Bloc

If you want to fail at something, make it a big, hairy, audacious goal. “I will get in shape,” “I will be a better friend,” and “I will learn to code” are all great examples. Goals in general are misguided and formless ideas. Achieving something is the result of many small steps performed consistently, not the result of an intangible idea.

At Bloc, we've helped thousands of students learn to code and change their careers. We’ve also seen students fail. One reason some students fail is because they focus on the goal of learning to code, rather than the steps for learning to code. If you want to become a developer in 2017, don’t make learning to code your goal. Instead, complete small tasks related to coding, and do them consistently. Each of the tasks below requires only 10 minutes. To kickstart your new coding habit, do at least one per day. We’ve outlined six tasks, so even if you do all of them in a day, you’ll only spend an hour.

Sign up for GitHub and Watch a Repository

GitHub is where developers collaborate on software. You won’t be able to contribute code right away, but there’s no reason not to sign up for a free GitHub account. A GitHub account allows you to follow developers and source code (known as repositories, or “repos” in GitHub). Pick a few repositories and follow them by selecting the “Watching” notification, shown below:

You’ll receive emails when developers update the repositories you watch. Read the updates and focus on the narrative – you won’t understand the code yet – just read the comments and get a sense of what the developer is trying to do with the code they submitted. Here are a few active repos you can watch, though the actual repo isn’t as important as becoming comfortable in GitHub, and learning how developers collaborate.

• Twitter Bootstrap - The most popular HTML, CSS, and JavaScript framework for developing responsive, mobile first projects on the web


• jQuery - A JavaScript library that makes it easy to program dynamic web site interfaces


• HTML5 Boilerplate - A professional front-end template for building fast, robust, and adaptable web apps or sites


• Ruby on Rails - A popular web application development framework

Codify Your Twitter Feed

Most prominent software engineers, developers, and designers use Twitter more than any other social media platform. Following them is a great way to learn about the software industry: trends, lingo, open source updates, hiring trends, etc. Consider following these prominent developers and companies:

• Chad Fowler - Author, CTO, speaker, and early Ruby evangelist


• Dave Thomas - Programmer turned publisher of one of the most well-respected technical book brands, The Pragmatic Bookshelf


• David Heinemeier Hansson (DHH) - Creator of Rails, CTO at Basecamp


• GitHub - The world’s most popular code collaboration tool


• John Resig - Creator of jQuery


• Kent Beck - Author of Test-Driven Development, programmer at Facebook


• thoughtbot -Well-respected development and design consulting firm, and prolific open source contributors


• Yehuda Katz - Prolific open source developer, Rails contributor and Ember creator

This is a small list, but once you follow them you’ll receive recommendations for people like them. Spend 10 minutes per day reading their tweets, and you’ll start to learn about the software industry and how developers think and speak. The purpose is not to mimic them, it’s to understand them.

Ask a Question

It's incredible how much one can learn when they simply ask the right person the right question. No matter if you’re a total beginner or an expert, you will always have questions when learning. To receive a good answer, you must ask a good question; yes, bad questions exist. A question is bad if it’s not asked thoughtfully. A thoughtful question provides context, is articulate, and has a defined scope. Here’s an example of a bad question:

I have a Ruby array of two fruits, and I can’t seem to access an element successfully. What does “nil” mean?

That’s a bad question because it’s impossible to answer without more information; it lacks context. How are you trying to access the element? Which element are you trying to access? Are you getting an error? If so, what’s the error? Does nil refer to the problem you’re having or something else? Ask a bad question like this, and you’ll get a bad answer.

A good question looks like this:

I just started to learn Ruby. I have an array consisting of two fruits: fruits_array = [“apple”, “banana”]. I’m trying to access “banana” by referencing fruits_array[2] but keep receiving “nil” in my irb. Why won’t it return “banana”?

This is a good question because it’s written well and is grammatically correct. It also provides adequate context: “I just started to learn Ruby,” “I’m trying to access by…,” “I keep receiving nil…,” etc. This question provides all the facts someone would need to answer it. It’s an easy question to answer for an experienced developer, which makes it likely that someone will answer it and answer it well.

There are many great places to ask questions. Quora is built for asking questions in general and Stack Overflow is built for asking technical questions. We’ve written “Getting Help on Stack Overflow” at Bloc, which provides details on using Stack Overflow. Once you have a GitHub account and have codified your Twitter feed, you can ask questions on those sites as well.

Write a Blog Post

Writing is one of the best ways to improve your coding skills, because it forces you to clearly articulate your intent. Coding forces you to articulate your intent as well, only to a computer instead of a person. You write for people, you code for computers, but you use the same thought process for both.

Write 100 words (less than half a page!) about anything you’d like. The only constraint is that you must try to clearly articulate your thoughts. Medium is a great platform for writing, and integrates with your Twitter account. As a separate task, read Writing to Learn by William Zinsser. It will open your eyes to the power of writing.

Write Code

At some point, of course, you’ll actually need to write code. There are many places to write code – none better than a simple code editor on your laptop – though as a beginner you may want an easier place to start. Sign up for a free account with Codecademy and Codewars.

Codecademy has tutorialized, in-browser courses that teach you the basics of programming syntax, while Codewars will challenge you to solve puzzles (called “katas”) with different programming languages. Both are great places to practice writing code.

Read Code

Reading code is an underappreciated practice. It may not be as exciting as writing code, but it is equally, if not more important. GitHub and Codewars are great places to read code. You don’t need to understand all the code in a GitHub repo or Codewars kata; start small and pick a class, method, or single line of code. Use the Rubber Duck technique to explain the code to yourself. By reading code you’ll expose yourself to new patterns, syntax, logic, and approaches that you would not otherwise know. Tutorials can only teach you so much, reading code will take you much further.

10 Minutes a Day and Free!

All of these small tasks are free – they don’t require subscriptions or memberships. You won’t learn to code by doing these tasks consistently, you will code. Please, don’t make a grand resolution – instead, commit yourself to small tasks and you’ll succeed. After you’ve created habits out of these small tasks, you may find yourself wanting to take your coding journey to the next level and change careers.

P.S. If you’re already there, check out Bloc’s part-time online structured programs for becoming a developer or designer.

By the year 2020, there will be more development jobs available than skilled college graduates to fill them. People searching for more efficient means of tackling the skills gap (say, through coding bootcamps), already know this. They’re smart, willing, and able. But with so many bootcamps available, many people struggle to find the right one for them.

Look for a data-driven bootcamp

At Bloc, we’ve seen that students who are successful in the program and later on in their jobs are most adept at making decisions based on data or information. By collecting data from student experiences as they go through the program, bootcamps are able to make frequent and reliable changes to their programs. Instead of guessing which factors deliver the best outcomes, bootcamps use data to make informed decisions for students.

An example of how important this can be is the data Bloc collects on what we call “mentor ratings”. Generally, we find our mentors are rated by their students as highly qualified, strong communicators, and empathetic. By asking more nuanced questions we’re able to draw correlations about best practices for mentors. For example, how they should conduct their mentor meetings, how they set expectations for students, how much hand-holding they should provide students. As we monitor those ratings over time, we’ve been able to establish more consistent high quality mentorship to every Bloc student.

Know what to ask

As future developers, starting to build this data-driven mindset now is good practice. The great news is it’s easy to start applying this skill to your bootcamp research. The best way to collect information on whether your prospective bootcamp is using data in the right way is to ask questions. Many bootcamps offer info sessions or even the ability to speak with a Student Advisor before you enroll. This opportunity will be invaluable in more ways than one.

Here are some questions you may want to ask:

• Do you collect satisfaction ratings from your students?
• Do you monitor student engagement levels and consistently check how well they are keeping pace?
• Do you collect ratings from mentors and students on curriculum checkpoints?
• Do you collect best practices about the job search?
• How do you learn what students need to do to find success?
• Do you have your curriculum industry-vetted? If not, how do you know if hiring managers will be eager to hire graduates from your program?

Alleviating risk

As the first online coding bootcamp, Bloc has had five years of student experiences to build upon. We’ve collected millions of data points across thousands of students to improve our programs for our students’ proficiency and success. One of the strongest data points is the risk students feel associated with changing careers.

Many bootcamp students have already invested a significant amount of time and money into a prior education, so being able to effectively choose which school will give them the best outcome is not something they want or can afford to do again. It’s important to be able to find a bootcamp that applies the same data-driven practice to its program structure that you apply to your search. You’re not leaving it up to chance, why would you choose a school that does

Schedule a call with a Bloc Student Advisor today to get the answers to the questions you have.

Over the last four years, we’ve seen 248 Bloc students go on to work professionally as software developers and designers. Along the way, we’ve learned what it takes to get students into the new career they seek, and we want to share the factors that contribute to the success of a Bloc student.

1. Persistence is required. Students who are unable or unwilling to sustain their effort on the often bumpy path to job readiness will not succeed. You have to fight the demons: bad time management, “maybe I can’t do this” second-guessing, a discouragingly sticky coding problem that makes you never want to open your laptop again, impostor syndrome, etc. The list of obstacles is long and successful students will rise to the challenge repeatedly. A student with a defeated attitude will not succeed in any program, period.

2. There is absolutely no substitute for a skilled engineer or designer to mentor you. The mentor-apprentice model is employed today in almost every software development team, whereby a senior developer or designer takes a junior person under their wing to show them the ropes, pattern their thinking and behavior appropriately, and guide them up the skills curve. In our experience, you cannot replace a mentor with a message board, and you cannot substitute a newly minted developer for a seasoned mentor with deep expertise derived from years of experience. Mentors can push you to your limits and help you navigate the struggles of programming. It takes an experienced mentor to adapt the learning journey to fit your needs. And your mentor is yours for life. Countless Bloc students report forming a strong bond with their mentors, and they stay in touch long after they’ve graduated. The rapport students build with their mentors is priceless.

3. An up-to-date, project-based curriculum goes a long way. Before Bloc offered career-focused programs with recruiting prep and career support for job-seeking students, we found that graduates of our more condensed programs were already having success in their job searches. When we surveyed our Course students — our shorter programs with no job prep or career services — we discovered impressive job success rates. We attribute that success to our approach to “learn by doing”; each Bloc student develops their craft by creating a portfolio of several fully-functional projects that demonstrate their skills in a way no certificate can. Based on these early success indicators (and our conviction that we can do far better to deliver outcomes), we launched our first outcomes-based programs last year: the Full Stack Web Developer Track and Designer Track, which are more comprehensive programs that provide recruiting prep and career support and have proven effective in providing outcomes for students.

4. Guided, rigorous career support is mandatory. Shifting focus to outcomes-based programs meant making our career support world-class. Career support is manifested in many ways in the coding bootcamp industry, but we’ve found that if it’s not built into the core of the program, the efficacy suffers. From our perspective, bolting on a week of resume preparation and cover letter drafting at the end of the program is a suspiciously limited amount of energy to devote to the challenge. At Bloc, career support is integrated into the curriculum early to ensure students are focused on their end goal from the beginning. We ask students to network proactively, complete mock interviews, and submit required programming reinforcement assessments early and often. Our feedback loop is tight: if a student struggles to master a skill, they don’t move forward until they understand it. If a student performs poorly on a mock interview, they’ll take time to answer their skills gap and then get another interview. If a student fails to apply to 10 jobs per week, we give a nudge to maintain persistence and focus, and help the student buoy their confidence. We’ve had four years to sniff out where and when students hit roadblocks — we know, with almost frightening accuracy, when a student may face a struggle and how to handle it.

5. Act in the student’s best interest without regard to how it affects a placement rate. We don’t play the numbers game just to show an alluring job placement rate. What if a student is offered a job that’s a bad fit for their skills and interests? What if a student prefers to seek out freelance work instead of a salaried position? What if a student wants to wait a few more months before applying to jobs? All of these scenarios create difficult complexity in calculating a placement rate, but are best for various Bloc students! This requires specialized attention for every student from Bloc’s Mentorship and Student Outcomes teams. We’ve learned the importance of assessing every student’s’ career goals even before they begin the program. Where does the student live? What is their current skill set? What is the student’s desired outcome? Do they have a family to support? We know students enroll to make a life change, and we help and advise them with their goals in mind, not a placement rate.

6. Physical presence is simply not a requirement. We believe that the individualization of an online program will provide better outcomes than an in-person bootcamp! Students can slow down in the areas they struggle in, speed up in the areas they grasp quickly, and focus their learning on their strengths and passions. Student persistence, experienced mentors, a project-based approach, and genuine student advocacy in career support are the most important factors for success, and none of those required an in-person learning format.

To date, 248 Bloc grads have successfully switched careers. Most are working in full-time salaried positions, some are working as freelancers, others launched new companies. We are bursting with pride at everything they’ve accomplished, and we’re eager to help the next 5,000 students do the same!

In the future, Bloc will publish an official Outcomes Report, which will isolate our career-focused programs for measurement. It’s too early for Bloc to publish these success metrics, as only a handful of the hundreds of students who enrolled in our career-focused programs last year have graduated and are within the post-graduate recruiting phase.

Genuine student advocacy is a core value at Bloc, and we hope you’ll come to find that our approach to outcomes is true to that value. If you have any questions or concerns about our approach, please write us at outcomes@bloc.io.

Howdy Aaron! Can you run us through a typical day for your student at Bloc?

Because we offer part-time and full-time tracks, many of our students put in a full day of work, and work on Bloc for a few hours each evening. Others quit their jobs and take Bloc full-time. A typical day for a part-time student might include reading an assignment which introduces a new concept, then having an online mentor appointment where the student and mentor pair-program as they try adding a new feature to the student’s project.

Is there a unique feature or distinct motivation for your bootcamp or teaching philosophy?

Bloc is unique in that we offer both (1) a custom-built, rigorous, project-based curriculum, and (2) teaching by one-on-one mentorship. Group bootcamps have a number of problems: it’s possible to fall behind (or accelerate ahead) of the class; students need to compete for time with instructors; commuting is a hassle; they’re more expensive; you often need to quit your job; the curriculum can’t be customized for your skill level. Our online one-on-one model resolves all of these issues.

As far as I know, we’re the only company that offers both high quality, regularly updated curriculum and remote one-on-one mentoring with seasoned professionals in varied backgrounds.

What backgrounds do you find your applicants usually coming from? Is there a particular kind of student or learning style that excels in your programs? Is there a kind of student or learning style that is not well suited for your programs?

Bloc actually doesn’t have applicants: we accept everyone who is desirous of learning software development and design. Obviously, having some sort of transferable skill - scripting, spreadsheets, algebra, QA work, etc. - will make it easier to learn. Our curriculum doesn’t assume any of this knowledge, so beginners are encouraged to sign up. Most of our students are bright, motivated, and have tried Codecademy, Code School, or Treehouse in the past, but decided they wanted a bootcamp to accelerate their learning.

If you’re not sure, get in touch, and we’ll discuss your background and give you an honest opinion.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing the online learning model and how did you overcome them?

The biggest challenge is student procrastination. Our flexible scheduling makes it easy to push the work back when it gets hard, and you don’t have cohorts to push you along. Self-discipline is very important. We solve for that by asking our mentors to be direct with students about their progress, and to hold students accountable for doing the work and showing-up.

Since your first cohorts, how has the direction of your curriculum changed over time, if at all?

We update the curriculum weekly with new technologies, projects, bug fixes, improved explanations, and more. Students get lifetime access to their roadmap, even after their course has ended.

Combining our curriculum with one-on-one mentorship allows us to tailor the curriculum to each student. The first third of the curriculum is required; during the remaining two thirds students select projects based on the skills and technologies they want to learn. For a student’s Capstone, they come up with their own idea from scratch, spec it, and built it.

What kind of roles, jobs, and/or companies do your programs ready your students for?

Student have graduated and gotten hired at great companies like Autodesk, Groupon, Starbucks, Sephora, and One Kings Lane. Beginners who do well can expect to be ready for an entry-level developer job. More seasoned engineers, for example a web developer who takes Bloc to learn mobile, can expect to qualify for a mid-to-senior level mobile job after graduation. Some students have turned their Capstone Projects into startups that either raised venture capital or got acquired.

Some people don’t take Bloc to switch careers. Product and program managers take Bloc to better understand the people and work they’re managing. Entrepreneurs take Bloc and launch their own company.

Students with specific goals should know that in addition to a mentor and a thorough curriculum, Bloc offers each student a Program Coordinator who can help personalize their experience. For example, if you let us know you’re planning on starting a company, your Program Coordinator can pair you with a mentor who has entrepreneurial experience.

What’s the best advice for students who want to attend your coding bootcamp?

Self-doubt and procrastination are your two biggest enemies. Suppress and ignore your self-doubt at whatever cost necessary. Plan at least two hours a day to work on Bloc, and fight with vigor the urge to skip even one day.

Writing is your best friend. When something confuses you, try to write out an explanation of what it is - either in code, or in English (or your native language). Writing will help you see what you understand so far and clarify your understanding.

What’s the best advice for people who want to start teaching code?

Teaching code requires many different skills than writing code. Get your toes wet first to see if it’s good fit - spend some time answering beginner questions on Stack Overflow, volunteer to mentor a new student, write a few blog posts.

Can you share a favorite teaching moment or the best student project you’ve seen?

One of our students, Łukasz Kowalski, received two promotions during his Bloc course (he worked with mentor Phil Wright). He started off as a UX designer, got promoted to iOS developer, and then was finally promoted to the team lead. He worked on a number of really cool projects, including a beautiful note-taking app. He’s featured on our alumni page (http://bloc.io/alumni).

How do you see the learn to code movement and the bootcamp industry changing over the next one to five years? Where do you see these programs fitting into the larger picture of education?

High-paying software development and design job openings are appearing faster than qualified candidates on the job market. So, for the foreseeable future, dedicated new developers will be able to get great jobs, and senior-level developers will be able to command especially high salaries.

There’s also been a sharp increase in software bootcamps, and they vary in quality. The job market has many junior developers who know just enough to be dangerous. If you’re picking a bootcamp, it’s important to pick an education that’s rigorous, thorough, and project-based - so you have experience building actual products.

Is there anything else you’d like to share?

Yes, two things:

1. One of our core goals is to promote diversity in the tech industry. If you’re reading this, you want to learn to code, and if you belong to a class that’s underrepresented in tech, please get in touch. We have scholarships and additional resources to offer towards your goals.

2. Learning to write code is a difficult but enriching journey. Aside from the doors it’ll open for your career, you’ll practice intense, collaborative learning with your mentor. The logical, structured nature of writing code will hone your ability to reason effectively and think creatively, and you’ll develop a deeper perspective on the world around you.

Hi Stan! Can you run us through a typical day for your student?

One of my favorite things about Bloc is the diverse student body it attracts. My apprentice Lisa, is a mother and a full-time professional. Her days involve waking up, teaching grade schoolers from 9-5, taking care of her children, then hacking away at Bloc’s iOS curriculum.

In between, she and I would chat about her code, programming concepts and her little dog that couldn’t help but chime in every five minutes. Apparently, Terrier mixes can’t help but vocalize their preference of Key-Value Observation over notifications.

Is there a unique feature or distinct motivation for your bootcamp or teaching philosophy?

In my opinion, Bloc’s “at your own pace” offering is a huge value for its apprentices. We provide mentorship, but in a way that works around the individual’s schedule. Not everyone can afford to surrender 12 weeks of their life to an edu-vacation. Bloc provides a flexible alternative that works in tandem with the student’s personal life.

What backgrounds do you find your applicants usually coming from? Is there a particular kind of student or learning style that excels in your programs? Is there a kind of student or learning style that is not well suited for your programs?

As I mentioned earlier, Bloc attracts a diverse breadth of students. The iOS course, for instance, has students ranging from teens to the middle-aged, we welcome anyone willing and eager to learn.

The students most successful in our program are the self-starters, people with discipline and motivation. If you have spent months trying to learn on your own and constantly pushed yourself to do better, Bloc will help you get to the next level.

Bloc is like a trainer at the gym. In the beginning, we’re lifting most of the weight and you’re learning the techniques and how to use the machines. But towards the end of the program, you’re doing all the lifting and we’re there to spot you.

Side-note: Bloc is not mentored by a bunch of Bros, but if you want a bro-mentor, we can probably make that happen.

What are some of the biggest challenges facing the online learning model and how did you overcome them?

The biggest problem we saw was the lack of proper guidance. Yes, tutorials are great but often serve existing developers much better than their targeted audience of beginners. However, for those just starting out, there’s a mass of information that they don’t know how to digest.

Mentorship solves this problem. By employing working professionals as guides, our students are able to discern what’s important from what isn’t.

Since your first cohorts, how has the direction of your curriculum changed over time, if at all?

We constantly ask and act upon feedback provided by our student body, our mentors and our peers. All mentors have access to the course materials on GitHub and are allowed to file issues and pull requests against our curriculum repositories.

Students often have direct feedback on material. We take this feedback seriously and consider every opinion sent our way. Lastly, our Mentors help keep our ears to the ground. Whenever there are big shifts in best practices or new technologies we must consider, we do our best to incorporate timely changes into the curriculum.

Active students receive the benefits of these updates because they happen live. Students are notified of significant material changes and if the changes warrant such, they are given the opportunity to opt-into the new curriculum.

What kind of roles, jobs, and/or companies do your programs ready your students for?

Bloc aims to help beginners acquire junior-level developer status and positions. Any company looking to hire entry-level developers in any of our respective fields will be pleased to interview our graduates.

For existing developers, we help facilitate career shifts. They typically excel during the foundations phase and end up with more completed projects than our beginner students.

We also target a third type of student, the entrepreneur. Each Bloc course instructs in building full applications, therefore, any graduate will have the capability to build their own product or join and contribute heavily to a small team.

What’s the best advice for students who want to attend Bloc?

I wish that every student, before embarking on a bootcamp experience, would attempt to learn everything on their own, for free. This may seem counter to the mission of every business to, you know, make cash rain down from the heavens, but it’s more important than money.

This works two-fold because primarily, there’s a chance that self-education may bring that student to their destination. If it does, they didn’t spend anything more than time, and their confidence will be through the roof.

Secondarily, if they reach that wall and can’t break through it, they are that much more prepared for Bloc. They will breeze through the foundations portion, much like an experienced developer would, and get to the projects quicker. Students who’ve reached the wall before joining Bloc get much more out of the product than otherwise.

What’s the best advice for people who want to start teaching code?

It’s the same advice I would give to anyone wishing to teach another person. You should have patience and bite your tongue when you see them make a mistake or struggle. It’s difficult to restrain yourself but don’t condemn or criticise, remember, you were in their place once, consider how you would feel.

When your student excels, don’t forget to praise them for their accomplishments. Programming in particular is difficult for many to learn, positive reinforcement will go a long way in motivating your student to continue rocking it.

Can you share a favorite teaching moment or the best student project you’ve seen?

My favorite moments generally occur during the projects phase. At the beginning, students are faced with the monumental task of building an entire app from scratch, on their own. Before they begin, I break down the project and essentially take off the training wheels. At this point, you watch and hope they can ride the bike themselves.

In our next meeting, they show me a wild amount of progress and I am filled with nothing but immense joy and pride.

How do you see the learn to code movement and the bootcamp industry changing over the next one to five years? Where do you see these programs fitting into the larger picture of education?

I expect our industry to grow its role in the grand scheme of education. I want Bloc and every other organization with similar goals to improve and expand its reach to more students.