All courses in the Preparatory phase are completely free and regardless of your background, this is where you should start. In the first course, we'll cover what software development is, what the job market looks like for developers, and prescribe a learning path for you to reach your goals. The subsequent preparatory courses are pre-requisites for the Back-end and Front-end phases. These preparatory courses will walk you through everything you need to get started. This includes using the command line, working with git and GitHub, HTML/CSS, and an introduction to your first programming language.

The courses in this phase will provide you with a solid foundation in general programming and problem solving with Ruby, and teach you modern web application development from the ground up. After completing this phase, you should have a solid understanding of how to break down problems and express your solution and ideas in code. You'll also be exposed to server-side web application development and be comfortable working with stateless server-side code. Finally, you'll fully understand the protocol underlying web development, HTTP, and how to work with relational databases and SQL.

This phase will focus on HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and the various tools and practices professional Front-end developers use. By the end of this phase, you'll have a good grasp of how HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, are used to create interactive web pages. Along the way, we’ll prepare you to learn any Front-end framework/library by mastering and using vanilla JavaScript for interacting with the DOM.

Once you have a solid grasp of a programming language and the fundamentals of web development, it's time to level up and learn professional grade software development frameworks, engineering processes, and architectural concerns. We'll take apart popular frameworks, like Ruby on Rails and Backbone, and use agile processes to prototype, build, grow, and maintain production quality applications and integrate with other services using web APIs.

These courses are not mandatory and are optional electives you can take after completing the primary courses. Some of these courses serve as supplementary material for Capstone participants.