Ember Bootcamp- Steve Kinney at Turing School

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 steve@turing.io
  • 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