RMOTR

This course was definitely a challenge, and it was definitely worth it.  Rmotr's teacher and mentor teams pushed me to learn features of the language I was not familiar with through readings, lectures, examples, and exercises, and they encouraged me to ask questions along the way.  They did a great job of answering my immediate questions accurately and thoroughly, and giving me good recommendations on what documents to read to go deeper.  The course included an impressive 12 programming projects, and looking back on it, I am surprised at all we were able to accomplish in the short span of time the course occupied.

I was cautiously optimistic about the course going into it.  I've had bad experiences in the past using glitchy web conferencing services, and using web-based dev environments don't give you too little freedom to really learn how to work with a language.  However, the conferencing tools the Rmotr team chose made lectures and coding sessions feel like they were in-person.  And they walked us through the steps of getting set up on a cloud coding platform that reminded me of working on my home computer.  I've even used it for personal projects since the course finished!

My confidence in my programming abilities has increased sharply since I completed the course.  In addition to the language-specific topics Rmotr advertised in the course description, I gained great experience working on coding projects as part of a team, reviewing and commenting on code written by others, writing tests for my code, ensuring my code was version-independent, and deploying my code on the Python Package Index.  I would recommend this course to anyone who has a basic grasp of Python or some other programming language, who desires to become a Python expert, and who is willing to get down and dirty for a few intense weeks of coding.

If you know python, but need some motivation in taking it to the next level, this course is for you. You will learn, the advanced concepts of python such as Functional Programming, Context Managers, Classes and Decorators, Web Development using Flask and not only that, you will learn when you should be using what. 

The pre-reading compiled for the classes are exhaustive, and an excellent compilation on the best of the material available on the internet. 

The most fun part for me were the group assignments,  where the assignments given to use were actual real life problems, and the solution that was expected from us were nothing short of production ready code. Collaboration with other people on the course on the group projects was awesome, and doing code reviews on other groups submissions made me a better programmer. 

You will learn how to use virtualenv effectively, create production ready Web Applications, learn the best practices for many things, including choosing the architecture for login based applications, how to structure your database etc. You will learn how to effectively write tests cases, and how to use py.test to test your code as you develop your application. 

Most importantly you will enjoy!

Rmotr.com is a fantastic programming class/bootcamp. I'm no stranger to online learning - CodeAcademy, Coursera, e-books - I've tried it all. One criticism of online learning is the isolation one can feel as they plow through a 'stack' of pre-made content, whether that's a set of chapters in a book or a queue of pre-recorded videos. It's easy to become disconnected. Santiago and Martin are doing a tremendous job bridging structured content with collaboration based learning - creating a virtual learning environment that's both effective and fun for students.

Rmotr.com builds upon students' knowledge of basic concepts in Python programming by focusing on building data-intensive projects and following good industry habits like TDD. A student will utilize OOP principles and advanced syntax features as they get their hands dirty with API development and basic web programming. Perhaps the most important highlight is the emphasis on group programming. Using a variety of web-based tools, students must learn to effectively communicate ideas, collaborate in shared workspaces and manage contributions linked to shared codebases through version control in order to succeed.

Not coincidentally, these are the kinds of soft skills aspiring engineers must have if they wish to succeed in the "real world" of development, and so students start practicing from the very start. For me this was the most challenging but also the most rewarding aspect of Rmotr.com. I'm still friends with some of my classmates, and we continue working on projects today!

This is more of an intermediate course, so make sure you have a grasp of fundamentals before signing-up. Things move quick, and expect to get your hands dirty early. You will learn a lot - you've been warned!

 

The best part of the course was getting to work on the group projects with other students. Trying to teach yourself can be a really draining experience sometimes (I am a long time sufferer of "analysis paralysis"), so having a guided curriculum and fellow classmates was a fantastic experience.

The course goes over a lot of topics in a short time, and true to its name ("advanced python programming") you will get more out of it if you are decently familiar with programming. The last quarter of the class is heavily focused on web development.

Rmotr was not just a class but also a collaboration between dedicated students and passionate mentors. The program aimed to go beyond just teaching the fundamentals of programming using a popular programming language, python, but provided the tools and environment so that newer developers would be well equipped to dive into the world of web development. Due to the nature of the course’s speed, the first couple of weeks were to ensure that all students were able to implement basic concepts such as conditionals, loops and simple data structures (lists, dictionaries, sets, etc.). The following weeks dove into intermediate topics including generators, decorators, comprehensions and object oriented programming (OOP).   Each topic was not just thoroughly discussed but put into practice through easy to intermediate assignments. In-session assignments were usually solved through a group effort which in addition, assured that all students were on the same page before moving on to the next task. I can admittedly say that, initially, I had some difficulty with the concept of working on smaller problems as a group. Having taught myself for the months prior, I was able to rush through most of the problems. However, taking the time to discuss the problem as a group had taught me something that most technical books would never cover: how to effectively communicate with a team. Through smaller sessions of group programming, it was evident that we all had slight variations in approaching a specific problem. The mere act of verbally explaining the mental steps that I took would lead to one of two benefits. It would either help another student better understand the approach or it would provide a window for discussion which almost always has led to a better method in solving the task at hand. Both those outcomes were huge successes in my book.    Following weeks were then spent on further reviewing object oriented concepts (inheritance, abstract classes, polymorphism, encapsulation) and taking the time to understand how a relational database functioned. These two tasks were critical during the development of the web app. Instead of blindly using an ORM, we would now be able to identify what commands were being initiated by SQLAlchemy methods. Structuring the configuration file around object oriented design, we were able to reduce the repetitiveness of the file but also make it easier to switch amongst the different environments (development, testing,  production). The benefits of writing clear and concise programs was becoming increasingly evident as the project developed.    As you may have guessed at this point, the last weeks were not class hangouts but geared towards diving into web development. I want to point out that most of the students had very little to no experience developing any type of web app. With the minimal supervision of the mentors, the students were set free to devise, organize and create a Flask app by the end of a given deadline. To emulate a working environment, groups would meet to discuss the scope of a given project, and to provide a proposal that outlined both the features and purpose of the app. The project would span for a total of four weeks, where a part of each week was spent in researching and building the app. Using Flask was an excellent choice for an intro to web development because it required the developers to pull the various components of the web app together which would teach the valuable lesson of reading through documentation. At the end of the four weeks, Santi and Martin had organized a demo day in which professional developers from various backgrounds provided well needed feedback of our apps. The developers asked questions which felt similar to code reviews. There were many questions about testing that I personally would keep in mind for future projects.   By the final day of the program, I felt not only accomplished of what I have learned but also gained a small but close community of developers that I was more than willing to work with.  

I've been learning to code on my own for a few years now.  I've gone through many books and online courses ranging from free to expensive, and I've completed a lot of coding challenges and exercises.  I got to a point where I felt like I had written so much code that I should be ready to build things that other people can use.  However, nearly every time I tried to write something from scratch I would stare blankly at my empty text editor, not knowing where to start, how to design or structure a program, how to create a whole product starting just from an idea, or how to break down a large objective into smaller pieces.  Sometimes I might make it work, but I would be frustrated and annoyed the whole time and it would take me ages to finally complete it.  How could I feel like I had no idea what I was doing when I've written so much code and solved so many problems successfully?

These resources I had been using all these years that made it easy for me to learn made it too easy.  It was too easy to solve each objective, and while I might have learned some syntax, logic or a nifty language feature, I wasn't really learning how to think like a programmer.  Programming isn't all that intuitive, despite languages and frameworks maturing and being updated with powerful new features.  Programming is ultimately writing instructions for a computer -- a dumb, fast machine -- that just does what you tell it to do, which is the problem.

The most valuable and powerful thing I learned through this course that made me feel like a better programmer who finally made it to the next level was not about Python, or fancy techniques, or code design.  It was the realization that programming is hard.  It's really hard, and it can't be made easy no matter how you break it apart.  And you shouldn't want it to be made easy, or at least I don't want it to anymore after this experience of working on multiple challenging projects per week for a month.  I've grown vastly more in the month of the course as a programmer than I had in the previous multiple years of learning to code the easy way.

Oh Python, you beautiful nasty devil.  I love you.  I hate you.  You make me feel smart.  You make me feel stupid.  You make me feel powerful.  You make me feel ill.  I previously only thought highly of Python and programming in general because it was so easy, but I hadn't realized I was rarely doing anything incredibly complicated with it.  Being challenged stretches you out in different directions and it mangles you as you travel around on an emotional and mental rollercoaster going from singing eurekas to shouting obscenities, but you come out of it an improved version of yourself.  That can be quite an uncomfortable experience during the ride, especially if you're doing it alone.  Thanks to rmotr, I didn't go through it alone.  I had fellow students alongside me who were getting beat up too, and we had the wonderful teachers and mentors to guide us and unstick us when we were too bloodied to go on.

And those fine folks are the value you're paying for.  The teachers spent the time laying out the curriculum, which is structured expertly with a concise weekly lecture and 12 fun projects that very effectively get to the heart of each concept and test your understanding at all times.  You don't just get high quality mentorship, or their well-designed code examples and explanations.  All of this has culminated in coding experience that has caused me to lose the hesitation to experiment, gain confidence to break things, and enjoy collaboration.

You can put any price tag you want on information, and that's what much of the education field is comprised of, unfortunately.  Who needs to consume information as their education when we live in a world that runs on information technology?  Almost no one nowadays.  These education systems are outdated.  People don't need to learn information, they need to learn how to learn, think, and solve problems.  People pay tens of thousands of dollars or more for university (credentials + information), ten to twenty thousand dollars for in-person coding bootcamps (interview prep + information + coding with other people in a desk-filled room), and a bit of money here and there for online courses or books (information).  There's mostly nothing wrong with any of those options depending on your situation, but they might be relatively wasteful or ineffective if there's a better way.  

If formative experiences are invaluable, information is abundant, and a person's time is scarce, how do you arrive at only $300 (or free if you get approved for their scholarship) for a month-long course that results in a formative experience that empowers you to be the productive, efficient programmer you've imagined you could be but couldn't figure out how on your own?  That must be rare, or perhaps even unprecedented.

This is an excellent course.  Working with other on collaborative group projects is a skill I'd never exercised before, and they introduced it right away.  The materials are well set up, and lead right into the exercises.  

This is a programming class; you're going to be writing a LOT of code, which is really the only way to learn.  With some team mates to rely on, you can quickly get unstuck and learn a lot.

The mentors, which are always available on slack, are quick to jump on any questions you have, and can help dive into your code to provide a quick lesson or get you back on track.

They could charge a lot more and it would still be worth it.

I'm convinced teaching is not for everybody. But Santiago and Martin got exactly what it takes, they have a gift for listening to people's questions, the patience to try to understand them, and the interest to resolve them.

The program is great for intermediate and advanced Python devs, it goes through some cool stuff, like decorators and iterators. I was able to apply some of those tricks right away, at work.

The networking is also fantastic, you get to meet/work with some cool people. I think the group work was my favourite part of the course, and looking at the project through the eyes of my teammates, looking at them try to solve the problem, was a great learning experience.

I'm sure the course/system has some aspects that can be worked on, but you'll notice these guys are brushing up their codebase daily, pushing fixes, and just improving overall.

Just for the chance of working with these instructors, and some cool teammates, the course it totally worth taking, imo.

 

Getting through the beginning of learning to code is quite easy. There is so much information on the internet out there for beginners learning to code, give me 5 minutes and I'll find you 20 different guides on getting Python running, and how to use the terminal and an IDE.

There are drastically fewer resources for intermediate programmers though. Once you get past the point of learning how to make a for loop, or having knowledge on all the basic data structures, you're left on your own. The next level of what you're told to do is "Go make a project of something you find fun!", and you're entirely lost.

I'll be completely honest, I think if you're dedicated enough, have the right mindset, have a really good work ethic, and have the time, you're probably able to get through that hurdle on your own and you don't need this class. 

Unfortunately for us, and fortunately for Santiago and Martin, I'd say 99% of the people in the world who are trying to learn to code don't fit those requirements. This class gives you the direction and focus you need to help you break through that intermediate wall. A journey that on my own probably would've taken me a year, I feel like I've gone through just this last month.

The basic structure of the class is like this: You have some solo reading with some homework to help you force yourself to apply the reading, you have a couple of classes where they go more indepth into the reading, and then you have the meat of the class, and the most helpful part, the group coding sessions. Every week you get a new group of people, and you get 3 coding assignments where you really start to grow as a developer. Each assignment isn't a small project you run a simple script for and get the output and return that, it feels like you're doing a professional level project, and helps you get in the proper mindset and to learn many of the best practices.

I do stress that this class isn't for beginners. They spend barely any time on the bare essentials like for loops or syntax, so you're going to have to know all that before you even apply. If you can't write a loop to get all the odd numbers out of a given list, for example, look at some of the beginner resources again. If on the other hand that looks incredibly easy to you, just go ahead and apply!

I guess to summarize, I highly recommend the class, the structure and reading material really felt helpful to my progress as a developer, and to get past the initial hump of lack-of-direction. I feel a lot more confident in my abilities to do larger projects. 

I greatly enjoyed Rmotr's advanced python course. They gave rigorous treatment to iterators & generators, oop, decorators, and web frameworks. We also covered use of a number of popular modules & packages including SQLite, pymongo, flask, beautifulsoup among others.

One of the best aspects of the course was the group programming -- ranging from 2-3 people and tackling challenging code projects, complete with unit testing.

Overall the support structure, presentation of content and hands-on practice came together for a great course. I learned a ton.

 

 

I highly recommend the Advanced Python Programming class from rmotr for anyone looking to take their programming to the next level.

One great aspect of the course is participating in live group programming. We were given three assignments a week to complete in a group of 2 or 3 people. Each student had different backgrounds and we were able to share expertise on different subjects. We learned how to come up with a plan to tackle the problems as a group, and how to split up different areas in an efficient manner. I had previously taken online courses through coursera and edX, but rmotr's group programming approach really revolutionized the online education system. It was an amazing experience to work side-by-side on a program with someone on the opposite side of the world. This gave me the chance to really get to know my fellow students and form a network of support and possible collaborations going forward.

A second aspect I enjoyed was the assignments themselves. They rose in difficulty in a way that built on itself. Early assignments introduced classes, iterators, and decorators while later assignments made use of these features in an intuitive way. This class was particularly good for me because I had always been intimidated to jump into web development. I never knew what packages to use or what project to try. This class gave me the push I needed to just start doing it, and provided a solid groundwork in web development that can be applied to whatever tools you are using. For everything I learned about writing actual Python code, I learned even more about the higher-level aspects of programming such as understanding packages, working with github, unit-testing, and even submitting a package to PyPI. 

This class packed a ton of experience and information into a short amount of time. Although I am by no means an expert in the subjects covered, I know have a solid groundwork and the confidence I can tackle new problems that I couldn't before.