Learn Web Development for Free at App Academy
The App Academy Programming School has launched a free interactive online version of its 12-week curriculum . It’s not a bad deal, as in-person Academy classes in San Francisco and New York can cost as much as a college semester. The online version requires less direct human interaction, but includes online mentors and access to the Slack community chat.
At first glance, the App Academy Open looks like the popular free Codecademy programming course . An introductory course teaches the basic concepts of coding in a split-screen instruction interface and sandbox coding environment. Later lessons are structured as freeform assignments with text instructions as the student works in their own development environment.
The main difference from Codecademy is the curriculum. App Academy founder Kush Patel told Lifehacker that while Codecademy is a good resource for all kinds of programming, the App Academy Open is focused on “teaching people web development skills so they can get jobs in software development.” (In full-time school, tuition fees are tied to the student’s salary after graduation.)
After an introduction to programming, the Alpha Course teaches concepts such as arrays and debugging. The rest of the curriculum focuses on the “full stack”: courses in Ruby, SQL, Rails, Javascript, and React. Each course takes one to two weeks full time.
The curriculum also covers a wide range of social issues in technology: external issues, such as algorithms that reinforce human bias and discrimination, and issues of the technical community, such as the representation and exploitation of racial minorities, women and LGBTQ people in the workplace. Rather than separating these lessons into a separate module that students can ignore, App Academy integrates them across all programming courses, presenting them as the important career lessons that they are.
If you can devote twelve weeks of challenging work without the pressure of learning and face-to-face training, you will receive thousands of dollars worth of hands-on coding training for free, specially designed to prepare you for the development work. …
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