Code Academy Notes: Day 1

These are my notes from Code Academy class.  Keep in mind they are notes and I care little if there are errors.

SMSassist sponsored the space in the JHC (show pic you took on iPhone).

Bought Jeff Cohen’s rails for .net devs book for a friend at my last job and now he is teaching me. Crazy. I didn’t know who Jeff was when I bought the book. Small world!

Learn as if you own the code
Blog lots about what you are doing at CA
Trust instincts and what you discover
What you go back & read will have a significant impact.

Vince Cabansag:
First thing he built was a blog. Blog is a great first app project. Student in inaugural class.

* I may miss a couple here as I didn’t know the logo’s.
Pathfinder
SPARK
Code Mountain
OCA ventures
Hydepark angels
accelerate labs
sand box industries
startup weekend (SUW is amazing.  I worked on a SUW project called Stokfridge in Toronto).
new world ventures

chicago land
built in chicago
illinois tech association
techweek
tech.li
technori

devmynd
gtrot by Code Academy Alumni Br_ttany
enovafinancial
doejo
tribeca
8th ligth
lightbank
obtiva a Groupon Company

geekfest (tuesday at noon’s at Groupon). Free food. Can’t attend because I am in design class
refresh chicago
chicago ruby
chicago heroku user group
code and coffee (Franklin & Chicago Starbucks).
code retreat
gathersus
chicago js
windycityrails

Dave Hoover‘s Apprenticeship Patterns book : Emptying your cup (Dump your learning now. Programming wise. Don’t be afraid to ask questions).
Mentors are excited.

It is on you to contact you your mentor.. Find them and get them, reach, schedule. It is as important as the class.

37 Signals suite.
Backpack (organize & collect) & campfire (chat). Use Use & Use.

Idea: Everybody blogging should put the others students on their “Blog rolls” or blog a list of other blogs. It will help drive traffic.

Mondays: 6-8pm html5&css (this week Wednesday by Shay Howe). Wednesday: 1pm Entrepreneur session.

Learn to Program (awesome book) & Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial. Jeff Cohen says it is awesome.

It’s ok to be out of your comfort zone. Jeff makes reference to the moon landing and what they went through. The Run way pic.May feel like a slow start but soon there will be takeoff.

Web Development:
-Computer Science (a little bit)
-Software eng
-Agile Methods

Computer Programming:
Input (instructions + data) > Processor > Output

Hard to explain how we are going to program, we are just going to dive in (~Jeff).

Tom Cullen> Used to be HF trader. Knew nothing. Built out a lot of website he developed. Redo exactly what we did in class but add it to your app/idea/project.
Advice: no substitution for hard work (Thomas Alva Edison Quote). Nobody has passion about your idea. Don’t worry about the NDA (I find this funny. NDA? Seriously?). Fight to pair with Ragu. Cut your illusions of getting a job right away (if that is your goal).

Mike Ebert: Zero programming. Little Html. Race Bikes in Europe. Looking at apprenticeships. Looking to be full time dev. Read 1st 2 chapters of Apprenticeship patterns immediately (free online). Get with people who are better then you (Shouldn’t be tough :) . The 4 hours with Jeff in class will be your best. He is the best at breaking things down in plain english. Throw away your code. Be goal oriented. Have your runway after Code Academy, map & search for your low to no pay job for a bit. Get together on the weekends.

Luis Vega: From Philippines. Knew about it 1 month prior and came. Was supposed to go home and looking for opportunities. He met everybody and anybody in the tech scene. He would go to Hash Rocket. Blog & share that you are constantly learning, and why it is totally worth it. Github is great but they won’t see your thought process so blog about it. Bug Neal and Mike to do a startup weekend (I did one in Toronto & it was an amazing learning experience).

Kevin (RudyonRails) I don’t know how to spell his last name. Programming bat boy. Audited classes he could get into. Worked in IT support, networks but got tired of it.
Try to tee up your mentors ASAP. Don’t put too much pressure to put on yourself. Exercise. @DHH said that when he came in and said don’t work over 40 hours & exercise.

Vince: Bit of C#, CSS, HTML. Real estate broker for 6.5 years. Left job to do Code Academy. Advice: Use your mentors.
In Class: Pair with different person everyday. Don’t let people do things for you. Learn how to build things. Share your ideas. Code into a program into a breakable toy (something that doesn’t matter).

Michael Verdi: Didn’t know what the terminal was. Completely foreign. Looking to continue practising and building. The Pair Programming King (Voted the person who was best to code with. His response: Non-threatening. The fact he is Vegan it makes sense (Non meat eaters are less aggressive supposedly according to a former teacher. Come up with an idea. Redo your daily classes from scratch and apply it into your practise app and your bigger app. John McCaffrey is the man. Funny dude.

Arvin (Pronounced Ervin or Irvin not Arvin): Partnered with someone in the Tues/Thurs class. Ditched ideas half way through and started something else. Him & Josh, paired and he learned a lot through him. Have confidence in yourself & don’t be afraid to stop your partner. There is no bad situation in pairing. Usually the person with less experience will be driving (typing).

Tom Brown (Not here): Had a vision of an app & he built it, and saw it through.

Jean (French) Not sure last name. Funny guy who will be doing the entrepreneurial seminars. 12 years of online marketing. Small Running app from Startup Weekend (You tell me when) Running registration app.

My thoughts: Damn am I ever glad to be living next door to the John Hancock Center for this class.
Some students are being paid by their employers. That would be cool!

Bernhard Kappe CEO of Pathfinder Software (Lean Startup MVP) will be speaking tomorrow at noon.

HTML Programming is a language despite what you may hear.

cd dev  (This is just me copying Jeff’s terminal typing. To the geeks out that ready to ransack me saying this is not HTML, I suggest Chilling out).
cd mwf
~/dev/mwf

If you feel lost:
Open (command) so open . (it essentially brings up the Finder in Mac).

Neal recommends Unix for the beginning mage (freely available but this guy deserves beers!!!)

mate (means open textmate if you use it).
mate hello.html (that will open text mate and create the hello.html file so you can start marking it up with html).

Classroom étiquette: Respect the instructor.

Ragu:
Was sitting where we were 12 weeks ago. He didn’t know spotlight (didn’t know spotlight). No such thing as a dumb question. He knows where the class is coming from. Really bad with names but wants to improve.

Evening:
Have my meeting (Friday) booked with my mentor at Eight Simple Bits. Emailed my design mentor Jake Downs  Started yoga at Core Power and hit the gym in the morning.  Need to be fresh to handle both these courses and the various events.  Pumped. Hitting the wrapper (Bed)!

@JaretManuel