TechNative Digital - Week 1
Day 1: Open Day
The open day was an opportunity for us to meet our coursemates and tutors before starting the course. Arriving at Innovation X, I immediately spotted Pete, the lead tutor on the advanced course who interviewed me, and joined the group of aspiring developers forming around him.
The morning presentations detailed the programme’s structure, emphasising its ultimate goal of equipping us with the skills necessary for paid employment. Dan Wallman, founder and CEO of TechNative Digital, said:
‘Our job is to help you get the right skills, but also to make sure you get work… If you don’t get work and if you don’t get a job interview… we have not succeeded.’
After the presentations, we split off into the software development group. Pete led the session, supported by Reggy. Introductions were followed by a game of Two Truths and a Lie, which was hilarious and revealed all sorts of interesting facts about the cohort. It turns out we have among us, a national judo champion… and Chris Hemsworth’s stunt double! (I also have questions.)
Pete set the tone for the day, balancing a sense of fun with clear expectations. We were expected to be on time (mentioned quite a lot), engage properly, and be professional. He warned us not to coast quietly in the background, hoping a job offer would simply wander over and find us. He also encouraged us to start building visibility from the outset: post a ‘hello!’ on Slack, start documenting early, and dust off our LinkedIn profiles if we’d been quiet for a while (guilty as charged).
He also encouraged us to attend local tech meet-ups. Brighton has a thriving tech community with regular events across different specialisms. Async Brighton, a front-end developer network, came strongly recommended and Pete’s advice was that if we only went to one event, make it that one.
Mini-Sprint
For the last activity of the day, we split into smaller groups for a mini-sprint: come up with a digital product idea and design a homepage for it. We had about 45 minutes from idea to pitch.
After some discussion (and a nudge from Pete to get on with it), my group came up with ‘Choose My School’, a platform designed to make the process of researching schools less of a full-time job for parents. We sketched out the basics such as filters, map views, school cards, key information at a glance, and decided on a monetisation strategy (freemium, with a paid tier for extra features).
The final group’s idea, ‘Bub, Bub, Bub’, was amazing and definitely stole the show! The product was an inflatable bubble that expands around you, protecting you from noise, germs, and smells in the workplace or on public transport. The bubble was described as breathable and soundproof (patent pending), with ‘Double Bubble’ also available for couples who want to suffer in silence together. Needless to say, it was the crowd favourite.
I finished the day feeling optimistic about the course, the journey ahead, and the new community I was becoming part of.
Day 2: Online
Day 2 was our first remote session. Pete was visibly delighted that everyone arrived early and the day started promptly at 8:58 am.
Once we’d done the location roll-call (Brighton, Hove, Worthing, Crawley), discussed the views from various windows, and met Pete’s fish (who we’ll all be well acquainted with by the end of the 12 weeks), Pete went over course admin and housekeeping.
He reiterated a key message from Day 1- the course is designed to replicate the work environment, and this should be reflected in our behaviour and attitude. The course will get us used to the rhythm of working as a developer, including stand-ups and retros, pair programming, and working collaboratively. Slack was also given a mini-tour for those unfamiliar.
A key theme of the day was communication. Pete laid down the law early with a ‘No Silly Questions’ pact. He emphasised that impostor syndrome has no place in the group, asking: ‘Can I have a promise from everyone that you will agree to ask any questions you might have and not be embarrassed. There’s no such thing as a silly question.’
Back to Basics
The coding challenges today were made up of basic HTML tasks. Pete had warned me in the interview that I might find the course material itself quite easy initially. However, I think there’s a lot to be said for revisiting the basics and cementing the foundations. And learning new tech skills isn’t really the goal of this course anyway.
I was paired with Kristy for the morning. She’d originally been on the foundation bootcamp but was promoted to the advanced course the previous day. The morning challenge was a simple HTML exercise which required turning content snippets into HTML pages. Kristy’s instinct was to write it out longhand, having (correctly) learned HTML this way. However, with the time constraints catching up with us, I fired up VS Code and showed her the shortcut using a VS Code extension.
Kristy mentioned in the regroup afterwards that this had been a huge revelation to her, that you didn’t have to type everything by hand from scratch, and tools exist to do this for you. Her reaction had me thinking about how workflows that seem routine to me now weren’t always so straightforward. I remember my first ever project, the tribute page task on FreeCodeCamp, which took two days of struggle (and literal tears at one point), but I was SO proud of my finished page.
AI Debate
There was an interesting detour into the use of AI in development, triggered by Kristy asking whether it’s acceptable for a developer to use AI when they’re stuck. Pete’s answer was a definitive yes, with the caveat that it's important to evaluate what comes back. Don’t treat it like truth delivered from the heavens.
There was an interesting range of opinions in the room. My own view is that I’m a massive fan of AI, but I’m also grateful that I learned to code before it became a default crutch. I shared how I’d recently done a workshop where I had to type from scratch in a stripped-down LeetCode environment with no formatting and no autocomplete, and it was somewhat horrifying how much I’d started to rely on the tools for even basic syntax. The takeaway from the discussion wasn’t ‘don’t use it’, but use it like a power tool and not a substitute for having a brain.
Question Assumptions!
The afternoon challenge involved crafting the HTML structure of a website based on Figma files, using only HTML to emphasise the importance of semantic markup (again, no CSS).
I was paired with Ijem for the afternoon. We actually did a pretty good job with what we thought was being asked, but we discovered in the debrief that we’d made an incorrect assumption and had already broken the pact about asking questions! We treated the task as ‘recreate the design using HTML-only tricks’ and had gone above and beyond what was actually required.
Someone asked directly whether we should be trying to make our HTML match the styling in the examples. Pete’s answer was no, the goal today was semantic markup and sensible structure, not visual accuracy. He made the point that in real work, requirements aren’t always stated explicitly, and ‘your assumption and my assumption might be different’. You have to extract them, and if something isn’t clear, you should ask. So the second lesson of the day wasn’t really about HTML at all - it was about noticing when you’re filling in gaps with your own logic.
With week 1 done and dusted, I feel energised and like I’m part of something again, and plan to carry this momentum through the course and into my job search.