The original article can be found at dou.ua.

This spring, JS courses organized by CodeAngels/Kottans guys were held in Kiev (http://dou.ua/forums/topic/8181, http://kottans.org). Courses were held  2 times a week in the evenings over approximately a 5 month period: Cogniance + workshops on Saturdays + homework to consolidate the material. The program was very intense:

• Programming with JavaScript;
• HTML and CSS basics;
• High level languages (CoffeeScript, TypeScript, Dart);
• Popular frameworks (Backbone.js, Angular.js, Ember.js);
• Testing applications (Jasmine, Mocha);
• Server-side JavaScript (Node.js, Meteor.js);
• Speeding page loading time using various technics.

Basically, the classes were led by John, but we also had time to listen and to write code with many other wonderful people, among which there were:

1. Alexander Beletsky (@alexbeletsky) – ▶JavaScript testing;
2. Julia Budnik (@Jubudni) – ▶HTML&CSS;
3. Eldar Jafarov (@edjafarov) – ▶Node.js;
4. Artem Trityak (@ArtyomTrityak) – ▶Advanced Backbone.js;
5. Andrew Listochkin (@listochkin) – Ember.js;
6. Valentin Shibanov (@olostan) – ▶Angular.js;
7. Dima Yarmak (@dmytroyarmak) – Backbone.js;
8. Mikhail Bortnik (@vessi) – ▶WebRTC;
9. Jenia Koshevoi (aka Jim) – d3.js;
10. Dima Tselinko (Dmitry Tselinko) – JS basics, JS OOP;
11. Dima Filipenko (@dmfilipenko) – JS, HTML, CSS.

Also, talks by Kira Puchnina (@kira__kit), Anton Nemtsev (@SilentImp) and Alexander Boychenko (@banzalik) were scheduled; perhaps next time everything will go as planned 🙂

Artem shared some additional materials in his blog, the slides can be found here, and here there are a lot of different links. In general, the target audience of the courses is already developed IT specialists (back-end and front-end developers, QA, and even a PM-girl), and the test task initially required a certain amount of knowledge and skills.

I’d like to point out that the emphasis was on best practices, knowledge sharing, “how not to shoot your leg using one or the other framework” and so on, and not on the summarizing lectures, which are unlikely to be interesting for people for a long time. Apart from other things, WebGL, package managers, CI configuration, testing, application deployment, and many other practical things were studied.

And finally, some feedback:

“First of all, I understood JavaScript, its strengths. Also courses gave me the basic knowledge of various frameworks, despite the fact that I don’t remember details, I already have a basis which I can use as a start and continue “the path of the Jedi”))). My impressions on how you need to work are very strong. For example, during the workshops, I was watchin how coaches worked, what they paid attention to — it’s all affected me a lot”.

Lubomir, front-end development, R&R Music Ltd.

 

“Probably, I came across the courses somewhere at DOU, I don’t remember…  And so it happened that at that time I was playing around with d3.js. I decided to make a test on d3.js, then had an interview at Bibliotech (it was fun), then had my first lessons. Actually these courses are exactly what you need to understand new technologies quickly and effectively, to expand your horizons and just to chat. As a result of course, I received a very helpful knowledge of js and the most popular frameworks, and this is not a trivial “Hello world!” but methods and approaches that have been tested in real projects. And, last but not least, a lot of communication with interesting people”.

Sergey, Freelance Wonderware ArchestrA developer/consultant

 

“I liked the course very much. Even before it, I was not afraid of JS, but now my knowledge was put straight and I’m ready to write modular, mission critical systems without hiding from JS. Moreover, people are nice and open. They can not only answer a sophisticated technical question but also go for a beer :)”.

Igor, Software Engineer, Site Reliability Engineering, Google

 

“These were courses that I have never seen analogues of; no company has conducted a JavaScript training at the time. Education was built correctly, covering both basic stuff and modern practice. I especially appreciated workshops, which were held on Saturdays. I acquired a lot of useful knowledge and acquaintances. 🙂 Thank you very much”.

Roman, Senior Front-end Developer, Ciklum

Well, thanks for all for the interesting experience and see you soon 🙂