What is Code Buddy Club?

• It's similar to a book club but uses free courses and tutorials instead of books.
• Participants are free to code independently, or to pair program.
• Meet on discord to share progress, provide support, and help with debugging.
• Each course should take roughly 1 to 5 weeks to complete.
• It's a really relaxed, supportive, and social atmosphere.

What Courses and Topics is Code Buddy Club Doing?

Please see the schedule for a list of courses.

Topics covered in the first half of 2024:

• Tooling - Git, GitHub, terminal, markdown
• React
• Chakra UI
• Accessibility
• JavaScript tips and tricks
• Web Components
• OpenAI

Who?

Who Will Be Running The Code Buddy Club?

• Sami Xie
• Liz McCready (GingerKiwi)
• Marco Campos (Madcampos)
• Room for one more co-volunteer :-)

Who is Code Buddy Club For?

This first round of Code Buddy Club in 2024 is aimed at junior developers, and anyone that wants to learn with a supportive group.

Participants should be comfortable with:

• html, css, and javascript,
• the basics of git and GitHub prior to starting,
  • However, it's ok if aren't comfortable with Git.
  • There's a free course that participants can do prior to starting, or in their first week of Code Buddy Club. See schedulenote 1.
  • The course is 1 hour long, and will likely take 2-3 hours of your time.
• Ideally installing packages with node package manager (npm).
  • If you're not yet comfortable with npm, the organizers can provide support and resources.

It's fine if you're just starting to learn React.

• A lot changed with React in 2023, especially with Create React App (CRA) becoming depreciated, so there's a React crash course in the second week.

When Will It Run?

Twice a week for one hour

• Sundays at 11:00am
• Tuesdays 6:30-7:30pm

Attendance is flexible

• Participants can join at the start of any course, or even part way in if they are able to catch up.
• For weeks with two short courses, we're going to try to keep one course per meeting.
• Just like in a book club, participants should start the courses before the meetings.
  • That way you'll have questions to ask, and likely be able to help others.

Please see the doc Code Buddy Club Schedule.mdfor details. To add all the events here's the link to the Google Calendar

Where Will It Be?

On TorontoJS discord server. There's a dedicated Code Buddy Club channel.

• Why on discord? 1. Great place to have streaming and screen sharing 2. Because this is knowledge that we want to persist, and Slack eats messages.

Why?

• Sami and Liz have been code buddies since October.
• It's been really fun.
• It's helpful to have someone to share and debug the same projects.
• Being part of a group helps with motivation and accountability by setting goals for things to complete.
• We're excited about opening this up to other devs in Toronto JS.

How Has The Schedule Been Developed?

Sami and Liz have found that going all out they have been able to get though 1-2 hours of tutorial videos per week. However, not everyone will have that time. A much more relaxed pace is more inclusive. So there's about 30 minutes of tutorial video per week. Some weeks have two shorter courses. Longer courses span two or more weeks. The longest course is five weeks long.

All the courses are free courses. The majority are on Egghead.io because the quality is good. There are also some from YouTube, and Wes Bos's free courses.

Due to the changes with React in 2023, specifically the depreciation of create react app (CRA) courses with react that are older than 6 months have been avoided, with the exception of web accessibility courses.

We have tried to alternate between shorter courses and slightly longer ones to give people the chance to join Code Buddy Club at almost any month of the year.

How Can I Suggest a Course?

Please refer to Course Suggestion for Future.md. Make sure to add your course below the line. Don't type over the instructions!