[Launch School] Community Update - January 7th, 2022

[:tada:] Happy New Year, everyone! [:tada:] It’s Jessica here with your first Community Update of 2022. I hope you all had a happy holiday season and have been enjoying a great start to the new year. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to stop dilly-dallying so much, so let’s get into this update already! A New Year Gift for our Wonderful Students! Starting our year off on a generous note, Chris would like to purchase a license to The Coding Career Handbook as a special Happy New Year gift to all of you who make Launch School as spectacular and supportive as it is. To request a license, all you need to do is [follow the instructions on this Reddit post](. The instructions will ask you to share a comment or tweet about how Launch School has helped you in some way (an easy task for all, I'm sure! [:wink:]). Please note, this gift will be available to actively subscribed students who complete the above by January 13th. Community Discussion How long will it take? This is the question posed in one of our longest-running threads on our [Community Forum](. The answer varies widely, yet it’s been immensely helpful to have many former and current Launch School students share their experiences and advice. Charles recently graduated from Core (congrats Charles!) and shared a bit about [his own journey](. Highly recommend checking it out for many encouraging gems of wisdom! Sharing/Articles Take a break from scrolling through cat videos on YouTube and head over to [Felicia’s YouTube channel](, which includes a treasure trove of videos on interesting topics ranging from the [pros and cons of Launch School]( and her [experience]( here thus far, to fun chats with fellow students [James]( and [Katarina](. There is so much to be gained from the many amazing people here, so thank you to Felicia for opening up about your own journey and for taking the time to learn more about our peers! Many of us know Stephanie as “That Awesome Launch School Student Who’s Really Good At Codewars”, so she probably knows a thing or two about solving problems. In [this article](stephaniecunnane/high-quality-thinking-for-software-engineers-c38d1a58c5ef), Stephanie presents a wealth of ideas, principles, and self-imposed questions that have helped her promote high-quality thinking to facilitate effective problem solving as a software engineer. It’s one of those articles you’ll want to bookmark and go back to time and time again! Podcasts and Q&As In our last Community Update, we announced a special end-of-December chat, upcoming Capstone presentations, and told you all to keep a lookout for the release of our final Podcast episode of 2021. Recordings for all are now available! Here's a reminder of what you can check out: Some of the highlights of last year were our Podcast episodes covering a wide range of subjects important to our community. In our [final episode]( of Season 3, Chris, Callie, and Mandy wind down on 2021 by reflecting on their favorite moments of the past season. Mandy and Callie share what’s ahead for them, and Chris teases exciting possibilities and new directions for Season 4, as well as goals for Launch School in the new year and beyond. Special thank you to Callie and Mandy for all the work you put into producing such brilliant Podcast episodes last year! The Deferred Payment Program was launched a little over a year ago, and since then, our first two participants, Adam and Graham, have already gone on to launch fulfilling software engineering careers. They sat down for a [Q&A session]( to answer questions about Launch School, DPP, the job search, and life as working software engineers post-Launch School. Capstone Presentations If you missed the live presentations for our latest Capstone Cohort's projects, not to worry, we’ve got you covered with the recordings here too! First up, Callie, Jose, Juan, and Richard give a whole new meaning to “keeping a close eye on things” with [Horus]( an open-source observability solution for small microservices. Users can generate, store, and visualize correlated telemetry data, allowing them to see the real-time health of their application. Jenae, Jordan, Michael, and Yujohn prove there’s nothing they can’t do with [Able]( a framework for A/B testing of Jamstack applications. It allows a developer to deploy multiple variants of an application with a git-based workflow, and track the performance of each variant. Able can deploy the open-source web analytics tool Umami on AWS infrastructure, or it can be configured to work with another analytics tool of your choice. Caleb, Sam, Tzvi, and Yue worked in harmony on [Aria]( an open-source canary deployment tool that enables high-fidelity analysis of service revisions in production environments. Aria allows users to customize deployments to accommodate their specific service needs while abstracting away much of the onerous infrastructure definition, deployment execution, and monitoring configuration. I imagine Justin, Rana, Regina, and Sam developing away in a virtual cabin of clever ideas when they built [Lodge]( an open-source, self-managed logging framework for small, distributed applications. Aneesh, Dylan, Jay, and Justin gave an electric presentation on [Synapse]( an open-source solution for building, deploying, and monitoring a GraphQL Gateway. Synapse enables you to put your legacy APIs behind a single GraphQL endpoint. It allows you to easily deploy your new Gateway onto serverless AWS infrastructure and monitor requests made to the gateway. And last but certainly not least, there were clear skies ahead for Alex, Minh, Raul, and Stephanie’s presentation of [Monsoon]( an open-source, serverless framework for running browser-based load tests in the cloud. It allows users to easily test their single-page application in anticipation of traffic spikes or overall business growth. Monsoon can simulate loads of up to 20,000 concurrent users, and tests can be of any duration, from minutes to weeks or longer. Users can also see their load test results visualized in a near real-time dashboard. Study Groups and Other Upcoming Events The Launch School Women's Group’s [next meet-up]( will take place on Sunday, January 9th at 2:00pm Eastern/11:00am Pacific time. They will be having a focused discussion on New Year Goals and Objectives, as well as a general Q&A about the curriculum and assessments for newcomers to Launch School or those who have just started a new course. These meetups are a fantastic opportunity to meet and chat with other women and non-binary folks in the Launch School community, so don’t be shy! Check out [this post]( for more details. We’ve built a lovely community connecting over the interwebs, but there’s something extra special about meeting IRL. We always love seeing everyone share their In-Person Meetups, whether it’s a party of two or twenty! For those in the Big Apple, check out the [#new-york]( channel on Slack for more details on their monthly meetups - their [next one]( is currently planned for February. For those in other parts of the world, join in on an available Slack channel for your area to see if a meetup is already in the works, or extend the first hello if not! For all bibliophiles out there and those who have aspired to read more in the new year, now’s a good time to check out the [#books]( channel, as students are currently in the process of deciding on the next read for the group. As per usual, Study Groups provide great opportunities to learn amongst fellow students: - We have several TA-led [study groups]( both in the Ruby and JavaScript tracks, for those who are new to the program, who want to practice problem-solving with PEDAC, or who are preparing to take on the first series of back-end assessments. - [The SPOT]( holds helpful student-led sessions each week that cover a range of courses in the curriculum. Check out [#the-spot]( on Slack if you’re interested in attending a session. All events are free, though most have limited seating availability. Monitor the [Forum's Study Groups tab]( for new Study Groups and the [General Forum]( for news of other future events. That’s All For Now That’s it for this Community Update! Stay safe and healthy out there, and have a wonderful year ahead! 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