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Coding Your Future: A Guidebook for Students

18 Opportunities with CodeCrafters

If You Build It, They Will Come.

  • Build your portfolio, they said.
  • Building stuff will help you learn new things, they said.
  • Building interesting software and hardware will help your CV stand out, they said.
  • Building anything will supercharge your skills and knowledge by applying what you’ve learned, they said.
  • Building a range of projects will give you plenty to talk about in job applications and interviews, they said.

These are all strong arguments for working on PROJECTS beyond those required for whatever degree you are studying, see section 8.7.5. But where do you start and how can you keep going? Open source projects are great but can be intimidating to beginners and outsiders, see section 5.3.5. Whatever kind of projects you are working on, building a portfolio can feel like drawing the owl shown in figure 18.1: Step 1: draw some simple lines … Step 2: … draw the rest owl. There’s a BIG piece missing in the middle, the missing docs, to help you keep going and help you finish your engineering project.

Draw an owl step by step should be an easy project: Step 1 just your draw an oval and some simple lines, then Step 2 fill in the rest of the owl. Easy? Not really, you need more steps. Creative Commons licensed screenshot taken from Google’s Tech Writing course, see section 4.6.2. 🦉

Figure 18.1: Draw an owl step by step should be an easy project: Step 1 just your draw an oval and some simple lines, then Step 2 fill in the rest of the owl. Easy? Not really, you need more steps. Creative Commons licensed screenshot taken from Google’s Tech Writing course, see section 4.6.2. 🦉

18.1 Crafting Your Future with CodeCrafters

The missing docs is a problem that codecrafters.io can help you with. Their coding challenges take you through building your own \(x\), step by step. You won’t just build your CV, you’ll become a better engineer too. Choose from a range of challenges from making your own shell to building your own Git, Redis, SQLite and Docker. There’s plenty of projects to choose from in whatever language you feel comfortable with or whatever new language you’d like to start using and learn more about, see figure 18.2.

Become a better software engineer with CodeCrafters. Stop following tutorials designed for beginners. Start working on PROJECTS that actually challenge you. Become a better engineer through deliberate structured practice, screenshot from codecrafters.io

Figure 18.2: Become a better software engineer with CodeCrafters. Stop following tutorials designed for beginners. Start working on PROJECTS that actually challenge you. Become a better engineer through deliberate structured practice, screenshot from codecrafters.io

Co-founded by Sarup Banksota and Paul Kuruvilla, CodeCrafters was backed by ycombinator.com in 2022. The free tier of codecrafters gives you limited content access and community features.

18.2 Free CodeCrafters for UoM students

If you’re a student at the University of Manchester (UoM), we are pleased to be able to offer more access for free via manchester.ccio.dev.

Move beyond basic tutorials and classroom exercises. Build real-world projects that push your technical boundaries. Develop industry-ready skills through hands-on practice with codecrafters.io. If you’re a University of Manchester student, you can register using your student credentials at manchester.ccio.dev

Figure 18.3: Move beyond basic tutorials and classroom exercises. Build real-world projects that push your technical boundaries. Develop industry-ready skills through hands-on practice with codecrafters.io. If you’re a University of Manchester student, you can register using your student credentials at manchester.ccio.dev

18.3 Summertime and the Codin’ is Easy

Coding in summertime (or any vacation time) isn’t always easy. Building a portfolio of interesting projects takes time and perseverance. Codecrafters makes it easier by giving you structured projects to work through in your own time at your own pace. Their projects will help you build your skills, knowledge and provide a portfolio as concrete evidence you can use in your job applications and job interviews.

Apart from any career considerations, it is fun to challenge yourself to build stuff just for the sheer enjoyment of it. To engineer is human, it can satisfy some of our most basic impulses. (Petroski 1985)

If you build it, they will come, see figure 18.4. You’ll improve the chances that they will invite you to interviews and you will improve the chances that they will offer you the job. So get building and get experimenting with CodeCrafters. The only question is, what will you make?

The phrase “If You Build It, They Will Come” is a misquote from the film, Field of Dreams where the lead character hears a voice telling him that “If You Build It, He Will Come”. (Robinson 1989)

Figure 18.4: The phrase “If You Build It, They Will Come” is a misquote from the film, Field of Dreams where the lead character hears a voice telling him that “If You Build It, He Will Come”. (Robinson 1989)

18.4 Acknowledgements

Thanks to Arpan Pandey for negotiating and building CodeCrafters access for students at the University of Manchester, shown in figure 18.3. 🙏

Summertime (and the livin’ is easy) is an aria composed by George Gershwin for the opera Porgy and Bess. (Gershwin 1934) Many versions of the song have been recorded by different artists including Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong shown in figure 18.5. (Fitzgerald and Armstrong 1959)

Figure 18.5: “Summertime and the livin’ is easy, fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high”