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Aaron Fried
Projects built by Thinkful students are impressive.
Now, since I work at Thinkful, I won’t judge Udacity — that’s not fair. Instead, I’ll share some really cool Thinkful student projects and tell you a bit about what makes them special.
A couple things to note: you build a lot of projects as a Thinkful student, the entire curriculum is project-driven. To learn concepts, you do a bunch of mini-projects, which are the same for everybody. Once you grasp the concept, though, you get to apply it to a project that you devise. Thinkful tells you what technologies to work with and basic requirements, but aside from that, you’re free to channel your creativity through your new skills.
Unique portfolio projects will stand out. Recruiters have seen a million clones of [insert popular website here]. They’ve never seen your idea implemented in the way that you chose to. Employers want to see someone who can think for themselves and come up with creative solutions to problems, not someone who can only follow instructions to copy old work.
One of our projects, the API Hack, is the capstone of the frontend curriculum. Essentially, the student builds a frontend and uses API’s from other apps to serve in lieu of a backend. A good project creates an actual service that bridges the gap between two other services, or creates an interesting, new hybrid service.
Take Tim Paik’s project LookItUp. I love this app. Tim combined a dictionary with Wikipedia and YouTube, so that you can find out what words mean and also see how they’re commonly used online. Unique, elegant, and genuinely useful.
I’m also a big fan of Tim’s design work here.
For a whole portfolio, check out what Jon Wade did. His portfolio itself has a fun retro feel, but the apps themselves are creative, well-built, and come with very clear documentation. That’s key — it helps people evaluate your code. When you’re building password keeping apps that rely on encryption, you want people to be able to trust it, so Jon made sure his docs achieved that.
Another thing that makes Thinkful students’ projects great is the support they get in building them, and then later on in revamping them when they start the job hunt. While you build, you have 1-on-1 access to your mentor, who will help you scope out your features, think of solutions you might have struggled with, and work according to industry-standard processes. Before you send your portfolio to an employer, it also gets reviewed by designers and engineers to make sure it’ll impress whoever sees it.
So, to speak for Thinkful’s projects: they’re unique, detailed, and serve as great practice for real-world development. They’re also proven to work — graduates get jobs, as shown by our Jobs Report. The methods have been audited by an independent accounting firm, it shows that 94% of bootcamp graduates are placed in jobs.
You can explore the full range of what Thinkful students are building on Project Hunt, where students can show off their capstone projects and get inspiration from their peers.
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Projects built by Thinkful students are impressive.
Now, since I work at Thinkful, I won’t judge Udacity — that’s not fair. Instead, I’ll share some really cool Thinkful student projects and tell you a bit about what makes them special.
A couple things to note: you build a lot of projects as a Thinkful student, the entire curriculum is project-driven. To learn concepts, you do a bunch of mini-projects, which are the same for everybody. Once you grasp the concept, though, you get to apply it to a project that you devise. Thinkful tells you what technologies to work with and basic requirements, but aside from that, you’re free to channel your creativity through your new skills.
Unique portfolio projects will stand out. Recruiters have seen a million clones of [insert popular website here]. They’ve never seen your idea implemented in the way that you chose to. Employers want to see someone who can think for themselves and come up with creative solutions to problems, not someone who can only follow instructions to copy old work.
One of our projects, the API Hack, is the capstone of the frontend curriculum. Essentially, the student builds a frontend and uses API’s from other apps to serve in lieu of a backend. A good project creates an actual service that bridges the gap between two other services, or creates an interesting, new hybrid service.
Take Tim Paik’s project LookItUp. I love this app. Tim combined a dictionary with Wikipedia and YouTube, so that you can find out what words mean and also see how they’re commonly used online. Unique, elegant, and genuinely useful.
I’m also a big fan of Tim’s design work here.
For a whole portfolio, check out what Jon Wade did. His portfolio itself has a fun retro feel, but the apps themselves are creative, well-built, and come with very clear documentation. That’s key — it helps people evaluate your code. When you’re building password keeping apps that rely on encryption, you want people to be able to trust it, so Jon made sure his docs achieved that.
Another thing that makes Thinkful students’ projects great is the support they get in building them, and then later on in revamping them when they start the job hunt. While you build, you have 1-on-1 access to your mentor, who will help you scope out your features, think of solutions you might have struggled with, and work according to industry-standard processes. Before you send your portfolio to an employer, it also gets reviewed by designers and engineers to make sure it’ll impress whoever sees it.
So, to speak for Thinkful’s projects: they’re unique, detailed, and serve as great practice for real-world development. They’re also proven to work — graduates get jobs, as shown by our Jobs Report. The methods have been audited by an independent accounting firm, it shows that 94% of bootcamp graduates are placed in jobs.
You can explore the full range of what Thinkful students are building on Project Hunt, where students can show off their capstone projects and get inspiration from their peers.
See Questions On Quora
Continue reading...
