How Yandex prepares front-end vendors. From the Coursera program to university courses

    We in Yandex not only work a lot with the front-end, but also share our experience with others. For six years of teaching practice, we have launched various training formats, which we will tell Habr readers about today.

    We hope these materials will help both novice developers and those who want to learn additional knowledge based on practice.



    So, you decided to become a front-end. On the Internet you can find a variety of courses, articles, books and other materials. But where to start? We recommend starting your journey by learning the basic tools: javascript, html and css. Still, frameworks and libraries are secondary. They were born as a result of solving specific problems; understanding these problems will allow for the most efficient use of modern tools.

    Online specialization on Curser


    The advantage of online education is that it is accessible to all, regardless of age and geography. Therefore, we begin the story with him.

    The basis of the specialization is part of the program that we have been teaching at the Ural Federal University for several years (which is discussed below). Every year, announcing courses in Ural Federal University, we received many questions from students and graduates of other universities and cities: “I also want to attend courses. Are there any alternative options? ”Or“ I’m not from Yekaterinburg and I want to become a front-endander. What will you advice me?". Your questions inspired us to the online format.

    Cursor program consists of five parts:


    Courses about the layout do not require virtually any training. Learning the basics of JavaScript is harder: teachers expect that you can already program in some object-oriented or functional language (for example, C ++, C #, Java, Python, or Haskell).

    Courses at the university


    The courses of development of interfaces in Yekaterinburg we spend the third year. They are designed for students of technical and mathematical specialties and are held at the Ural Federal University for two semesters (autumn + spring).

    In the first semester, we give students two courses: Layout and JavaScript. Here only lectures and homework. It was this part that formed the basis for the specialization on the Curser.

    In the second semester - one course. Here we talk about all the trends and fashion trends that exist in the development of interfaces. In addition to homework guys are divided into teams and work on the project.

    Lectures can be viewed on the video.
    See the 1st semester playlist (fall 2017) and the 2nd semester (spring 2016) .

    Blended learning


    Many letters and questions arrive to us, not only from the guys taking the first steps in the frontend, but also from universities throughout the country. They invite us to make presentations at job fairs and student conferences, to conduct courses. Unfortunately, we can not always live in a tour format to come to all universities. So the idea of ​​blended learning was born. It was first implemented in cooperation with Innopolis University in the spring of 2018.

    At the beginning of the semester, the students studied the basics as part of their specialization on the Curser, once a week they met with a teacher for a consultation. In the middle of the semester in the format of lectures, we told the necessary minimum for creating a full-fledged web application. In the end - the guys took part in the hackathon, consolidated their knowledge. With blended learning, we will continue to experiment.

    I have already mastered the basic tools. What's next?


    Further vector and inspiration for development will help get the School of Interface Development. This is our first event for training interface developers. For the first time we held a school in 2012. The reason for its appearance is simple: we lacked specialists of the appropriate profile.

    The school lasts two to three months and takes place at the base of the Yandex office. During the School there are three blocks:

    • At first, the guys listen to theoretical material, during the existence of the Interface Development School, we have accumulated a large video base
    • lectures are accompanied by homework, it allows you to consolidate the material and experiment within a specific topic, tasks are usually creative - everyone will find a field for experiments;
    • work on the project in teams.

    We invite to the School all who already have basic knowledge in the field of frontend. Typically, at the entrance of the school participants have to solve several test tasks - on Layout, JS and related technologies.

    The school this time will be held in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Simferopol. Acceptance of work will close between August 22 and 31 - as soon as there are a sufficient number of applicants with a well-executed task.

    I am already an accomplished fender. Do you have anything for me?


    Especially for you, we are preparing a completely different format - the Yandex. Blitz competition on the frontend. You will be able to break your head over interesting tasks similar to those that our developers have to solve every day, fight for the cash prize and get on the radars of Yandex recruiters.

    The competition will be held in October. Not to forget, pre- register .

    Results


    By 2018, we managed to teach 397 students at the School of Interface Development, about 100 - at courses in UrFU and 28 people during blended studies in Innopolis. The HTML & CSS and JavaScript courses on the Cursor now have 4470 and 4388 active participants, respectively. More than 500 people have already received certificates for at least one of the courses.

    We are constantly looking for new formats of learning and exchange of experience. Tell us what materials or activities on the frontend would be useful for you.

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