Express is a flexible framework for building server-side JavaScript web servers using Node. We teach it here at Rithm School, and students often enjoy getting a chance to use their JavaScript skills on both the front-end and back-end, using Express to build API servers.

One area that can be confusing for new users is how to handle errors well using Express. Express is so flexible that it's not clear how to make a simple, general purpose strategy for handling different kinds of errors.

To help with this, here is a simple, new-learner-friendly system for making and handling errors in Express.

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November 05, 2018

When lecturing, I'm commonly asked how I move so quickly between windows, between tabs and in applications like Terminal or the browser. In this post, I’d like to briefly highlight four essential tips and tricks for becoming a faster and more productive developer.

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October 16, 2018

A lot of people who decide to come like a program like Rithm's spend a lot of time trying to prepare as much as possible for the technical curriculum. We'll often get e-mails from accepted students before the program starts asking what else they can learn or study so that they'll be ahead of the curve when the program begins.

While that sort of planning and dedication is admirable, there's another aspect to immersive coding programs like ours that gets comparatively less attention, though it's no less important. I'm referring to the emotional weight of a full-time, in-person accelerated program. In this post, I'd like to outline some of the emotional challenges that students face, and provide some tips to help you address those challenges head on.

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October 08, 2018

Until recently, many people thought the sole source of success boiled down to their intelligence (IQ). However, research has been emerging since the late 90’s that there is a definitive link between career success and emotional intelligence (EQ). Intelligence is your ability to learn, which remains the same whether you’re 15 or 50 years old. EQ is not a steadfast metric, it’s a flexible set of skills that can be learned and improved with practice. You may be saying to yourself “but my technical skills will speak for themselves - why should I care about this?”

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October 03, 2018

Last Friday, Rithm School's seventh cohort finished the outcomes section of the course and graduated! 🎉 🎓 This was Rithm's second iteration of our in-house outcomes program, during which we had quite a few industry guest speakers come speak with students. Our guest speakers hailed from a wide range of companies from small startups like Desmos to massive corporations like Netflix. Most had substantial experience interviewing candidates, and all had sound advice to share with our students about the job search process. In this article, I have compiled what I believe to be the top three job search insights based on that experience.

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September 27, 2018

Meg Lane, our operations and events extraordinaire, has her thumbprint on every square inch of Rithm School’s financial district office. You can thank her keeping up our office space (and for our awesome tiki-themed kitchen decor!), running all of our free events, and most recently taking over all of our alumni activities. Here we learn a little bit more about Meg, her role on the team and what sweet treats she may have hidden around the office.

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September 11, 2018

JavaScript is increasingly popular for developing backend servers, often using the Express library with Node. While many tutorials show using Node/Express with NoSQL databases, like MongoDB, these kind of databases are often not as good for common, relational data requirements. Many projects would benefit from a more scalable, transactional relational database.

However, this leads to developer design decisions: should I write SQL queries directly in my code? Should I use an abstraction layer? Should I use an Object-Relational Mapper?

In this post, we'll explore a few approaches to the same problem. We'll use a tiny application, but develop it for each approach, so you can get an early sense of how it would be to work in these different styles.

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August 28, 2018

No matter where you are in your career, looking for a new job is an incredibly stressful time. It's common to experience feelings of inadequacy, rejection, and general imposter syndrome.

This is a natural consequence of company hiring practices, which typically are engineered to minimize the rate of false positives (e.g. hiring someone unqualified for the job). Knowing this doesn't always ease the pain of not landing that dream job, though.

Even so, it can be helpful to try to zoom out and take a high level, objective look at the job search process. That's what I'd like to do here. My hope that by exploring a model of the job search, you'll be able to more effectively budget your time and more quickly find success.

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August 20, 2018

Daniel came to Rithm School with an impressive background as a university lecturer and researcher. Outside of his interest in coding, his love of cars and driving started at the age of three when he disengaged his family car’s parking brake and caused a traffic accident. Fortunately, his driving record has improved since then! Daniel’s job search is winding down (congratulations!), so he was able to take some time to share more about his experience with us here at Rithm School:

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August 08, 2018

Welcome to Rithm School, prospective students! This post details Frequently Asked Questions we get about the Rithm School interview process as well as key information about the interview itself. If you are looking to get into Rithm in the near future, hopefully this gives you more insight as to how best to prepare and what exactly to expect on your interview date.

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August 01, 2018