Curriculum

Welcome to the Techtonica curriculum!

Techtonica is a non-profit project of SocialGood that offers a software engineering training with a need-based, sliding-scale, subsidized tuition and stipend scholarships for intensive tech training and job placement for unemployed or underemployed folks. For more information, please see our website: Techtonica.org

Program participants will learn to do full-stack web development using JavaScript. What bootcamps and Techtonica have in common is the fact that they are intensive training. However, bootcamps can be pretty passive classroom learning and they cost $15,000+ for the students.

Techtonica aims to be more like the workplace to make the transition into the industry better—instead of having an instructor constantly guiding you (which you won't have in any software engineering job), you are given a general schedule of topics and assignments (see our curriculum repo for an idea of the resources provided) and you're expected to figure out what to do on your own or in collaboration with volunteers, mentors, tech groups, and other participants. We’re making Techtonica’s program as hands-on and project-based as possible to best prepare you for work in tech.

Jump to Curriculum Table of Contents.

Volunteering & Contributing:

We'd love your help in improving this curriculum. See CONTRIBUTING for details.

Table of Contents

The following is the approximate sequence of the topics during the program but is always being tuned and optimized so if you have questions, please open an issue.

• Week 0 - Pre-Work
• Week 1 - Onboarding & Developer Tools
• Week 2 - Webpages: HTML & CSS
• Week 3 - JavaScript Fundamentals
• Week 4 - Intermediate JavaScript and React
• Week 5 - Web APIs
• Week 6 - Databases
• Week 7 - Advanced JS and React
• Week 8 - Testing
• Week 9 - Eventonica Project
• Week 10 - More PERN & Review
• Week 11 - Data Structures & Algorithms
  • Data Structures
  • Algorithms
• Week 12 - Final Assessments
• Week 13 - Career Week!
• Week 14 - Project Prep Week & Electives
• Weeks 15+ - Final Project
• Core Soft Skills for Tech Professionals
• Independent Topics
• Optional / Elective Lessons

Week 0 - Pre-Work

Before beginning the program, participants meet weekly for 4 weeks to learn JavaScript fundamentals. Participants should memorize common JavaScript built-in functions within the first month.

Week 1 - Onboarding & Developer Tools

1. Welcome, Tips, and Rules
2. Participant Weekly Expectations Checklist
3. How to Learn
4. Professionalism
5. Roles in Tech
6. Intro to Command Line Interface Tools
7. Advanced Command Line
8. Bash Profile
9. Vim
10. Homebrew 📝
11. How to Pair Program
12. Project 0 - Week 1 Review
13. Operating Systems
14. Keyboard Shortcuts
15. Ergonomics
16. Growth Mindset (YCLA Lesson Plan
17. Asking Good Questions
18. Networking (Career)
19. Chrome Developer Tools: Setup
20. One of either: Living in Open Workspaces or Working Remotely depending on program status. 😷
21. HTML
22. Intro to CSS
23. JS HTML DOM Methods
24. Debugging
25. Recipe Page Project (Phase 1: HTML | Phase 2: CSS)

Week 2 - Webpages: HTML & CSS

1. Git Version Control
2. .gitignore
3. Using GitHub for Code Storage
4. GitHub Collaboration
5. Operating Systems
6. Local Development with VS Code
7. Article: What Exactly is the DOM?
8. How the Internet Works (The Other Kind of Networking)
9. Intro to DNS
10. Recipe Page Project (Phase 3: Bootstrap | Phase 4: DOM Manipulation))
11. Media Queries
12. UI/UX
13. Bootstrap
14. Building Confidence
15. Solving Code Challenges
16. Git Part 2: Study Guide
17. Portfolio Project: HTML, CSS, & Bootstrap
18. Using GitHub for Project Collaboration
19. Personal Branding in the Portfolio Project
20. Reading & Writing Documentation
21. Writing Readable Code
22. Deploy your Client Side Portfolio Project to Netlify
23. Portfolio Project: Collaboration and Review

Week 3 - JavaScript Fundamentals

1. JavaScript 1 - Variables, Strings, Numbers
2. JavaScript 2 - Arrays, Functions
3. JavaScript 3 - Conditionals, Comparisons, Booleans
4. JavaScript 4 - Loops
5. JavaScript 5 - Switch Statements
6. JavaScript 6 - Object Literals
7. Date Objects | Date Time
8. Basic JavaScript Practice
9. intro to Testing & TDD
10. Assigned Reading - Eloquent JavaScript

Week 4 - Intermediate JavaScript and React

1. JavaScript DOM Manipulation - formerly jQuery
2. Game Project (HTML & JavaScript)
3. a11y: Accessibility
4. SEO
5. Portfolio Project: Incorporate SEO & a11y
6. JavaScript 7 - Object-Oriented Programming
7. Mini Project: Object Oriented Programming in JS
8. Functional Programming
9. All React Lessons

Week 5 - Web APIs

1. Node.js
2. JavaScript 8 - Regular Expressions / RegEx
3. Runtime Complexity
4. Intro to HTTP
5. APIs & JSON
6. HTTP Request Practice
7. Express.js
8. Game Project (React)

Week 6 - Databases

1. JavaScript 9 - Async, Callbacks, Promises
2. Intro to JSON (DigitalOcean)
3. AJAX
4. .env & config files
5. TwilioQuest Exercise
6. Require and Import Mini Lesson
7. Install PostgreSQL
8. Intro to Databases
9. Data Modeling 1 (Single tables)
10. SQL 1 (Single tables)
11. Data Modeling 2 (Multiple tables)
12. SQL 2 (Multiple tables)
13. Intro to Docker
14. Install and Run PostgreSQL using Docker
15. REST APIs

Week 7 - Advanced JS and React

1. Full-Stack Web App Using React and Express
2. Recursion
3. JavaScript Set Object with JavaScript Tutorial
4. JavaScript Performance Optimization
5. [React Performance Optimization](/electives/optimization/performance-optim