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 couse 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 don’t 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 bootcamp, and you will hit the ground running on day one. We will assume that you’ve completed this work, and provide minimal resources to you if you have not. Additionally, the life of a software developer is one of focus and meeting committments. Completing the Foundations Course shows us that you have the ability to prioritize this work, can focus on it, and meet the committment of completing it.

Foundation Sessions

Another opportunity we provide for your foundations are training sessions before your cohort starts. Starting 4 weeks before the beginning of the cohort, on each Thursday evening, you can come in to ask questions, meet your teammates, and get some mentoring on this Foundations Course. These are a great opportunity for you to make sure you are set up for success on day one of your cohort.

They start at 5:00 PM and go to 7:00 PM in one of the classrooms at NSS.

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. You will be coached 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’s a good thing, because we want you to make as many mistakes as possible. It sounds strange that we would want you to do things incorrectly, but it is an important step in learning.

Read the following two foreword chapters to discover about 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.