Happy Birthday Code Academy

This weekend marks one year since we picked the name Code Academy for our startup. While we started with the idea of “Rails school” back in March, April 20-22, 2011 highlighted a critical point in our lives. For all the crazy things that have happened over the past year, I feel that the best way to capture it is to show you the actual timeline of how this all came to be. Below are the major highlights of the birth of Code Academy and how we got to this point.

April 20, 2011 - What’s the name?

We had been working on this idea for almost a month now, but we hadn’t come up with a name yet. We have spent the past year coming up with names for all these ideas we wanted to build, but here we were with an idea that really excited us and we couldn’t come up with anything! Towards the end of April, a team member had sent out some domain names, and they weren’t that good. With the likes of codingskool.com and codecloister.com, the chances weren’t looking great, but Neal saw a diamond in the rough! CodeAcademy.org was there and he immediately fired back an email with that url and we had a name.

After picking Code Academy we immediately went to twitter and snatched up the @CodeAcademy account and filed for not-for-profit status with the State of Illinois.

April 22, 2011 – Neal gets introduced to Steve Collens, SVP of the Pritzker Group

Thanks to our close friends Harper Reed and Troy Henikoff, Neal was introduced to Steve Collens and had the opportunity to present this idea called Code Academy. So Neal, who during the whole month of April had convinced what seemed to be the whole city of Chicago about our idea (with a simple iPad presentation) met with Steve Collens to pitch Code Academy.

The meeting that was slated for an hour but ended up going on for 2.5 hours. From then on Steve became one of our biggest supporters.

Do Code Academy or work for the President?

By the beginning of May, we were really getting excited about the prospects for Code Academy. People in the entrepreneurial and software development community were getting excited about the idea AND working with us to make it happen.

But then a curveball came…

Neal initially meets with Harper to talk about the next steps for Code Academy, but the meeting quickly turns into Harper trying to get Neal to become a product manager for the Obama re-election campaign. Neal initially said no, stating that he couldn’t leave the team that was building CA. Harper came back and said we will hire the whole team, which showed the seriousness of him wanting us.

So what do we do?

Option #1 (Code Academy): If we choose to build, we can pursue our vision of not only transforming a city we love, but creating a world where anybody who wants to learn programming, solve problems, and live a meaningful life can do so.

Option #2 (Obama for America): If we choose to join an organization, we have the opportunity to work with some of the best (if not the best) people in world of technology, solving problems on a stupidly large scale, all focused on helping some kinda-important dude keep his job.

May 23rd, 2011 – The Hardest “No” Ever

On Wednesday, June 1st we officially launched a landing page for Code Academy. It was a dead simple page (mainly because I coded the front-end on a bus trip to my hometown) but it was enough to get the message across of what we were trying to do.

Later that night, a few of us prematurely tweeted out the CodeAcademy.org URL and got some retweets. One of the replies we got was from this guy named Jeff Cohen…

A few weeks later, Code Academy had an instructor.

July 22-27,2011 – Won the Spark Chicago competition with Code Mountain

As we were building Code Academy during the summer, Neal and I got accepted into this new startup competition called SPARK Chicago. It was during the weekend of July 22nd, which was right when we wanted to launch the Code Academy site. So I did as much as I could to do both. After spending most of Monday-Thursday that week awake trying to get the site launched, Neal recruited six other SPARK contestants to join our team. By Friday, we had a team of eight people going into the competition. We postponed the Code Academy site launch to focus on SPARK and building out Code Mountain.

Three days later, we won Startup Weekend Chicago and made it into the SPARK finals.

Three days later, we won SPARK Chicago. And then I went to sleep.

Another bonus of winning was that we created a great partnership with Bernhard Kappe and Pathfinder Software, so we decided to stay in their beautiful office to continue building Code Academy. We can’t thank the Pathfinder team enough for their support!

August 4, 2011 – Relaunched CA site for Fall Quarter applications

One week after winning SPARK, we officially re-launched the Code Academy site to the world. Our whole summer came down to this: could we find 12 people who were crazy enough to do this program?

The Catalyst

Neal had the opportunity to meet Jason Fried back in April 2011, and kept him (as well as DHH) updated on Code Academy’s progress. After we relaunched Code Academy in August, Neal hit Jason up on twitter to help spread the word about Code Academy. Jason responded.

This simple tweet on a Friday afternoon gave us a HUGE boost in applications. We had been receiving about 2-3 apps a day at that point (which was amazing by the way) but that day alone we got 15 applications, 5 of them directly related to Jason’s tweet. Amazing.

By the end of August, we had received 88 applications from people all across the country and the world. Crazy, insane, unbelievable, whatever word to describe shock was what we were feeling. But there was no time to rest. Mainly because of the small fact that we had to still choose who was going to do it. We did all the interviews in one week, and then decided to take 35 people instead of 12 into our inaugural program.

September 2011 – So we have students, but we still haven’t built a school…

It was awesome that we had all these students, but there were some problems. We still didn’t have a space, computers, or money to buy those things! So during the month of September, Neal hustled his ass off to setup a payment system so the students could pay us upfront, find a space for the class, AND get computers. Three days before class started, we signed a sublease with Groupon for a little section of space in their HQ. The next day the iMacs came.

Monday, October 3rd, 2011 – The end of one beginning. The start of another…

From April until October, we were trying to get convince people to believe in this idea called Code Academy. We had been lucky enough to accomplish that feat, but now we had to actually do it.

We didn’t know what the next three months would be like exactly, but at least we wanted to get the first day right. A surprise visit from DHH did the trick.

DHH. First day of Code Academy. At Groupon. You can’t make this stuff up.

December 20, 2011 – Fall Quarter Demo Day

By the time December rolled around, we knew that we were able to teach beginners how to build web apps, but we didn’t know if they could present what they built and learned in front of other people. We also didn’t know who would show up to watch. We sent out RSVPs to friends, family and others within the Chicago community to come to our inaugural demo day. The response was overwhelming.

200+ people were crammed into TechNexus for over three hours to hear our students present. They did an AMAZING job! Thanks to Fred Hoch for letting us host Demo Day there.

January 9, 2012 – the start of Winter Quarter

Moved to the John Hancock Center, thanks to SMSAssist. Increased our class size from 35 to 56 students. Added a UX class as well as piloting a HTML/CSS class. And had the opportunity to enjoy this view for three months.

March 27-28 2012 – Officially moved into 1871 + Winter Quarter Demo Day

The day before the end of Winter Quarter, we moved into our new home at 1871 in the Merchandise Mart. The next day, we hosted the first event ever at 1871: Winter Quarter Demo Day. The attendance went from 200+ Fall Quarter to 550+ Winter Quarter. Once again, our students brought the house down and successfully finished another great quarter.

April 9th, 2012 – Start of Spring Quarter

One year later here we are in 1871 and going strong through Spring Quarter. While we were initially looking for only 12 people, this quarter we have over 80 students alone! Add them with all the staff, alumni, mentors, and advisors, we have over 300 people who are involved with Code Academy! We can’t thank all of them enough for their support during our first year of Code Academy.

This year has been incredible and has not gone to plan in every amazing way possible. Our alumni are getting jobs, apprenticeships, internships and starting their own companies, and more and more people are coming from all corners of the country and the world to Chicago to learn web development and design. Our focus has always been quality over quantity and delivering the best beginner-focused education in the world, and we plan to continue doing that during year two.

P.S. We also have a few more surprises coming this year, but I’ll save that for another post.

Jean Bahnik, Code Academy Web Development student from Fall Quarter 2011, discusses his path to becoming a Junior Developer.

Currently Jean is working with the development team at Trunk Club in Chicago.

Tweet @jeanbahnik

One Week Left to Apply for Code Academy HTML/CSS + UI/UX Course

Our goal has always been to offer a holistic approach to agile and web development. In looking at the complete package we knew just how important UI/UX was to the development process, and we were extremely fortunate to include Carolyn Chandler as an instructor for an entirely new class this past quarter.

Quickly we noticed another gap. Students were building such great applications, but they needed a more concrete bridge between web development and UI/UX.

Shay Howe, front-end extraordinaire, had been filling the gap for both classes by helping coach students with HTML5 and CSS3. It was amazing to see the response from students and Shay’s dedication to helping. Not to mention his skill. Just look at the HTML/CSS online tutorial he put together for our students last quarter.

This quarter we’re excited to announce Shay and Code Academy are opening the HTML/CSS class to the public. Shay will be teaching Monday nights 6 to 9pm, beginning April 16th.

In conjunction with Shay’s class, our UI/UX class taught by Carolyn will also be moving to an evening slot, Tuesdays 6-9pm.

Take one class, take the other, take both. In just 10 weeks you’ll have actual sites you’ve built using HTML/CSS, have insight into the user interaction behind it, and an opportunity to demo your applications in front of Chicago’s elite entrepreneurs on Demo Day.

In honor of our recent move to 1871, each class will be offered individually for $1871. Both classes taken together are $3000.

Apply today, deadline is April 7th.

What is it about timing that works out so magically? It was just a year ago Code Academy was a gem in the minds of Neal and Mike, and simultaneously the first ripples of the tech center were spreading through Chicago. And in just one year, here we are. In the same breath our second Code Academy class is wrapping up and 1871 is opening.

With Code Academy, it’s always been about what you build, what you learn and getting it out into the world. With that we set off to find a venue that fits not just our personality, but a venue on par with our culture, our drive and the passion we put on display.

We cannot imagine a better spot than 1871, and we’re extremely fortunate and excited to announce this upcoming Code Academy demo day will be held at 1871. Be one of the already 300+ RSVPs joining us March 28th in 1871’s grand hall.

We hope to be a shining example of the persona 1871 exemplifies and we cannot think of a better way to kick off Chicago, embolden the community, and foster entrepreneurship than by bringing our students front in center with you.

RSVP, and we’ll see you inside.

Code Academy Demo Day at 1871 222 W Merchandise Mart Plaza, 12th Floor Chicago, Illinois 60654

Wednesday, March 28 5:30pm to 9:00pm

An ongoing series for Code Academy alumni to share their stories.

Dave Anderson (@daveande) is one of Code Academy’s first alumni’s. He is our world traveler, who has now found a place to call home. We just call it Detroit.

Where are you now? Tell us about the company you’re with.

I’m in Detroit working for a five person startup called Picket Report. PicketReport.com is a relocation tool that allows users to research neighborhoods they are considering moving to. We sell a widget and our API to real-estate agents, large estate websites, banks, and we are currently developing a few new products for large mortgage companies. I work directly with the technical co-founder on helping develop/improve/update our website and our software products.

What’s your one big takeaway from Code Academy?

Code Academy gave me the confidence to approach web development as something I could actually do rather than something I was intimidated by. I don’t think I would have gotten to this important mental point of “I can do this” while learning web development alone with online tutorials. CA not only gives you the practical tools to become a software developer, it gives you the confidence to actually call yourself a software developer (and this can be key when going through job interviews :-) ).

Advice for students entering CA?

Don’t be afraid of your ignorance. I think Dave Hoover said this in his introduction letter to incoming students and it has stuck with me. Ask as many questions as it takes and pair program with the best of ‘em. You’ll certainly learn more quickly this way and the quicker you can get over your embarrassment for not knowing how to do something, the closer you’ll be to becoming a problem solving, savvy, resourceful software developer.

Advice for non-technical entrepreneurs?

Learn how to code! Even if you don’t end up building your product yourself, having a basic knowledge of software development will help you in very valuable ways. And at the very least, just by starting to learn, you’ll likely become involved with the software developer community and in a very good spot to find a talented technical co-founder.

Startup advice? What have you learned so far about funding, founding, and launching.

Join one or start one(which means you should probably learn how to code…see answer above)! It’s fun, exciting, inspiring, and challenging all at once. Working with a small group while trying to build something viable and successful is an awesome experience, regardless of the ultimate success or failure of the business. Real jobs suck. Join a startup.

In appreciation of our mentors, their time and knowledge, this is part of an ongoing series to highlight them, their stories, and their advice.

Trevor Turk (@trevorturk) is a 31 year old programmer living in Chicago and working at 37signals.

How did you get into coding?

I graduated from a Liberal Arts school with a degree in Philosophy, so I don’t have a background in Computer Science. I got my start making WordPress themes and plugins. I did a couple of bigger PHP projects, but didn’t really enjoy that and moved into consulting at a large bank. Pretty quickly I figured out that wasn’t right for me, so I saved up enough to survive for 6 months and quit. My girlfriend was finishing up law school so I went with her to Australia/New Zealand for her study abroad program, and I just sat in a library every day and taught myself Ruby on Rails.

When you were first learning to code, how did you get over your initial hurdles?

Similar to your mentorship program, I worked with other, more experienced programmers. I wrote people directly asking for pointers. I downloaded a forum that was built in Rails with 500 lines of code, thinking that I’d be able to figure out what was going on in there. That was called Beast.

I was maintaining a bunch of PHP stuff like forums and photo-sharing sites for my friends, so I went through and converted all of that to Rails. That was called El Dorado. It was a learn-by-doing exercise that took about 6 months. I came back to Chicago and started doing freelance work. Eventually I found myself working at 37signals, where I’ve been for just under a year now.

Advice for beginners learning to program?

When you’re starting out, just focus on getting things to work. Don’t worry too much about style. It’s okay to take shortcuts. My big thing I’ve been hammering on is to come up with some little project you want to do. Take as many shortcuts as you can to get it live, make it, and move on. Keep hacking on open source stuff, too. That’s a great way to get to work with a ton of people and get your name out there.

Advice for students graduating Code Academy?

Chicago has a developer crisis. I think anyone coming out of Code Academy should be able to find opportunities to work at least in an apprenticeship position. When you apply for a job, show them code. Send a link to your Github profile — that’s obviously the most important thing you have nowadays. Make sure you’re building things. Make sure to have a side project or two. Take the time to participate in open source. Take a shot at improving a gem that you use. I’ve done a lot of work just improving the documentation on things like Devise and CarrierWave. You can make a big impact on a project even if you never touch a line of code.

Also, you’ve got to take testing seriously. If someone is looking at two candidates for a job and one has an example app with no tests and the other has a well-test app, who do you think they’re going to hire? Testing is really important in the Ruby world. I don’t care if you like Cucumber or RSpec or Test::Unit or whatever — just take the time to develop an opinion about all of those tools you’re ahead of the game.

TextMate or Vim

I’m all TextMate. Vim’s too ugly.

What was it like launching Basecamp Next?

I’m very lucky to be working at 37signals. These are the best programmers in the world, and I’m sitting next to them, working with them. For me it’s a dream come true. Dave Hoover wrote a blog post a while back called Be the Worst that’s about working with and learning from the best. That really resonated with me, and it does a good job of explaining what I love about working at 37signals and programming in general. Getting paid to learn new things every day — what’s not to like about that?

Thank you so much for your time and mentorship Trevor. We’re extremely inspired by you, the work you do, and the products you’ve built with 37signals.

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. -Henry David Thoreau

What do you equate terms like soul-crushing, mindless, political with? It’s strange how often I’m hearing these words in association with traditional jobs today.

Is it odd to think these types of jobs were considered incredibly desirable, but today we can’t stand the thought of them? What’s worse is knowing how structured the world, education and people still are around these jobs. People are just waiting to find a way out, we see it and we hear it every day.

The first set of Code Academy applications prove it’s not just a fad, but is in fact a growing trend. Colleges are setting people up for jobs they hate. These are jobs that drone on mindlessly while people wait for their chance to be heard and affect some change in their company.

You notice it most when you join a new company. With a fresh pair of eyes you quickly take note of the inefficiencies, the strange processes and outdated routines happening around you. It’s odd to think how many other employees facilitate the progress of a companies bad habits. And as a new employee it feels like your duty to right these wrongs. But as much as you try, you’re proven ineffective. Why is that?

What is it about companies that become so stagnant no matter their size, they become okay with their complacency? It’s frustrating. Our generation of entrepreneurs are here to solve actual problems, yet we’re not given the chance to save these companies. We’re risk takers. We’re adept at change and we’re agile with our resources. We find a problem and instinctively jump to solutions. It’s in our nature to leverage our naivety within a new company to question everything.

To save your company and your best hires, you need to start creating value for them. Create a platform for change in which people can actually offer real solutions to problems that exist within your company. And if you can’t keep up, that’s fine Code Academy will happily provide them with a new path.

I’m more optimistic today than I was before this round of applications, if only because I’m seeing so many of us willing to pivot our lives for ideas and not cash. We’re not happy with a full-time, 9-5 job with pension and security. What makes us happy today is building things that matter. We find delight in adding true value and making a difference for our consumers. We want to make change happen, we want to see a better world, and more than anything we want to play a part in its creation.

Design is about look, feel and function. It’s not just Photoshop, Illustrator or Balsamiq. It’s about finding out why particular elements feel more natural and are more expressive towards your vision and your brand. Design is how you can encourage users to interact with your application effortlessly. Why? Because that fosters community, growth, and what’s better for your users is ultimately better for you.

It’s time we find ways to incorporate design into our way of problem solving, our ideas and our focus as entrepreneurs and developers.

Design for Entrepreneurs

“Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.” - Steve Jobs

Considering the number of wireframes and mockups I’ve come across from non-technical cofounders, it’s a wonder why design isn’t playing a larger role in startups.

You, as an entrepreneur, may be extremely passionate about your idea, but you haven’t looked close enough at the problem yet. That’s where design takes its first steps. Too quick are entrepreneurs jumping to solving problems at a funding level, that they forget to start at the user level. It’s a Catch-22. Funding won’t happen until you validate your idea with users, while for many entrepreneurs, the funding is their validation.

Code Academy UX

“Web design is the creation of digital environments that facilitate and encourage human activity; reflect or adapt to individual voices and content; and change gracefully over time while always retaining their identity.” - Jeffrey Zeldman

By design Code Academy finds people at pivotal moments in their lives looking to build something, whether it’s a career in software development, or a web app to solve the world’s problems. To do so we want our students to experience the full scope of building a web application from the ground up. This of course relies heavily on design principles and requires involving them as soon as development begins.

It’s exactly why we’ve launched our own UI/UX course this January alongside our development program. It’s just as important to validate your ideas against the research and psychology of your users. Understand what their problems are, find the best solutions, then build them.

We think design is immensely important. So important we’ve pulled in Carolyn Chandler, User Experience Director at Manifest Digital to teach us and our students how to do it right. What Carolyn has shown us is, in their simplest form, web application design breaks down to how it works, how it looks and how it feels.

It goes far beyond just the visual aesthetic of a site, but goes into the actual functionality of it, the associations it ties in with your mind, and the map it creates as you navigate across it. And these are the elements we are able to iterate across our own projects in just 11 weeks. We also open our minds as designers to help our development students explore a variety of solutions and a variety of methods when approaching a unique problem.

Design is the translation of a users actions into the functionality and practice of your product, and we invite you to learn all about it.

Apply today, Code Academy UI/UX.

In appreciation of our mentors, their time and knowledge, this is part of an ongoing series to highlight them, their stories, and their advice.

Fred Lee is CIO/CTO at Enova. Follow him @fredlee.

Enova is a web-based consumer short-term lending company located in downtown Chicago. Founded in 2004, Enova has grown at a tremendous pace since its inception. Today, Enova has over 800 team members providing trusted online financial services to millions of hardworking people in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia and Canada.

Enova Technology is a place where top talent gets to operate as an owner. With a technology stack built on open-source software — particularly Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL and Linux — developers and engineers have the opportunity to implement innovative solutions on cutting-edge technologies while driving results through customer-friendly applications and systems.

What can students do to enhance their Code Academy experience?

If I’m a potential student looking at Code Academy, and I think to myself “What is CA going to get me?”, and all I can think of is how it’s going teach me technical skills, then I would be missing the boat.

Skills can be acquired anywhere. CA differentiates itself is through its mentoring network. That’s invaluable. You might not know anybody in Chicago tech community, or the Ruby community. But, through CA, you can have a foot in the door with any of these people. That’s huge. I can understand why people are reluctant. It’s hard. It’s scary. It’s a skill. People need to get more comfortable with it.

Another way to enhance the CA experience is to build something. I have always learned by trying and building and failing. People learn better that way. The more opportunity a student has to build an actual deliverable, the better it is. With a tangible goal, you can develop other skills, such as project management, time management, and requirements gathering. All of these skills are a large part of success as a developer.

What can companies do to help CA students?

I would like to see some of the Chicago companies taking chances on a few CA folks. Just by committing to CA, the student has demonstrated a lot passion. This is huge. That is half the traditional interview process. “Does this person have passion and a desire to learn?” They are a part of CA? Yes. Done. Let’s move on.

I am interested in creating more Ruby developers. CA is a great way to do this. For companies looking to hire Ruby developers, it should be in their interests to help create more Ruby developers. Hiring Ruby developers is great. But, at some point, we need to create more great Rubyists. Code Academy is all about creating Rubyist. This is why Enova and I support CA. And, I am happy to contribute in whatever way I can.

Textmate or Vim?

Vim.

I used to use TextMate. Always knew Vim a bit.

I switched to Vim full-time in 2008. I was kind of forced to. When your application gets large and complex enough, differences in development and production platforms can actually matter. So, you end up trying to mirror the production environment as much as you can.

We run Linux in production. So, our development platform is a VM of Debian Linux.

I think Vim is the most productive editor. I’ve come to love it. If you want to get “Vim-spired”, check out Gary Berhnhart on Destroy All Software. Just watch him destroy Vim.

Fred, you’ve been one of Code Academy’s biggest supporters, and we really can’t thank you enough. We know we wouldn’t have been able to get off the ground as effortlessly and successfully as we have without you and Enova’s support. Thank you.

We’re happy to announce Spring 2012 applications are now open for students interested in web design and web development. Deadline to apply is March 10th, and we’re on pace to receive a record number applications so get yours in ASAP.

We’re extremely anxious to move into our new diggs at 1871, and are looking forward to the opportunities our upcoming classes will share in Merchandise Mart.

In case you missed it, The Chicago Tribune mentioned Code Academy and highlighted the 1871 announcement.

Apply today!