Ember Bootcamp- Steve Kinney at Turing School

Real World Ember

We talk Ember on the desktop, the world debut of Turing School's Javascript curriculum, how to train hordes of highly skilled devs in a brutal 7-month program, and how famous is too famous for Real World Ember.

• Turing School
  • Starting a new program to split from the Ruby curriculum- all Javascript, mostly Ember with a bit of React and Node
  • Ember AND React in the new curriculum
  • React community discovering the need for ember-cli
• Steve Kinney
  • Steve is in the suburbs of fame bc of EmberConf speech, but we let him on here anyways
  • Okay, famous people are okay too
  • In Denver for 18 months
  • Moved from New York City to work at Turing School
  • He is co-director of academics
• The Original Ruby Curriculum
  • 7 months training, which is longer than other code schools
  • First 6 weeks focused on fundamentals, algorithms using Ruby
  • Second 6-week module teaches Sinatra and Rails
  • Third 6-week module is “Real World” Rails, dealing with collaboration, performance, API, etc.
    • A big project at the end of third module
  • Fourth 6-week module goes deep into Javascript, with a bit of EmberJS
    • a lot of stuff packed in there, like websockets
    • Want them to learn the low-level stuff so they can know what to do when things go “off the rails"
• Fancy New Javascript Curriculum
  • WORLD DEBUT
  • 1st module: CSS and Html + Javascript fundamentals
    • Responsive design- building your own simple grid system from scratch
    • Fundamentals, like in original curriculum, but with Javascript
  • 2nd module: A lot like the current 4th module
    • Game Time: they build a game with Javascript
      • Every cohort builds a more ambitious game than the one before- SkiFree, Rock Band, etc.
        • Forces you to think in objects, stop storing stuff in the DOM
    • Node + Express for APIs
    • Events, localstorage, what is Event Loop, flexbox, scss, functional programming with lodash, etc.
  • 3rd module: Professional client-side applications
    • build tools, process automation
    • JSONAPI
    • Javascript Frameworks: teaching the “big two”, Ember and React
      • Angular devs: send all hate mail to Jeffrey :)
    • In a React app, you’re slowly building a weird poorly-put-together Ember
    • In Ember, all the edge cases are sanded down by the community
    • Steven would reach for React for simple apps, Ember for complex apps
    • Jeffrey does Ember for everything
    • Tossing up a quick Ember app is way easier now than it used to be.
    • It’s just a static file- you could bring back manual FTP! This is possible.
  • 4th module: Javascript outside the browser
    • Electron- desktop applications with Ember, they can access file system and OS features
    • Huge possibilities, multiple windows, interprocess communication, node + chromium, etc. (but no URLS)
    • Like websockets, you didn’t know you needed it until you think about it.
    • Electron + web sockets + web workers + localstorage: a total offline experience with EmberJS.
    • Getting started is Really Easy (this assertion not fact-checked by Jeffrey, but I trust Steve)
    • Great community, including an ember-cli addon.
    • Cordova: Native-ish Android and iOS apps
    • You can stick stuff on the app store, use native APIs
    • React Native
  • Graduates will know more than 90% of the market about doing Javascript outside the browser… at graduation!
• All their curriculum is free and open source!
• Students' responses to Ember
  • People with Rails experience are mostly confused because the same words mean different things
  • Ember: A swarm of Rails apps
  • It will probably be easier once they aren’t teaching Rails first
  • Often apologizing for the Javascript itself
• Teaching has leveled him up as a developer
  • Having to explain something means you have to really understand it
  • Steve: 3x the length of lesson to prepare it
  • Jeffrey: Very jealous of only 3x. On a very very very good day, 3x time just for recording.
  • Confessions about Jeffrey’s first screencast
• first jQuery experience hooked him
• some people love the front-end web experience, others just don't
• Who should apply to Turing School?
  • People who want to work really really hard
  • “I made a promise to make you hireable. I’m going to keep it."
• Hiring teachers and developers
  • 2-3 more instructors to start off new program
  • Email [e-mail]
  • Teachers will also work really really hard
  • Teaching during the day, lesson planning at night- like K-12 education
  • Everyone in the org teaches, including Jeff Casimir (founder)
• DinosaurJS
  • One day single-track conference
  • Creative things in Javascript
  • CFP open now
• Sponsored by EmberScreencasts.com