Tealeaf Academy

I’m excited to announce that I have enrolled in the Ruby on Rails online Web Developer course, offered by Tealeaf Academy. I have some familiarity with Ruby on Rails, and I’ve even tried out a couple projects from Michael Hartl’s famous Ruby on Rails Tutorial.

There are a lot of good in-person coding bootcamps, but none of them are practical for me, financially or logistically, right now. There are also some good online ones, like Thinkful or Bloc. Plus, there are great self-paced online coding sites, like Codeacademy, Treehouse, or Code School. I’ve worked through lessons on all three of these sites, and I’ve learned great things from them. I can read code, and I can create nice-looking, if basic, websites with semantic code, but I still feel like I’m missing something. Tealeaf is different. This is the first thing you see when you go to the site:

“Your Last Stop Before Becoming a Confident Developer.” That message really hit me. I know a lot about web development, but I’m honestly not confident enough to become a full-time web developer. I have been teaching myself for years, and I think I know front-end development pretty well, and I also know a decent amount about databases, but I feel like I have gaps in my knowledge. The curriculum at Tealeaf should give me the knowledge and confidence to tie everything together.

The first thing that attracted me to Tealeaf was the depth and the curriculum and the quality of the projects. Looking at the people who have graduated from the other sites, I can tell many of them are talented, and they learned a lot. But there were two things that really impressed me about Tealeaf. First, I’m not sure how the future will play out in web development. Ruby on Rails, Node.js, or an entirely new paradigm could take over web development. But I doubt it will be that simple. Every day, new approaches and frameworks are being developed. This is not a field where you can learn something and expect it to stay relevant for long. You have to keep learning constantly. I love that! But that also means that it’s more important to learn how to think and solve problems as a professional coder, than to worry about which language or framework happens to be hot this year. And that is what Tealeaf emphasizes. Looking at their site and hearing the experiences of people who have gone through their program, I am confident that I will develop the knowledge and attributes to be successful, no matter what specific tools, languages, or systems I use.

Another great aspect of their system is that it’s a four-month program, but they do not have a time limit. With the other schools, you pay by the month. For most of the year, my job does not infringe on my private life, but I work at a university, and we’ve just had a major software upgrade, and this time of year is always our busiest. By the time I finish my pre-course work, things should have died down again at work, and it will be smooth sailing for the rest of the year. But it’s good to know that if something does come up, I won’t be penalized. Sometimes, I learn quickly. Other times, I like to take my time and go through and really work on what I’m learning, until I know it well. With Tealeaf, I can go as fast or as slow as I need, without having to pay more. I want to learn deeply, not just rush through to meet an arbitrary time limit.

“It’s time to stop messing around and take a structured approach,” their website declares. After almost 20 years of learning “a little of this, and a little of that,” I’m ready to do just that. The best part for me is that I was able to use my tax refund to pay for the lessons.

I’m really excited about this new journey I am about to embark on!

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