A thorough look at the competence and skills of our Junior-Mid Developers
10 months ago - 3 minute(s) read
The Zega Bootcamp has ended its second edition at the beginning of 2023, producing a class of highly competitive Junior-Mid Developers. Within six months on a project, they can achieve the Middle seniority without much difficulty. This says a lot about the intense eight to ten months course that we developed with a sense of urgency and responsibility towards the market. In today's article we are looking at the achievements of our graduates and where they now stand as a seniority.
Overview
The initial seven months of our fast-paced bootcamp focused on core frontend and backend technologies. During this time, the students had the chance to build real-world projects as part of a team of 20 engineers, as well as deep-dive into the core of each learned technology.
Technologies
The technologies taught during the Bootcamp are diverse, covering Backend, Frontend, Storage, Testing, Methodologies and even some more from other categories. Here they are, arranged as per the aforementioned categories: Java, Spring (Boot, Security, Data, Cloud), JPa, Hibernate, RESTful APIs, JavaScript, TypeScript, ES6, HTML5, CSS, Bootstrap, ReactJS, PosgreSQL, MS SQL Server, Firebase, Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Git, Kafka, Maven, Jira, OpenAPI, Redis, Keycloack, Kubernetes, JUnit 5, Mockito, JaCoCo.
Understanding JAVA at an advanced level
In order to reach in a timely manner advanced Java knowledge, the students first had to understand Data Structures and Algorithms. This included a comprehensive list of concepts, such as arrays, linked lists, stacks, queues, trees, graphs, sorting, searching and complexity analysis. This paved the way for comprehensive understanding of Java Core 11-18, including syntax and semantics, collections, I/O, generics, annotations, and concurrent programming. On top of all this, fundamentals on Functional Programming and Object Oriented Programming were taught in order to complement the Java course.
The cherry on top - building a performant ERP product for our HR
The students built a web application that provides comprehensive HR functionalities to streamline business operations. The system features a centralized database for managing employee information, including benefits, time off requests, and performance reviews.
Let's have a look at the architecture of this product:
● Microservices architecture for backend implementation.
● Hexagonal architecture pattern used for microservices creation.
● Communication between services is done using Rest API / Feign Client.
● Application containerized and managed by Kubernetes Cluster.
● Microservices are secured using Spring Security and Keycloak for Identity and Access Management.
● APIs are built using API first approach through OpenAPI with Swagger.
● PostgreSQL database used for the persistence layer.
As for their responsibilities, the students had to maintaing the technical infrastructure through continuous integration, continuous delivery and deployment. They also used Liquibase to manage database changes, they designed and developed new microservices which provide RESTful APIs, they did code review and pair programming.
These results are quite impressive for less than a year of hard work and study, both theoretical and individual practice. The aim of the course was to prepare highly skilled developers, ready for demanding clients that might hesitate in hiring developers with the Junior seniority. As such, our Junior-Mid Developers have the acumen and training to level-up on their own, in a very short time frame (six months), under the loose supervision of a Senior. We are pleased and at the same time hope to raise the bar for every coding school out there, knowing that many students have difficulties in landing a position after graduation.
