Starting the Syllabus with Backend vs Frontend

[kabaros]

Few of us feel that introducing Backend (Node) before Frontend (React) could be a better path for our students.

Pros:

• It's a less confusing ecosystem on Node, which could help the students to concentrate on getting their coding and JS core skills honed.
• Starting with Backend fits how people and projects work (traditionally)
• It seems to be the path taken by other coding schools (CC, F&C etc...)

Cons:

• It might be too abstract for our students at that initial stage

We're experimenting with how we can start with Backend while making it less abstract. Few of the ideas floating around include Building a Frontend ourselves (the mentors) to reflect the Backend code the students are writing, or even using something like Slack Bots to do coding (which is fun and helps them learn the core concepts and understand how they can apply to anything)

[rarmatei]

@kabaros I'm still getting familiar with the syllabus, so please correct me where I'm wrong, but I understand the students will have already been taken through HTML/CSS/JavaScript by the time we get to Node/backend.

If that's the case, I don't think Node will be too abstract, as I'm assuming by that stage, they'd be familiar with how JavaScript is used to make pages interactive, and other more "tangible" examples on why JS is useful. Then Node can be a nice follow-up to how they can populate their pages with server data (or building the front-end ourselves, like you mentioned, though I'm wondering why this can't be built by the students as they're working through the modules?).

And once they're familiar with front-end and back-end basics, React can be a great module to finish on, where everything is made interactive, and it's gonna start to look more like a real world application.

But if we're planning to keep the last two modules (node and react) a lot more coupled together (use them together to build a complex app) and more separate from the first few introductory modules, than what I said above might not work?

[kabaros]

@rarmatei In the last class, they knew JS and React before node. They learned JS in the context of front end in a browser. We are wondering if we should start teaching them JS in Node first, to make them concentrate on getting their coding and logical skills stronger without being distracted by DOM, Ajax and other aspects of front end. sent from my phone

[Amwam]

I think teaching node first might make sense. Largely because testing can be introduced a lot earlier in the course. I think having tests in place for homework has made things easier for the students.