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Welcome to Nashville Software School!

Thank you for choosing us to guide you through your journey to become a software developer! This Foundations Course is for students who have enrolled in either a day or evening Web Development cohort.

We want to ensure that you are as prepared as possible for the technologies and concepts that your instruction staff will be coaching you through in the first few weeks, so we have prepared this course to set you up for success. These resources will provide you with the basic skills, terminology, and context for what it will be like at Nashville Software School.

Foundations Course is Mandatory

If you do not do the Foundations Course, you will be immediately behind your teammates on the first day of class and are at risk of needing to move to the next cohort so that you have time to complete it.

Nashville Software School is an accelerated boot camp, and you will hit the ground running on day one. We will assume that you have completed this work and provide minimal resources if you have not. Additionally, the life of a software developer is one of focus and meeting commitments. Completing the Foundations Course shows us that you can prioritize this work, focus on it, and meet the commitment of completing it.

Foundation Sessions

Another opportunity we provide to reinforce your software development foundations is coaching sessions that start approximately four weeks before your cohort begins. You can come to ask questions, meet your teammates, and get some mentoring on this Foundations Course from NSS Alumni and Junior Instructors.

The sessions are in the evenings once a week from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM over Zoom. They are an excellent opportunities to make sure you set yourself up for success on day one of your cohort.

Being a Student at Nashville Software School

The environment at Nashville Software School is likely something you have never experienced before, especially in an educational environment. We will coach you on attaining a Growth Mindset so that you can meet all of the challenges with excitement instead of fear. You will be reading, writing, and talking about code every single day.

We talk very little about theory. Just enough to support your ability to write code, and eventually, do well on an interview. We spend over 90% of the time working on the practical skills of software development. You will be writing a tremendous amount of code.

Most of it will be bad.

That is a good thing because we want you to make as many mistakes as possible. It sounds strange that we want you to do things incorrectly, but it is essential to learning.

Read the following two foreword chapters to discover what we expect from our students, and see our recommendations for your hardware during your cohort.

Time to get started!

Start with Book 1 and work your way through the books, following the order of the sections in each.

Make a plan. Stick with it. Decide on how long you want to study each day (we recommend 2 - 3 hours each day), and set yourself up to not have any distractions during that time.