forward to continuing with The Odin Project and the next challenges, but in the meantime I must return to looking for my alternance (apprenticeship) and maybe a small personal project before launching into the next part of the curriculum.

The Odin Project: With its hands-on approach, The Odin Project guids through everything from basic HTML and CSS to full-stack development.

The Odin Project (https://www.theodinproject.com/)

The Odin Project The Odin Project offers a full-stack curriculum for aspiring web developers. With its project-based approach, you'll gain practical experience while learning HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and more.

TheOdinProject

The Odin Project - Free, open-source platform with a curriculum focused on JavaScript and Ruby for web development.

I'll throw in a vote for teaching yourself or using free resources and communities. Even if you go down the bootcamp route it is going to take a lot of self motivation and work outside of the bootcamp / afterwards in order to become job ready. Or at least do this to start with to make sure you like it.

I did this myself a few years years ago over lockdown. I had a lot of down time and worked on teaching myself web development full time 5 days a week for about a year. I was then able to land a job at a FAANG company through an apprenticeship scheme that they offer in the UK (I'm not sure if these kinds of schemes are available in the US) where I stayed for a year and a half and I am now working for a startup in a position I found through connections I made at my previous job. At the time I did have other offers for non-apprenticeship roles at other companies so don't let the absence of apprenticeships put you off if they aren't on offer in the US. The job market was definitely better when I was applying for my first job so the process might be more drawn out now. The main resource I used for self teaching was The Odin Project (https://www.theodinproject.com/). I also did a batch at The Recurse Center (https://www.recurse.com/) which was a great experience in general, especially for getting some hands on time working on projects with other people. I would say be curious, reach out to people who are working on things you find interesting to ask them for a chat and just persevere with the applications as you will definitely get a lot of rejections.

One more thing (might be UK specific as well) but I would check to see if there are any government funded bootcamps you might be able to get a place on. I know multiple people in the UK who got the job center to pay for them to do a bootcamp while they were on universal credit and now work in the industry.

So I have been learning how to code and broadly development since 2020, during the Covid-19 lockdowns, beginning with the classic triple threat of HTML/CSS/JavaScript, adding into the mix a dash of Python and since returning to live in France 2022 have committed to The Odin Project web-development program and happily began my full time formal learning with Ada Tech School in 2023. Now the search for my 12-month-long apprenticeship (Alternance, en français) begins, as well as continuing my self-study and side-projects.