| layout | ||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Welcome! Developer Fundamentals is Rocket Academy's certification course that enables graduates to either:
(1) Enter the industry: be well prepared for our Coding Bootcamp that will springboard you into the tech industry as a full-fledged Software Engineer
(2) Future-proofing and relevant: be adequately equipped and certified to interact with and understand coding professionals across various industries
Rocket Elements is Rocket Academy's introductory course into software programming. You will delve the process of creating a fundamental block of the internet - a web page.
What so special about designing your own web page? Each web page is the fundamental of the Internet (World Wide Web)! As you well know, the internet is deeply woven into the tapestry of our daily communal lives, connecting us in a profound way that was not available to us before 1991 (when the internet was made public).
Interested? We have detailed the context of the internet in our optional "Introduction" module that we hope you can take your time reading and internalizing.
Why are you here? Why is programming important? The reasons to write code are myriad and should not be bound to any one particular reason.
It is absolutely fine to learn how to code and not use it to earn a living! In fact, many developers within the industry will confess to having coded as a hobby earlier before starting to consider it as a formal job later on.
Chances are, as you build small programs to help automate and ease certain tasks for your daily life, that someone else would find that your program would benefit them as well and you may realize that your code can impact a large portion of society by meeting a societal need. And that leads us to the rest of the points below.
The modern adage of "doing what you love as a job". Naturally those who found themselves proficient and enjoying the art of programming turn to this option. Nevertheless, "coding as a career" is never going to be the same as "coding as a hobby". Yet many still choose to do so knowing that it is what they still enjoy doing and their knowledge is sufficient for them to make ends meet.
To top that, technology, with much certainty, will not disappear in the near future. If anything, new technologies will be developed and the world's needs for programmers will only increase: there is great job security within the industry as you continue to learn and upskill yourself.
As a company's developer you will most likely have much lesser freedom when it comes to implementing the various parts of a project and will have to always consult your superior in terms of both the functionality and design.
For greater autonomy, while not for everyone, people also choose to "be their own boss", running their own business - building the software they want to build while not being tied to an organization's needs and concerns.
Of course, with this option, comes the need for great self-discipline and a much bigger array of skills and knowledge in running a profitable business.
In this realm code can be used in one of two major ways:
(1) as a support structure to automate the company's administrative and logistical needs while pushing other types of products (i.e. dropshipping / blogs / POS systems / CRMs) - knowing how to code enables you to create in-house systems tailored for your specific needs!
(2) as the main product itself
Through Basics will enable you to understand the logic of the fundamental syntax of any computing language through considering Web Development, the larger concept taught thoroughly by Rocket's Software Engineering Bootcamp.
There are many paths of software engineering of which Web Development is a simpler one to understand because everyone interacts with the World Wide Web, our internet, on a daily basis.
< pic: different software engineering careers >
In this course we will learn basic coding concepts through building simple programs. You can consider applying to join our Bootcamp after Basics to build more complex programs, gain full understanding of how applications are made, and even get a formal software engineering job.
Basics aims to incrementally level-up students' coding knowledge through fun game-based mini projects. This happens in a "sandbox" environment meant to focus on the universal, fundamental concepts of programming, rather than being specific to the any one language.
Coding Basics consists of 6 Modules and 3 Projects.
{% tabs %} {% tab title="Modules" %}
- Data Types, Structures, and Manipulations
- Structuring and Debugging Code
- Logic and Control Flow
- Program Scope
- HTML and CSS
- The Document Object Model (DOM) {% endtab %}
{% tab title="Projects" %}
- Scissors Paper Stone
- Beat That!
- Blackjack {% endtab %} {% endtabs %}
Coding Basics does not cover entry-level Computer Science. At Rocket Academy, you will be learning via a middle-out approach, and you will learn by doing. This course will not deep dive into how or why a computer operates. Computer Science is to programming what organic chemistry is to cooking. If this was a cooking course, we will be teaching you how to cook an omelette, not why the egg fries at a certain temperature. You will also likely make a mess.
The following areas are covered in depth in Rocket's Software Engineering Bootcamp and not in Coding Basics:
- Industry-standard, production-level app building and software architecture.
- Advanced data structures and algorithms, such as those relevant for coding interviews.