It’s no secret that it’s a good time to be a coder. Everyone with the semblance of an idea, an early stage startup, or a going concern is looking to hire talented developers. So that talent is in short supply. Very short supply.
But there is hope.
In fact, organizations are springing up left and right to help people tune up their coding chops—or to learn to code for the first time.
And as luck would have it, some of those groups are right here in Portland.
Now, our strong user group contingent and tech groups are complemented by programs that bring new would-be developers into the fold, as well.
Portland Code School
Designed as a 12-week full-time program, Portland Code School promises to arm participants with the knowledge they need to seek employment—or at least an internship—as a developer.
We envision The Portland Code School as the leading developer of the next generation of Portland programmers. Working in collaboration with Portland coder communities, we provide aspiring programmers with a jumping off point to dive into a web development career along with the skills and tools to engage in learning the advanced skills that distinguish great programmers from those that are merely good enough. We also network with leading edge tech companies seeking to hire skilled and well-rounded programmers, to ensure our students have the skills needed to be professionally competitive and successful.
For more information, visit Portland Code School. Applications close February 1.
Code Scouts
Don’t have the ability to go full-time? Code Scouts offers a program that allows participants to learn coding skills—while compensating for hectic schedules—with the concept of “Learning Circles.”
Organized by members, learning circles are small working groups where members support one another through peer mentorship and encouragement. Mentors assist members in person or online.
This flexibility means that members get to work on their skills when it’s convenient, and to organize themselves in ways that are meaningful to them and that facilitate their personal goals.
Code Scouts is currently focused on helping women enter the field of software development.
For more information or to register, visit Code Scouts.
What’s missing?
Are there other local resources that are helping novice developers gain the skills they need? Let me know and I’ll update the post to reflect those resources, as well.
(Image courtesy Jarkko Laine. Used under Creative Commons.)
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What’s (probably) missing is R, statistics and applied math. We have quite a collection of people here who are into that – there’s two generations of high-performance computing geeks like myself, plus an R programming user group, a data visualization user group *and* a “big data/data science/Hadoop” user group. Bottom line: if people want to learn this stuff, there are folks here willing to teach it.