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Category Archives: From a Student

Posted by Steph Laba
On Thursday January 17th at 11:06 AM

Jan 17

From a Student Learn to code Web Development

Processing: HackerYou Interns Build a Site from the Ground Up, Part 1

This post was written by Emily Gutierrez and Steph Laba, former HackerYou Web Development students and current HackerYou web design and development interns.

This is the first post in a three-part series where we will document our progress as we design and develop a responsive web page. We wanted to chronicle our work from the point of conception to its launch. The page itself will be one part infographic, one part brochure and it will be entirely responsive (a dynamic web page that resizes depending upon the size of the screen it is being viewed on).

Each week, we’ll post shots, thoughts and reflections about our progress. We hope this will help inspire and enlighten others curious about web technology, especially potential HackerYou students (because the HackerYou Web Development course with Wes Bos will be back in March).

This week we focused on the design and development of the first portion of the site, the desktop screen. We collected screenshots and documented some of the challenges and successes we’ve had while creating this project so far.

The Concept & The Design:

The first step in this project was to come up with the idea. In addition to showing potential students what HackerYou is like, we also felt it was important to show what we learned from our Intro to the Web Development course, giving potential students an idea of what they will learn once they’ve completed the course. After some discussion we landed on our concept. We would use a candid class photo from our Web Development class with interactive speech bubbles incorporating testimonials from HackerYou alumni. This concept would effectively capture the lively, hands-on vibe of HackerYou and would also be an interesting way to demonstrate the skills we learned. Once we had our concept pinned down we turned to Photoshop to create a fully realized mockup. Here are some of the progress shots:

We started with some quick sketches of the layout as well as the assets we would be using.

We used a grid and ruler lines to keep everything aligned, giving the plus signs a scattered but neat look.

Development:

Once we completed our work with Photoshop we got started with the development side of things. We knew that the speech bubble would be the most difficult part, so we decided to tackle it first. Through our existing knowledge of CSS3 and with help from our pal, Google, we were able to effectively execute our intended concept.

Progress clip showing our use of CSS3 animation work, so far.

Be sure to check out the blog next week for the second part our series, where we will be covering our design/development process for tablet-sized screens.

- Steph and Emily

Posted by heather
On Tuesday December 11th at 03:49 PM

Dec 11

From a Student Web Development Why?

Guest Post: My Time at HackerYou

This is a guest post from HackerYou Web Dev (Fall 2012) student Tyn Soltys. According to her (new) website, you may know her as “that creative person who finally decided to do something about it.” You can find out more about her here: http://tynsoltys.com/

You know when you get a really good feeling about something, and you can’t stop thinking about it day and night, and finally work up the courage to just go for it? No, it was not love, but how I felt when I learned about HackerYou, and enrolling turned out to be one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.

HackerYou has not only turned me into an amateur (hoping to become professional) Swiss Army knife of a front-end web developer, but has been hands-down one of the greatest educational experiences of my life – and as a relatively nerdy person who never really liked going to class, this is saying a lot. This is what “class” should be. Before I knew it I was looking forward to Monday and Thursday nights more than weekends. I’d like to say I’m joking, but not really.

When I met with Heather before the course begun, she explained to me how this was not about marks – it was about taking what YOU want out of the course. Well. I have not only gotten an incredible education in all things front-end development, but the amount and quality of support from amazing mentors and instructors is what really sets HackerYou apart. No question goes unanswered, no student ever feels left behind. Students readily help each other out too, and not just with course work – the class is filled with an incredible roster of students, many of them entrepreneurs, designers, and leaders in their field, but all super creative and interesting people. Everyone is approachable and openly shares their expertise with others, and it really feels like more like a team meeting than a class (I’m not being cliché, it’s actually how it is – and if you read Heather’s idea of what she envisioned HackerYou to be, she hit it right on the head, so that deserves an incredible congratulations, too. Amazing job, and thank you.)

Led by the illustrious and #bada55 Wes Bos, two nights a week at the Centre for Social Innovation in the Annex (another incredible place, definitely check it out) class typically begins with a review of last class’ content, followed by the introduction of shiny new content. We work through several examples together, and a few on our own, and are then given a bit of time to think and absorb all the crazy stuff we just learned and ask a ton of questions. Wes’ lessons are well thought out and full of wise wisdom, and there’s always some sort of “loot bag” of cool links or resources for us to use, many of which have become invaluable tools and favourite new morning coffee reading. Classes are very rarely overwhelming, but when they are, it’s just the nature of the content to blame (hello relative/absolute positioning). In that case, we aren’t allowed to leave until we understand everything (just kidding), but seriously, thanks to the mentors’ genuine interest in helping us learn, by the end of the night all of us were making some pretty cool collages and overlapping craziness from primary coloured squares. I’m now working on some really cool CSS3 “toys” that definitely, definitely take advantage of that lesson.

I am actually quite sad that it’s over. I was never one for going to class much (ask my friends at university) but that’s because I rarely ever felt class taught me more than what I could just learn on my own. I know for certain that I would be nowhere near the level I am at now if it wasn’t for the intelligence of the curriculum, the incredible support of the instructors and mentors, and my truly inspiring classmates of the inaugural HackerYou class. Not only is class actually fun, but I can see its benefits clearly, especially when I open up the sites that I’ve made and really wish my Mom could hang them on the fridge. Web development is truly one field where watching online tutorials (though absolutely essential) won’t really tie everything together so nicely, or learn things in the right order, and be told that “well actually, that’s one of those things that they’re (the w3) are working on, so you’re not going to find the answer, instead, try this…” – do you know how big of a time and sanity saver that is?

So – if you’re thinking about signing up for a development course or for HackerYou specifically, and you genuinely want to learn, know that it is perhaps one of the most worthwhile investments you can make. It’s a fun, efficient, and top-quality educational experience. Whether you just want to understand web development for your job or personal interest, want to create that blog or other pet project you’ve been dreaming about, or want to start a career in web-development (like apparently I do now!), I couldn’t recommend anything so strongly as I do HackerYou.

(No, they did not pay me to write this. Seriously, this is from the heart.)

With tremendous thanks to Wes, Heather and the HackerYou team,

Tyn

Posted by heather
On Thursday November 08th at 12:15 PM

Nov 08

From a Student Learn to code Web Development Why?

My Journey to (and through) HackerYou

This post was contributed by Michelle Pomeroy – she’s one of the 30 students currently enrolled in our Web Development course! Learn more about her below!

It never fails to amaze me how one event in life leads to another and before you know it, you’re coding websites. That’s the short version of my journey to HackerYou. The longer version is that a Mozilla Hack Jam (designed for teachers) led to discussions about Ladies Learning Code, which lead to participating in workshops through Ladies Learning Code, at which point I discovered HackeYou’s Introduction to Web Development course. I never thought life would lead me here, as it completely different from anything that I have done previously. However, I cannot help but think I’m exactly where I’m meant to be.

After working full-time as a teacher for a few years, I admit, it was a debate as to whether I should take a course in the evenings, particularly when I knew that I would be learning a plethora of new information that is not technically “in my field”. I wondered if I could handle the extra hours required of me while working full-time, as well as keep up with all the new concepts. My previous programs in university consisted of courses related to the social sciences and child development, with the expectation that you keep up on academic journals, write papers and study for multiple-choice exams. I feel like these programs were something I did because I “fell into” them and they were a natural progression – not because I was necessarily passionate about them. HackerYou opened up new doors for me – doors that were not necessarily closed before, but previously non-existent in my life.

There are times now that I’m up until 2 am working on an HTML/CSS project (I find myself unable to sleep until I’ve worked out the kinks, although I’ve heard it can be better to “sleep on it”) and yes, sometimes I have the urge to throw my computer against the wall in frustration; however, after being in school for twenty plus years, I can honestly say that I’ve finally found something I’m truly passionate about. I finally found something that I can see myself doing for years to come, whether it’s in the form of a full-time job or as a hobby. Thank you, HackerYou, for giving me a second chance at my career and providing me with the skills needed to pursue my passion. Can it be done if you work full-time? Of course. Can it be done if you’ve had no previous experience? Absolutely.

[From Heather: Our next 3-month Web Development course begins on March 19th, 2013. Click here to learn more about the two parts: Intro to Web Development and Intro to Responsive Design. Ready to apply? Click here.]

ABOUT MICHELLE POMEROY

Michelle Pomeroy is currently a full-time Special Education teacher at a unique independent school in Mississauga, Ontario. In her spare time, she enjoys reading for hours on end, watching horror/science-fiction movies, listening to music, attending concerts, practicing Taekwondo and partaking in workshops on a variety of topics, including science-fiction writing, film direction and improvisation. She hopes to continue to take web development classes to one day become a web developer using the super-awesome skills she has obtained through Hacker You.

Posted by heather
On Thursday November 01st at 09:18 PM

Nov 01

From a Student Learn to code Ruby on Rails Why?

Why I’m Signed Up for HackerYou’s 72-Hour Rails Course

This post was contributed by Alan Judson – he’s one of the 30 students that will be joining us at our Intro to Rails course in January! Learn more about that course here, and learn more about Alan below!

I have a secret. At night, when the kids are in bed and my wife is out at the coffee shop doing some freelance work, I am on the internet learning to code. I love learning new things and, especially, I love becoming very good at them. I don’t always succeed, though. I never did manage to teach myself Latin (or French, or Spanish, or Korean, for that matter). Things I’ve taught myself (with great success) include several musical instruments and Microsoft Excel. The things I’ve had success with have something in common: instant feedback. Excel provides a dizzying array of error messages, and musical instruments, well, I’m sure you’ve heard a beginner guitar player (or, worst-case scenario, violinist). Without feedback, self-study is a struggle.

Self-studying in the programming world is easier than ever: there’s Codeschool, Codecademy, Rubymonk, and TryRuby, just to name a few. To get feedback on why something isn’t working, though, you often have to search through the haystack of Google and Stackoverflow. It’s awesome that they exist, and I’ve gotten pretty far that way. But, you know what’s better than that? Putting up your hand and having a passionate teacher explain it. A good teacher can smooth out the learning curve and even help you dodge the hours of set up required before you can even start coding.

I heard about HackerYou through a blog that listed programming crash courses, and was excited to see that there was one offered in Toronto! It was too late to register for HackerYou’s first three-month course, so I sulked a bit, but then discovered a three-hour “Intro to Ruby on Rails” workshop that they were running (just like this one). I’ll tell you why it suited me perfectly.

Everyone at HackerYou wants you to succeed. The instructors are full-time, working-in-the-business professionals that use this stuff every day. With a student-to-instructor ratio of 10:1, the workshop was super helpful. The instructors answered three months’ worth of my internet forum questions in three hours (and minus the snark). Just think how excited I was when HackerYou announced a three-month, 72-hour Ruby on Rails course that will be running from Jan 21 – April 18^th2012 (Mondays and Thursdays, 6:30 – 9:30 pm). Hint: I was elated.

I’ll end with a comparative study on my experiences with applying to university vs. HackerYou. I thought university was going to be Dead Poets Society. It wasn’t. It was closer to the Pink Floyd “The Wall” end of the spectrum (but not as catchy).

Application to University:

Essay
Boatloads of paperwork
Mean administrators holding up the process over a lower case “j” left undotted.
Hundreds of dollars to apply!

Application to HackerYou

Two-minute online application (free)
Thirty-minute, congenial coffee meeting with Heather to see if it’s going to be a good fit for both parties, which covered the following sub-topics:
1. A comprehensive overview of what the course experience will be like
2. A demo of the apps you will build during the course (Hacklendar & Hackboard) – along with assurances that the instructors will help you to customize them to fit your vision
3. Loads of examples of HackerYou’s connections to Toronto’s tech world
4. A surprise bonus: students enrolled in HackerYou’s three-month courses receive free access to all of HackerYou workshops for the duration of the course – you could learn something new almost every day of the week, if you wanted!

If you’re stuck in a study loop and have a day job, apply to join this upcoming course. I’ll see you at the Dead Poets Society. Robin Williams not included.

ABOUT ALAN JUDSON

Alan Judson, of Hamilton, ON, has a life of a thousand simple pleasures. A daytime data analyst, he fills his summer nights as a bluegrass musician playing in small pubs and every pig roast in the area (bluegrass and bacon, anyone?). He has an insatiable urge to learn, and a special obsession for looking up words in the dictionary. As a habitual autodidact (looked up this word today), he can’t wait to throw himself (further) into web programming. He’s in his glory, though, goofing around with his devastatingly gorgeous kids and spending time with his best friend, his high school sweetheart – awwwwww!

Posted by laura
On Tuesday October 16th at 01:18 AM

Oct 16

From a Student Workshops

Thinking of taking a HackerYou workshop? Jump right in. You won’t regret it.

This post was written by Anna Starasts. Learn more about her below!

As a fan of Ladies Learning Code, I was really curious to try a workshop with HackerYou. My work as a Community Manager in the Toronto tech space places me at the intersection of technology, social media, marketing and branding. I’m always on the hunt for ways to stay current on all of these areas. After taking my first HackerYou workshop, Introduction to Social Network Analysis using Excel, I can now say that I’m also a big fan of HackerYou because they gave me exactly what I was looking for: a chance to learn something new about the tech and digital space in a bite-sized, practical and engaging way.

My workshop was led by Ashley Beattie, who guided us through 3.5 hours of serious social media data digging (with patience and humour to boot). Co-founder of social network consultancy Social Insight Agency, Ashley also has spent many years working for the Navy doing Social Network and Organizational Analysis. And I don’t mean that he manages their Twitter account; he helps the Navy improve their operations by studying the network of people involved in getting a job done within the organization, then figuring out how these tasks could be performed more efficiently.

Since the workshop was a room full of young professionals, Ashley focused on how we could analyse social networks with business and branding goals in mind. For example, by running certain types of analysis on your company’s Twitter network we could discover influential micro-communities in your industry that we didn’t know existed, or pinpoint who might make a great early ambassador for a new product we’re working on. To perform social network analysis on the spot, we tapped into the public data available from the APIs of Facebook and Twitter, then used open-source applications (NodeXL and Gephi) to analyze this information and turn it into brilliant visual models. I had never run an analysis like this before, so I found it to be a fresh and interesting way of looking at an online community.

When we wrapped up, I felt like I had met some interesting new people, learned a few new tricks about social media and grown about a million new brain cells (whatever was happening up there, I definitely had a few “ah-ha” moments). If this sounds up you alley, check out Ashley’s next HackerYou workshop, Problem Solving with Excel.

Living in Toronto, we’re lucky to have access to so many rich resources to enhance our tech literacy. There’s no doubt that with HackerYou workshops, the founders of Ladies Learning Code have done it again: adding something fun, interesting and valuable to our local tech community.

Anna Starasts is the Community & Marketing Manager at gdR (Grossman Dorland Recruiting) a Toronto-based recruiting agency that specializes in tech and digital media. You can find gdR (@gdRtalent) and Anna (@monsavoirfaire) on Twitter.

Posted by heather
On Thursday July 12th at 11:37 AM

Jul 12

From a Student Learn to code Startups Wantrepreneurship

Confessions of a Wannabe Entrepreneur

This post was originally published on July 10th on Jordan Saxe’s blog. Jordan will be joining the first cohort of HackerYou students this fall – we’re so excited to have him! You can follow him on Twitter at @jordansaxe.

Most of you know and have seen various tweets of my wide-ranging pursuits of trying to develop a website/application for the last year. Everyone has ideas and everyone has designs that they think are good and could be the next thing sold for a kajillion dollars. I think the thing that separates people out are the ones who pursue the idea, and the ones who sit back and let that idea sit and do nothing while someone else does it.

I don’t speak for everyone and can only relate to my experience, but I have had some difficulties in pursuing those ideas. I’ve invested in books to re-learn HTML and CSS, and deep dive into MAMP, and ultimately start out really invigorated. But things come up, and the interest is lost. I return to sitting back and wondering how awesome my idea could potentially be if I could only find that one missing person who believes in my idea enough to help. I have also invested in Team Treehouse and TutsPlus to learn. I honestly thought that maybe this is a better avenue for me to work in. I can watch the videos online, take the chapter quizzes and apply my knowledge. Again, the initial passion is there, but things come up and the interest is gone.

So my next pursuit is something more. Something bigger (and something I think will be really big in the future). I signed up for HackerYou, a startup run by a couple passionate ladies from Toronto who created the successful Ladies Learning Code workshops. I feel like I have scratched the itch of the Wannabe Entrepreneur. I plopped down the cash and time commitment (3 hours, 2 days a week for 3-4 months), and I can say that I have never been more excited to get my hands dirty and create. The tools included are like something I have never seen (and you can read more up on that here) and should provide a very interesting way to challenge typical learning experiences you get in high school, college and university.

I feel like this could be a very interesting experiment, not only for HackerYou, but also for me. I’m planning to blog about the experience week by week and update everyone on my progress. Why would I subject myself to some potentially stupid and hilarious public gaffes of a semi-new developer? For those reasons…its stupid and hilarious and I know I wont make those mistakes again. As well, it would be a fairly interesting way to showcase a side-project I have been meaning to create since I started trying to develop it.

Should be a wild ride.

–

Want to follow Jordan’s lead and start learning to code for realz in 2012? Join us for an Intro to Web Development this fall, and learn how to build websites from scratch. Click here to learn more or to apply.