For those who have dreamed of developing a cool cell-phone app or designing a hot new Web site, Palm Beach County’s first brick-and-mortar coding school is coming to town Nov. 3.
Palm Beach Code School will offer morning and evening classes in a structured setting that teaches students the essentials of computer programming, enabling them to build their own front- and back-end software.
“One of my reasons for starting the school was to create a program that taught the fundamentals of Web development to help fill the projected 20-percent increase in job growth for Web developers over the next 10 years,” said Jim York, the school’s founder.
Professionals with skills in CSS, HTML, Javascript, JQuery, MySQL, PHP and some of the other programming languages are in high demand. A quick search on Indeed.com proves it, as more than 2,000 available jobs in Florida are listed on the site. Simplyhired.com lists more than 19,000 jobs. Both put the average salary at $70,000.
“The school commits to doing our very best to help graduates with placement in the industry,” York said. “Florida law prohibits any schools from making blanket guarantees of employment, but we will do our best to match up our graduates with Florida tech companies seeking to fill positions.”
The classes will take place in a Palm Beach Gardens office suite and comprise four parts: an introduction to coding, design and graphics; writing code, both basic and complex; establishing and managing a database of Web pages; and a capstone project, in which students will walk away with an original Web site. All of the curriculum is state-certified, and a diploma will be issued upon completion of the school’s educational requirements.
Students can attend an eight-week morning class that runs from 9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays or a 16-week evening class that runs from 6:30 to 10 p.m. either Mondays / Wednesdays or Tuesdays / Thursdays. Tuition is $3,250.
“The training program is geared toward working professionals, recent high-school or college graduates, career changers, as well as gamers, who want to learn the current skills and new programming languages to either jumpstart or advance their careers – in months, not years – all at an affordable tuition,” York said.
Each student must pass a 25-question aptitude test in order to be accepted into the school. Those who don’t pass the test can enroll in a three-week primer course that teaches the basic Web technologies needed in the flagship course. The fee is $400.
“The educational objective of the Palm Beach Code School’s training program is that each graduate will be qualified for junior Web-developer positions,” York said. “We are teaching people the programming skills and languages needed for the jobs of tomorrow.”
York is an accomplished education executive specializing in career-school start-ups. He founded the Palm Beach Film School in 2003 and oversaw the release of 300 productions in the institute’s eight years. Prior to that, he expanded North Palm Beach’s Connecticut School of Broadcasting by opening locations in Davie and Tampa.
York has hired two Web-savvy instructors to teach Palm Beach Code School’s classes – Kim Moser and Paul Needham. Moser is a New York Institute of Technology graduate with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. He works as a freelance programmer and Web designer for clients all over the country. His area of expertise is programming Web sites for big businesses.
“I program Web sites every day using the same skills I’ll be teaching,” Moser said. “These are the basic technologies that, these days, are standard tools for any good Web developer. They are necessary skills required to do any serious type of Web development.”
Additional languages that will be offered are Apache, GitHub, Python and Ruby on Rails.
“My main goal is to make sure that people come away with an understanding of these technologies to the point where they feel comfortable so they can apply for a job and have the skills they need to do that job,” Moser said. “Let’s face it – if everyone could learn these programming languages on their own, there would be no need for schools.”
Needham graduated from Florida State University with bachelor’s degrees in business and political science, and he is pursuing a master’s in information systems. He works as the IT director at a private school in Hobe Sound.
“You must teach coding properly. Many programs only teach students how to copy and paste and don’t teach them how the actual code works. Good coders are very difficult to find,” Needham said. “In this class, they’re going to understand how to code before they walk out the door, there’s no doubt about it.”
For information, call 561-855-6575, email info@palmbeachcodeschool.com or visit palmbeachcodeschool.com.
Recent Comments