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In April 2022 we organized the Monterail Vue Bootcamp which was already our third Monterail bootcamp. Having some experience in the field and takeaways to share, we decided to unveil more details about this successful initiative. Enjoy!
Why Vue Now? The Background
The idea of bootcamps is already a well-oiled machine at Monterail. We organized our first Ruby on Rails (it’s one of our core backend technologies) bootcamp back in May of 2021, the second Rubycamp shortly after that, in August.
The experience gained and lessons learned from those two editions, meant that we know what to expect and how to best prepare, it was only a case of changing the technical roadmap and lesson plan to more frontend topics.
The choice of the front-end framework was pretty easy, as official Vue.js partners, we have used (and loved) Vue for years now so it was high time to share what we learned with others.
Many things in our Vue Bootcamp roadmap remained the same as in the previous editions. It was hugely important for us to also cover topics like project teamwork and estimations. We also wanted to show best practices of our Monterail way of coding, quality assurance, and client communication.
The Roadmap for the Bootcamp
The Vue bootcamp, although it has "Vue" in its name, mainly focused on practical knowledge about creating web applications. Presentations and workshops, instead of focusing on tools, provided knowledge that is needed to work in a real-world project.
The plan came to life over a period of weeks and was beautifully handled by our Frontend Architect - Artur Rosa (read about his development path at Monterail) and Frontend Principal Engineer - Szymon Licau.
Two experts and true craftsmen in their field, they knew what we needed to teach.
Our other Vue.js experts and developers also took part and each had a presentation or two to show to our participants. During the course of the bootcamp, which lasted 2 months, the participants had morning “lectures” on various topics, whilst at the same time each working on their own version of our Montecinema application (you guessed it, the backend was already worked out during the previous bootcamps).
A Day of a Bootcamper
Although each day was a little bit different, we always tried to keep it organized and divided each day into time slots dedicated to different tasks.
Example day of the Vue Bootcamp:
- We discuss topic X
- Example homework: use X in a certain way
- Participants can complete the exercise as part of the project
The project had specific business requirements, but in practice, it was a sandbox for completing homework tasks and practicing topics.
A sneak peek into Montecinema application specification
One of the most interesting parts of our bootcamp is the 2-week project shadowing that happens at the end of each bootcamp.
Each participant is assigned to our real-life project and explores what the role of a developer looks like for real in a project. Participants joined standups, learned about the business logic of the project, and even had some of their own tasks in Jira!
Our Approach to Learning
We want to teach how to solve problems. This and all of our previous bootcamps, focused on much more than just coding. We strived to create a collaborative environment, yet one, focused on finding the best solutions to our problems.
We understand that in order to bring value to our clients, a developer's role isn’t just to write lines of code. It’s about collaboration, communication, understanding of business problems and solving them in the best way possible. This takes a lot more than just good coding skills.
Our Vue.js Bootcamp resulted in hiring four amazing developers who are in tune with our good practices and can quickly jump into any project at Monterail. Bootcamps are also our solution to a very serious problem in the IT industry - filling demands for good and already experienced developers. By providing a relatively quick, yet comprehensive training, juniors become independent smoothly and can join a project really soon.
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