More than 16,000 students were expected to have graduated from approximately 70 coding bootcamps in the United States last year, according to Course Report’s 2015 Coding Bootcamp Survey. With the current and projected need to fill open tech positions around the South, the trend of building more coding bootcamps doesn’t seem to be stopping anytime soon.

We have mapped out the adult coding bootcamps that are currently operating in our southern states. The information for each location is currently basic, but we will continue to add more information in future versions.

*Click on the slider tab to the left to view the map by state.

Please help us keep this map updated! If you know of other coding bootcamps, please let us know by filling out the form below:

The post Where Are the Coding Bootcamps in the South? [map] appeared first on Startup Southerner.

Last month, the White House announced a new multi-billion-dollar Computer Science for All initiative, with a mission to provide every student a chance to learn CS in school. The commitment at the national level comes at a time when the dialogue, advocacy and regional mandates for more STEM education are at an all-time high. One of the key factors in creating such initiatives is that these skills, including coding, are necessary in order to participate in the current economic landscape.

I learned coding in school, too—at a coding bootcamp, at age 35. And one of my main reasons for deciding to quit a steady job to take a six-month deep dive into uncharted waters was to become armed with a skill set that would help guide me to broader career options in tech. This decision and subsequent completion of the program at Nashville Software School have already paid off. My current part-time positions are in software development, with hopes to eventually move toward UX strategy.

And, well, I started a business. What I didn’t expect that I would learn from learning to code were developing habits that have allowed me to galvanize skills and perspectives that I already had and then propel them into something useful, something better. Even if studying coding doesn’t lead everyone to pursue a career in software development, there are several lessons that can carry into life in general.

1. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable. In going through a coding bootcamp, new concepts are thrown at you day after day, practically every day for the duration of the program.  One concept may build on the previous one, but it was often frustrating when a new lesson was introduced before I had a chance to figure out the one I was previously working on.  

The reality is that this is often how life is. If we keep looking for that perfect moment to take control, you may never find it. That sense of discomfort is most often a clear sign that you’re learning something new. And that’s a good thing.

2. You don’t really know it until you do it. There’s really no other way to get better at coding than to write the code yourself. No matter how many tutorials you watch or Stack Overflow posts you discover with the so-called best solution, the supposed academic understanding of a concept really doesn’t count as understanding anything at all. By having to actually take action, it also means learning this next lesson.

3. Make Mistakes. In choosing to learn code, you’re also choosing to make mistakes. And for many of us who have lived a lifetime trying to avoid those dreaded pitfalls of life, the idea of making mistakes to become better seems like a really bad idea. But those mistakes you make in code are not permanent by any means, and they’re also the only way to make progress toward the solution.

4. Versioning means there’s room to keep getting better. Because the turnaround time on projects comes quick in a coding bootcamp, you learn to set priorities on what’s enough for the MVP (minimum viable product) of version 1.0, with expectations that the other features would be built in subsequent versions. For me, I’ve applied this sort of iterative method to working on my personal well-being. It’s OK to not be your desired self now. What really matters is that you are making incremental progress toward a bigger goal.

The post 4 Startup Lessons I Learned at Coding Bootcamp appeared first on Startup Southerner.

For Nicole Ahima, dance has always been a passion. And as artistic director of Music City Dance Alliance, she’s been developing the vision and associated programs that help grow a new generation of dancers.

Now, she is ready to do another sort of development—software. In January, Ahima was among the twelve graduates of Nashville Software School’s inaugural evening cohort.  

“It’s definitely been rewarding. It was scary. It was hard,” Ahima told Nashville podcaster Clark Buckner at the demo day on Jan. 13. “At the end of the day, I’m really excited for what the future holds after a year here.”

The capstone project she presented at the demo day incorporated both her passions. Built on HTML/CSS with a C# and .NET backend framework, her sign-in application for Dance World of Nashville allows the office to cut out its reliance on paper-based forms.

A 2010 graduate of Middle Tennessee State University with a major in psychology, she thought the hardest part of going through the year-long coding program was in relearning how to learn. “After not having to learn and study in so long and then coming in here and learning something completely from scratch, it’s definitely been an adjustment,” says Ahima, who realized her love for the “clean, simple, visual” work of front-end development.

And a career as a front-end developer is what she hopes to land soon. As she searches for opportunities in Nashville, she is already broadening her skill sets by enrolling in the NSS professional development course on UX and UI for digital product design.

Catch all interviews by Clark Buckner with all the newest graduates of Nashville Software School here.  

The post From Dancer to Coder: Meet Nicole Ahima appeared first on Startup Southerner.

‘Founder’s Tech – Tech trends, tips and advice for founders, entrepreneurs and bootstrappers’ is a recurring column by Jake Hare, founder of Nashville-based Launchpeer, a web & mobile application development agency focused on startups, entrepreneurs and bootstrappers.

There is so much documentation out on the Internet regarding this. Most articles talk about how code is at the core of tech startups, especially SaaS (software as a service), which has become an increasingly popular area for bootstrappers and entrepreneurs to get into because of the promise of monthly recurring revenue. Who wouldn’t want to build such a business?

The problem with the idea that founders should learn to code is time. How realistic is it for hopeful founders to spend the time needed to learn to code, and I’m not talking about WordPress or simple HTML and CSS, but an actual application framework such as Ionic, Ruby or countless others that will yield a usable web or mobile application. Even if it’s just building a minimum viable product, it’s difficult to spend hours of your day, oftentimes after already working eight hours at a full-time job that pays the bills, to learn to code. There are a lucky few who have the time and money to attend schools like Nashville Software School or The Iron Yard for months on end, but that’s simply not realistic for most. For most, it’s spending time on sites like Codecademy or Code.org trying to pick up some knowledge, which could take months if not years to master enough to fully build what you need, if you were electing to build on your own.

At the end of the day founders should ask themselves why they should learn to code. If the answer is to build your MVP inexpensively and quickly, that’s likely not a correct assumption. The reason a founder should learn to code is actually something quite different. It’s really to know enough that you don’t get screwed by the freelancers or developers you hire to build your product. At Launchpeer at least half of our clients come to us with an existing, often horrible, code base, with the founder or team having worked with freelancers in the past, writing code in a silo with little checks on the work they were performing. Best-case scenario is the code actually works, but is buggy; worst-case scenario the team gets something that doesn’t work at all, all while they were billed some hourly rate that ended up being for nothing. The reasons for this are often the same: the founder or team didn’t know enough about code to provide meaningful assistance in terms of application requirements, didn’t know enough about code to know what items should be worked on first and for how many hours, and didn’t know the best framework for their situation to begin with. This leaves the founder at the whim of the freelancer, who doesn’t have near as much invested in the business venture as the founder.

The reason a founder should learn to code is actually something quite different. It’s really to know enough that you don’t get screwed by the freelancers or developers you hire to build your product.

In short, a founder should definitely learn how to code. Not necessarily enough to build a full application, but enough to know how long some features will take to build over others. Enough to know that their application should be a native app instead of a hybrid app because of the features being built. Enough that when their freelancer or development team is running into problems, the founder understands, at least at a high level, what the issue is and can provide assistance or prioritize certain items over others.

If you’re a founder trying to learn how to code, and you have the time to attend a code school, then definitely do it. Our agency has hired developers out of The Iron Yard and other schools, and the training they provide is definitely enough to build an MVP. But, if you’re like most entrepreneurs and you’re busy working a full-time gig, hustling part-time to build your startup, then elect for something like Udemy, Pluralsight or Codecademy if you’re OK with self-guided modules that can teach you the basics. If you’re looking for something a little more intense with the help of a mentor try the online programs at Bloc or Thinkful, both fairly costly but come with a mentor who you can meet with regularly.

The post Why Founders Should Learn to Code (It’s Not Why You Think) appeared first on Startup Southerner.