[Launch School] Community Update - January 13th, 2023

Happy New Year everyone! It's Clare with our first Community Update for 2023. I hope you all enjoyed a good rest over the holidays and had a chance to play too. There was a lot of lego building in our house, and the snow was a bit distracting on the days I had planned to hit the books, but it's not every day that your local park looks like Narnia: [snowy_grove] If you read my last community update, you will know that I was very excited about Advent of Code. It certainly lived up to expectations thanks to everyone who contributed to our community. We built a really supportive space, had lots of fun, honed our problem solving skills and swapped lots of coding tips. A special shout-out to Mai Khuu and Jason Tsang, who both completed all 25 days. This is no mean feat, as the problems get really tricky towards the end. Many congratulations to you both 🥳. I also want to draw attention to it being about the journey, rather than the destination. For myself, I became much more comfortable with coding in JavaScript, I'm making far fewer syntax errors and I learnt a lot by looking at other people's solutions. And let's not forget the more painful parts. I now know that when using the sort method on an array containing numbers, JS assumes that I wanted to sort them as if they were strings, which will be great when I come across a problem that requires this! (Fingers crossed that Srdjan didn't get any ideas for future assessment questions. 🥴) This is a bumper update, so let's get down to business. --------------------------------------------------------------- Important Updates Upcoming RB101/109 and JS101/109 splits There are going to be a number of improvements to our core curriculum this year. The first of which is occurring on January 17th, which will split the first course in each of the Ruby and JavaScript tracks, into two courses. The course material covered in the current RB101, will be divided between the new RB101 and RB110 courses. Similarly, material in the current JS101 course, will be covered by the new JS101 and JS110 courses. There will also be four assessment courses: RB109, RB119, JS109, and JS119. Each of these assessment course will have an exam followed by an interview assessment. For more information, please see the relevant post for each of the [Ruby track]( and [JavaScript track](. JS101/JS210 Updates Prior to the holidays, we made some updates to the introductory JavaScript courses, JS101 and JS210. These haven't impacted any assessments, but have provided additional material to help students understand the concepts in these courses. If you are currently enrolled in one of these courses (like I am!) check this [post]( to see what has changed. There's lots of extra content added to these courses, and I'm really grateful to the team for these particular updates, which are smoothing my way through JS210 🙏. Events Calendar The Events link on our website has had an exciting transformation. It is now presented as a calendar with events color-coded to make them easy to identify. All is explained [here](. There are so many things going on at Launch School and this will make it much easier for students to keep track of events. This is an absolute must-have for those of us with FOMO. [fomo] (I'm a bit sad that my children going back to school after the holidays has taken a massive chunk out of the time we have available to build - but this was work, so we had to make time to create this!) Don't worry if you preferred the events page as it was previously. You can still find a link to the events listed in chronological order if that is your bag! Capstone News The Capstone 2208 project presentations are now done. [Check out the recordings]( to learn all about these great projects! Podcast S4E8 We dropped [a new podcast episode]( a few weeks ago! In this episode, Chris and Karis discuss the latest Capstone Salaries page update. As well as highlighting the successes of our Capstone program, this also contains really useful advice on what to consider when comparing statistics provided in the media. When looking at the number of completed lego-builds, the denominator is as important as the numerator! The episode also includes some announcements and information about upcoming events, so make sure you listen and don't miss out. Thank you for another wonderful podcast, Karis! 🤩 --------------------------------------------------------------- Routine Updates Meet-ups There were some great in-person gatherings last month, including good food and great conversation in Fremont, California. [sf_bay_dec2022] There are also a couple of meet-ups in the pipeline: - As usual, New York City has a get together planned. It is this Saturday, January 14th at 2pm at Bob's Your Uncle. For more information, the #new-york channel on Slack will have all the details. - If you are in or around Austin, there is a meet-up planned for this Sunday, January 15th (check out the #austin channel on Slack for more information) I'm sure there will be lots of gatherings planned in the next few weeks, so take a look through the Slack channels to find a region near you and see whether a meet-up is in the works. If there are no local groups for you, try starting one; you can make some great new friends! Women's Group We have our regular Launch School Women's Group Virtual meeting coming up. Our December meeting was all about reflecting on our experiences over the last year. This was a lovely way to round out the year, celebrate our successes and share challenges we had overcome. We also shared some book recommendations, including: - 'Lost Connections' by Johann Hari [lost_connections] - 'Courage is Calling' by Ryan Holiday [courage_is_calling] The next meeting is on Sunday, January 15th at 2pm EDT. This will include an 'Intention Setting Activity' (I'm looking forward to finding out what this is all about!), as well as the usual socializing and opportunity to ask questions. For more information, including how to sign up, check out [this forum post](. --------------------------------------------------------------- Wow, that was a lot of material to get through. Good luck with getting back into study routines, and don't forget to check out all the resources Launch School has to help you through your journey. Lastly, let's all wish Teddy good luck for this Sunday. He has a date with another guinea pig, and if all goes well, Biscuit will be joining my family to be Teddy's new buddy (let's hope he likes lego so he can fit right in). Here is Teddy's profile pic: [teddy_dating_pic] Happy New Year from everyone at Launch School! --------------------------------------------------------------- If you wish to stop receiving emails from us, you can use the one-click link below to unsubscribe. [Unsubscribe From All Email]( [Unsubscribe From Weekly Summaries](