Cohort 21 wrapped up their first 3 months of bootcamp last week with their front-end demo day. No matter how many front-end demo days our instructors and staff have been a part of, we’re always impressed with the level of the projects the students present. By the time front-end demo day arrives, the students have presented as groups several times and test-driven their front-end demo presentation to their classmates.
During their presentation to all 75 of the day students, they showcase their application, discuss how they built it, what they learned in the process, and their stretch goals for the project. Their projects included a patient assessment app for EMTs called BLS Jump-Kit, a character and region organizer for Dungeons and Dragons called D&D Character Creator, a weather reporting app called WXly, and a version of Tetris called FTRIS-ARENA. (If your boss catches you playing FTRIS-ARENA or creating characters wth D&D Character Creator, just let him or her know that you’re testing a NSS capstone!)
The front-end portion of the NSS curriculum focuses on HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, AngularJS and Firebase flat-data structure. Each member of Cohort 21 displayed understanding of these concepts and more; some students even challenged themselves to learn new hybrid-mobile frameworks like Ionic and many took on diving into new APIs. Front-end demo day gives students experience presenting their work in front of an audience in preparation for their final Demo Day where they will have the opportunity to meet with prospective employers to showcase their front-end and back-end capstones.
Front-End demo day simply marks the midway point for our cohorts. Cohort 21 is now a week into learning Ruby on Rails. They will spend the remainder of the year building projects for Bangazon, a simulated real-world company that uses Agile methodology.