Colearn and Pair Program at TrueCar

We'll try having everyone swing by the bi-weekly hack night at TrueCar this week to mix with some senior developers. We can still pair up on projects as normal, just in a slightly different setting. Their meetup is listed on SFRuby (which you should really be a member of!) and it's probably helpful for them if you RSVP there as well:

https://www.meetup.com/sfruby/events/118098442/

The Usual Stuff:

Come on by for some casual co-learning and project pairing with other aspiring developers. You'll be able to pair up with others on the mini-projects listed in the Web Development 101 section of the curriculum (https://github.com/theodinproject/curriculum) (for HTML/CSS, Javascript, Ruby, and Rails), but you're welcome to work together on anything else that helps you learn!

If you'd like to schedule time outside of the meetup to work on one of the projects with someone, try our new soon-to-be-open-sourced scheduling tool: theodinproject.com/scheduler (http://www.theodinproject.com/scheduler)

General Things

This meetup follows the curriculum listed at github.com/TheOdinProject/curriculum (http://www.github.com/TheOdinProject/curriculum). Each week, we'll be facilitating opportunities to pair with other students on the projects of the curriculum and to ask questions. We will not be doing formal instruction.

You cannot learn web development in just a couple hours per week at a meetup -- you need to put in the time and effort outside this group to tackle the curriculum and find other students to pair with on the projects using the remote-pairing tools we've laid out. Our goal is to give you the path forward (via the curriculum) and help you identify the other students with whom you'd like to take this journey (and facilitate scheduling those via the scheduler). The rest is up to you!

Preparation

Try to get started on the curriculum and work your way up to one of the pairing-friendly mini-projects (in the Web Development 101 section) if you'd like to pair with someone on a real project. You don't need to, though -- we have people come who are at all points in the learning process.

1. If you're interested in giving Ruby or Rails a shot, go through the installation instructions (https://github.com/TheOdinProject/curriculum/blob/master/installations/installations.md) first.

2. Make a contribution or fix a bug on the curriculum! It doesn't have to be anything major at all but this will give you practice at making contributions to open source projects. See the section called "Contributing (https://github.com/TheOdinProject/curriculum/blob/master/contributing.md)" on the curriculum's main page.

3. Sign up for the forum/mailing list on Google Groups (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/learn-web-dev-meetup-sf) if you'd like.

4. Keep pairing up with each other whenever you can! We've now replaced the pair scheduling document with a real tool at theodinproject.com/scheduler (http://www.theodinproject.com/scheduler). If you have any feedback on that, let me know!

See you there!

FAQ:

Q: Do I need to bring my laptop?

A: Yes! Please have everything installed (as per the Installation Instructions (https://github.com/TheOdinProject/curriculum/blob/master/installations/installations.md)) as well.

Q: Do I have to have been to the previous meetups?

A: No, we usually have people from a variety of backgrounds working on a variety of projects. They tend to cluster around where we are "officially" at in the curriculum but it's not a big deal if you aren't there.

Q: What if I haven't even started yet?

A: Everyone starts somewhere, so come on by and you'll probably find someone in the same boat.