Tweet 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: Alexander Beletsky (@alexbeletsky) – ▶JavaScript testing; Julia Budnik (@Jubudni) – ▶HTML&CSS; Eldar Jafarov (@edjafarov) – ▶Node.js; Artem Trityak (@ArtyomTrityak) – ▶Advanced Backbone.js; Andrew Listochkin (@listochkin) – Ember.js; Valentin Shibanov (@olostan) – ▶Angular.js; Dima Yarmak (@dmytroyarmak) – Backbone.js; Mikhail Bortnik (@vessi) – ▶WebRTC; Jenia Koshevoi (aka Jim) – d3.js; Dima Tselinko (Dmitry Tselinko) – JS basics, JS OOP; 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”)))....

Tweet On May 5, I actively participated in a Saturday work. No, I did not dig and plant and did not even clean a street (not a woman’s business). I participated in Ya.Subbotnik in Kiev organized by the Yandex company. I liked the following talks most of all: “Modern machine of a HTML developer” on the details of creating and testing web app in Yandex, on cross-browser problems (multiple browsers, customizations, plug-ins, users’ love for night releases and other stuff and how not to shoot your leg trying to please everyone), on the use of additional tools of partner companies and of Yandex (from Yandex utilities I remember only Borschtik, which allows making one CSS-file from many; by the way, I have not eaten borscht for a long time :P), on testing in virtual environment, etc. “API of the Yandex Maps 2.0″ on the new features of Yandex maps. Also, there were many lectures on the BEM (Block-Element-Modifier) for the fans of this methodology. By the way, I found a clear explanation of the basic BEM principles in the article “BEM 101”. In the talk on GIT, the lecturer actively encouraged the audience to move from SVN to GIT, motivating it by the “painless” merge (and we, SVN users, know how a brain melts when our branches join) and lots of other amenities. Result: I was satisfied with the time spent. Friendly atmosphere, familiar faces and interesting...