John Wark

John started programming professionally at age 19. After a long and multifarious career in technology, he founded NSS in 2012. He believed that Nashville's technology talent shortage would never be solved by trying to import experienced developers from other cities or by waiting for colleges and universities to start graduating enough students and/or appropriately trained students. He also had faith that Nashville had an ample supply of motivated adults with latent aptitude who, if offered a chance, would eagerly pursue a career in technology.
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Recent Posts

Can you Hear Me Now?
Jan 23, 2017
We've made some exciting new additions to the Hackery, our large co-working and event room at NSS. The additions are "functional art" (is that a real thing?) in the form of a dozen sound panels to help reduce the sound level in the room when we have an event or lots of students working together on projects. Read More

Topics: News

Why It Makes Sense To Interview NSS Graduates | Stories From The Hackery Ep. 7
Sep 7, 2016
In Episode 7 of Stories from the Hackery we catch up with Daniel Green from VitalSource Technologies at Ingram Content Group. We chat with him about the products that VitalSource develops and why he felt it made sense to interview NSS graduates for his team. And we talk more broadly about the impact of the Nashville tech community on helping NSS become successful and how, in turn, NSS grads are impacting the community. Read More

Topics: Hiring?

Nashville Software School Announces Data Science & Data Engineering Bootcamp
Aug 11, 2016
Today we're announcing our Data Analytics & Data Engineering Bootcamp, a new training program that NSS will roll out in 2017. Dramatic growth in analytics applications and the increased use of data science tools across industries, especially in Nashville's major industry of healthcare, has led to significant unmet demand for professionals trained in modern tools, techniques, and methods. Read More

Topics: News

NSS Approved To Accept GI Bill®
Jul 20, 2016
Nashville Software School (NSS) is proud to announce that our full-time Web Developer Bootcamp has been approved by the Tennessee State Approving Agency for Veterans Education and Training. We are the first coding bootcamp program in the Southeast U.S. approved to accept the GI Bill® and one of the first five in the entire country. Read More

Topics: News, Community

Melanie Hall Shares Her Journey From Design To Development | Stories From The Hackery Ep. 5
Jul 18, 2016
Melanie Hall came to Nashville in 2012 because she was passionately involved at a non-profit. She supported herself by applying her college training as a designer. Like many designers we have met, Melanie realized that her design training didn’t really prepare her to design for the web. She needed an understanding of how (at least) basic level coding worked. Melanie joined the second student cohort at NSS in January 2013 and today she is still passionate about her non-profit, still passionate about design, and she is a working full-stack software developer. Read More

Topics: Student Stories

The Evolution Of Mobile Apps, IOS, And Swift | Stories From The Hackery Ep. 4
Jun 30, 2016
iOS and Swift continue to rapidly evolve. Van Simmons previews our upcoming iOS mobile development class and discusses how the changing nature of Swift is causing us to evolve our iOS class. Van also talks about the rapid emergence of idiomatic conventions for developing apps in Swift, his experience building multiple major iOS apps in Swift, and the potential for Swift as a language for server-side development. Read More

Topics: Learning, Technology Insights

Demo Day Recap And Interviews With Our Newest Graduates
Jun 30, 2016
Last week, Cohort 12 and Evening Cohort 2 graduated 37 full-stack developers, marking over 293 total graduates of NSS. We celebrated their graduation and introduced 32 of the graduates to the community at Demo Day on Friday, June 24. Get to know our graduates. Read More

Topics: Student Stories, Hiring?

Hiring And Growing Junior Developers | Stories From The Hackery Ep. 3
Jun 16, 2016
Many of our graduates come to NSS to change their careers. When they start their first job as a junior software developer, not only do they bring problem-solving and coding skills, they also bring their prior work experiences with them. Jared Fuller and Jesse Waddell both come from customer-focused careers. Their experiences in serving customers' needs will help them work with both clients and end-users as developers. Read More

Topics: Hiring?, Community

It's Our 4th Birthday!
Jun 10, 2016
NSS started our first bootcamp on June 18, 2012. The idea behind NSS was pretty simple - we felt that we could help address the shortage of local software developers by home-growing talent. In other words, we felt that there were plenty of people living in Nashville who had the aptitude to be good software developers. Those folks just needed an opportunity to tap into their latent potential. Read More

Topics: News, Community

Kelly Stephens Finds Improved Quality Of Life As Software Engineer | Stories From The Hackery Ep. 2
Jun 3, 2016
Kelley Stephens, a Software Engineer from Cohort Five discusses the importance of changing careers, finding Nashville Software School, and using her knowledge and new network to land a job at Ingram Content Group. Listen to her journey as told to Clark Buckner in episode two of our latest segment of Stories From The Hackery. Read More

Topics: Alumni, Student Stories