virtualcoffee.io VS curriculum

Let’s go back to April of 2020. The early days of the pandemic when the world seemed to close in around us. The pandemic had left us isolated, uncertain, and craving connection. It was in this time that something beautiful was born: Virtual Coffee. I put out one, simple tweet: Is anyone interested in Virtual Coffee. And what started as one coffee turned into finding hope together in the one place we could safely gather: online. Virtual Coffee was built out of necessity but grown through compassion and shared experiences.

Thankfully I am part of an awesome online community of developers: https://virtualcoffee.io

I've been learning how to code for the past five months and let me tell you, it really is a whirlwind of emotions! After an amazing mentorship that ended too soon, I realized something: I thrive when I learn with others. That's when I found Virtual Coffee, a tech community that uplifts and celebrates wins of all kinds! Just one virtual coffee in, Chris Nowicki, a generous full stack developer in the community, already dropped a goldmine with us--learning and building in public!

I joined an online developer community called Virtual Coffee last year and saw Klesta’s post about Web Dev Path on their Slack channel. I remember I read her interview to know better about it. I was familiar with building something on my own but I didn’t have much experience to develop within a team. Web Dev Path sounded like a good place to improve skills to work in a team.

Next month at Virtual Coffee, we're doing a monthly challenge for public speaking. What are your favorite tips or resources?

VC Link

Since last September, I have had the opportunity to be an open source project maintainer. I help maintain some project repositories at Virtual Coffee, OpenSauced, and SheSharp communities. And now, I can see the view from a different perspective.

I'm part of some tech communities and love documentation. Together with the core team of the Virtual Coffee Community, I actively discuss ideas and contribute to creating and shaping the community documentation. From there, I was trusted to be the Documentation Team Lead.

Virtual Coffee

Update monthly challenge page to Hacktoberfest — Virtual Coffee

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.