{ The Rithm Blog. }

Student Interview: R20 On Remote Company Projects

At Rithm, we believe that one of the best ways to prepare students for jobs as web developers is by giving them opportunities to work on real-world projects. Working on personal projects can be fun, but working in a team or on an existing code base gives students insights into the day-to-day challenges of a developer that they might not otherwise learn. One of the company projects our 20th cohort is completing is a web application that streamlines the process of workers making wage dispute claims against their employers. We asked two of our students, Julia and Kathrin, to share their experience working together with us:

May 25, 2021

Good Ideas for Better Variable Names

A large part of professional programming is communicating clearly with other developers: almost no serious software projects are written by a single author, and it's common for dozens of programmers to be able to understand your code.

May 04, 2021

TypeScript: How To Get Started

TypeScript is a language extention to JavaScript that is so hot right now. Looking at the 2020 developer survey from stack overflow, you can see that TypeScript continues to gain ground in both popularity and love for the language. If you're new to the JavaScript world and still trying to get a handle on the basics, then you may be wondering what TypeScript is useful for and when you should learn it? We'll try to explore what TypeScript is in this blog post and discuss when is a good time to start incorporating it into what you are learning.

April 21, 2021

3 Patterns for Refactoring Your Code

When I review code written by people who are relatively new to programming, I find myself often repeating the same advice. There are many patterns we adopt as we learn to code that we have to unlearn or modify once we become more comfortable with the fundamentals. In this post, I'd like to highlight three common patterns I see, and how you can refactor them to write code that is more readable, and often more concise.

April 12, 2021

From A Rithm Instructor: Technical Job Search Blockers

In order to get your first position as a software engineer, you have to have a certain level of technical ability. However, sometimes it is the non-technical things that can get in the way of breaking into the industry.

March 12, 2021

Coming Up in Python: `match`

The next version of Python, 3.10, is in late alpha and is expected to be released in the middle of 2021. It has a number of small changes to the language, but also one later new piece of syntax, the `match` keyword.

March 03, 2021

2021 Rithm School Scholarships

Here at Rithm School, we have seen value in providing scholarships to highly motivated web development students. The practice of offering scholarships is not only a way to support learners working with tight budgets, but also a method of engaging and motivating nontraditional students of all backgrounds and experience levels who are interested in breaking into tech. We currently have 3 separate partial scholarships we are offering for our 2021 full-time courses.

February 24, 2021

6 Tips To Push Through The Discomfort Of The Job Search

There comes a point in the job search, when the initial optimism and enthusiasm has worn off and the job search starts to feel like an eternal grind. You have put a lot of work in, but haven’t experienced any of the benefits. You are very aware of how much effort and discomfort you have gone through, and it can feel like you have nothing to show for it. It’s tempting to stop pushing yourself and return to comfort. Here are six ways to keep pushing through the discomfort until you land a new job:

February 17, 2021

Our Updated Interview Process

At Rithm, our goal is to make our admissions process fair, personalized, and informative, and over the past couple of years, we've seen that candidates have highly enjoyed our admissions process and interviews. At the same time, we've seen that our application process is longer than most, as it requires students to complete a large set of practice problems before interviewing. While this has been a helpful way for candidates to practice problem-solving, it has not always led to the most seamless interview process. In order to make it easier to interview at Rithm School, we're making a slight modification to our interview process.

January 25, 2021

Using The JavaScript Ternary Operator Effectively

The JavaScript ternary operator is a useful tool that you'll encounter in code quite often. Ternary operators can make statements more concise and easy to reason about. If the syntax is new to you, the operator may seem a little confusing. Let's talk about the ternary operator and discuss some rules of thumb for how to use it.

November 09, 2020

Seven Tips For Dealing With Imposter Syndrome

Imposter syndrome is a phenomenon where people doubt their skills, talents, and/or accomplishments. They have a constant fear of being exposed as a fraud, and think things like, “eventually everyone will find out that I really have no idea what I’m doing.” Even after one gets a job this can still occur, they would attribute getting a job to pure luck.

October 20, 2020

Alumni Spotlight: Genna Mergola

I am currently located in San Francisco, CA originally from New Jersey. I love being active, I was previously a professional modern dancer and yoga instructor. I still love to do yoga and plan to eventually teach again once possible.

October 13, 2020

How To Get Into A Top Coding Bootcamp

Getting into a selective bootcamp can be difficult. This is a good thing, you want to avoid schools that admit anyone who is willing to pay. There are too many schools that are more focused on building a big business rather than the outcomes of their students. Even after going through a leading bootcamp, getting the first job can still be difficult. Stay away from places that make it seem easy. It is much better to be surrounded by others who have put in a lot of effort into being there.

September 22, 2020

Taking Breaks: Why Being Busy Doesn't Equal Productivity

Imagine this: you are working on a project, but you keep checking your email, slack, and social media. You stare out the window trying to regain focus. Maybe you are half listening to a podcast in the background. You mindlessly wander from one task to another based on whatever you are feeling in the moment. You are not truly working, and definitely not taking a break. We’ve all been there. Maintaining focus was hard in normal times, let alone during a pandemic.

August 18, 2020

Student Interview: R16 On Company Projects

Marco: I was born and raised in the Netherlands. During a vacation in California in 1996, I went on a job interview at the Netherlands Consulate General in Los Angeles. I got the job, married my Dutch girlfriend of 5 years, and with our two cats we moved to Redondo Beach. It was a dream come true! In 2010 the consulate relocated to San Francisco, and that is how we ended up in the East Bay.

August 11, 2020

5 Topics To Master Before Learning React Hooks

Three years ago, our co-founder and lead instructor Tim, wrote a wonderful post on 5 Topics to Master Before Learning React. Since then, React has evolved tremendously and has only continued to become more and more popular. In this post, we’ll revisit some of the essential JavaScript features you should be comfortable with before learning new frameworks, especially the most recent major change in React, React Hooks.

July 28, 2020

What You Can Learn From Learning A New Language

Most programmers with more than a year or two of experience will know more than one programming language. This happens often because they joined a new work team or company that was using a different tech stack. Separately from work project requirements, learning a new language can be one of the most helpful things in your development career. New languages can introduce you to different ways to express problems, different tooling, and even different ways to think in code. You'll often hear advice on what others think is a hot new *must learn* language, but before jumping immediately to that, it can be helpful to think about what you want to get from a new language.

July 21, 2020

Software Engineering Careers Post Covid-19

If you’re currently learning how to code, or have recently graduated from a bootcamp and are job searching, it’s natural to have anxiety surrounding hiring and retention in the software engineering industry. The spread of Covid-19 has undoubtedly turned everyone’s life upside down (here at Rithm, we had to quickly adjust our class to a live-over-Zoom delivery). Whether or not your employer is a software company, it depends on software.The nature of that software is always evolving, which is good news for the software engineering community.

July 08, 2020

What Coding Language You Should Learn To Get Hired In 2020

Choosing your first coding language is an important decision, the more time you spend with a language the more comfortable you will feel writing it. It’s a good idea to focus your learning on a language that is not only in demand for today’s job market, but also expected to be in demand in the future.

July 02, 2020

Alumni Spotlight: George Gruner

George came to Rithm School by way of Baltimore after dabbling in a handful of personal projects and finding himself wanting to join a more structured learning environment. George took some time to share more about their experience with us at Rithm, and to give some advice for anyone looking to transition into web development!

June 24, 2020

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