Core Competency Discussion Notes

core_comp_discussion.md

CORE COMPETENCY

• Awesome idea

CC - Data

• relational vs non-rel databases can help cover different concepts
• helping people understand why they might want to choose between tradeoffs b/t sql and nosql
  • cap theorem
• alternative datastores, should it be under "databases"
• are students more equipped to deal with mongo when they've already been through SQL
• maybe change theme to "Data Storage"

Drill into detailed competency - Testing

• when we teach testing, they don't use it all that much in the program because they're trying so hard just to build their app
• if you do go into backend, one of the first places companies will put you is into QA testing
• it seems still important to teach some level of testing, students often get a lot of interview questions related to testing
• have found that testing can also be "magic" ... don't fully understand
• under testing, maybe add something about running a test someone else wrote against your code. or retroactively testing your code

What is missing?

• design patterns...
  • object-oriented design could be its own core competency. see it as a bullet point on a lot of job reqs
• browser performance
  • could be under browser applications
  • image size
  • placement of script tags
  • different ways you can use css selectors, which ones aren't as performant
  • selector caching
  • different types of script tags
• search algorithms

Moar Consistency

• surveys for
  • syntax
  • design style
  • terminology