Learning Goals

Skill Proficiencies

Academic success in B3 means that students demonstrate proficiency and comfort with the concepts below. The expected mastery level can be understood with the following scale:

• Mastery: student is able to explain and implement the concept independently or with light reference
• Functional: student recognizes when to use the concept and can implement it with the support of documentation and/or a collaborator
• Familiarity: student can recognize and describe the concept when needed/appropriate, but is not able to implement the technology/technique

Mastery

Object Oriented Programming

• Students are able to use classes and methods to make abstractions that improve code quality
• Students are able to write classes that demonstrate encapsulation of data
• Students are able to explain how their code achieves abstraction and encapsulation
• Students are able to apply MVC principles to separate responsibilities appropriately

APIs

• Students are able to expose an API.
• Students are able to consume external APIs

Testing

• Students are able to test external API consumption
• Students are able to test API exposure

Functional

Project Management

• Students use pull requests to organize discussion about features.
• Students communicate with product owners with regard to missing deadlines.
• Students document intent and usage of their code for effective collaboration.
• Students translate acceptance requirements into user stories that are ready for work.
• Students utilize project management tools to communicate across technical teams and stakeholders/clients.
• Students implement feedback from a code review to improve quality.
• Students provide feedback in the form of a code review to improve quality and share knowledge.
• Students are able to understand and build on an existing code base

Self-Directed Learning

• Students formulate questions by synthesizing what was expected vs what was observed.
• Students find resources online or in print to help them learn new technologies.
• Students read documentation and implement strategies described.
• Students ask meaningful questions.
  • Example: Don’t ask “How do I get this to work?” Instead, mention what has been tried, what happened, what was expected with a goal of understanding where you have made a wrong assumption.
• Students utilize mentors and other community members to identify and discuss the merits of various implementations.

APIs

• Students are able to use serializers to format json responses
• Students are able to authenticate users via OAuth
• Students are able to access the private resources of an OAuth-authenticated User

Advanced Rails

• Students are able to send email from a Rails app.

Testing

• Students are able to mock external HTTP requests using Webmock & VCR

Databases

• Students compose advanced ActiveRecord queries to analyze information stored in SQL databases.
• Students write basic SQL statements without the assistance of an ORM.

Familiar

Optimization

• Students are able to explain when to use caching strategies to improve performance in Rails.
• Students are able to explain the scenarios that would benefit from using background workers in Rails.
• Students are able to explain how indexes address slow queries.
• Students are able to avoid N + 1 queries

Front End Javascript

• Students are able to make API calls using fetch calls.
• Students are able to use jQuery to traverse and manipulate the DOM.