Bootcamp

Bootcamp 3 week program

Improvements? Suggestions? email dna@hola.org

Prior to joining - preparing for bootcamp

Welcome email

Prior to joining Hola and coming to the bootcamp, we will provide you by email with information about Hola, our DNA and internal dictionary, products, coding conventions and basic tools and methods of work.
We will schedule 3 online sessions for you with your mentor, prior to start of camp, to answer your questions, and to provide a few short tasks, based on these materials, to help you ensure that you have them covered well.

Learning starts at home

Your first days in the bootcamp significantly impact your pace in Hola. Since we truly believe in productivity from the very first day, it is strongly recommended to invest the time, learn and practice the technical materials provided by your mentor. Note that failure in these online sessions can end with cancellation of your bootcamp.
Also note that you are expected to act according to our DNA from day-1. Invest time learning it.

Last thing before we start; to understand why we came up with several items in the DNA, take an hour and watch this video that explains the 6 major lessons we learnd till we reached 100 Million users with Hola.

Other bootcamps

Deploys bootcamp is here.

R&D

Day 1

Goal: Get to know the Hola work flows, and deploy your first code to millions of users!

During your first day, you will learn the basic work flow in the Hola development team. You will learn how we deploy our products to the field, the tools and flows of our working environment and all other surroundings, so that you can become productive on day 1.
Today you will deploy your first code to millions of Hola users!

Schedule

09:00 Welcome to Hola - a session with your mentor, explaining Hola's organization, roles and responsibilities
10:00Get to know your workstation: get your username/email/laptop
11:00Deploy team session - working in the Deploy team, deploying real code to the field
13:00Chef lunch together with the team
13:30 Workstation best practices with your mentor
13:45 Get your first engineering task
15:30Debug your code and run unit-tests
16:00 Do your first commit session with your mentor.
In this session we will practice for the first time the Blocking sync Review
17:00Deploy your code to the Hola user base (!)
17:30Test your code on the web
18:00Go home! 50M users have your code

Day 2

Goal: Deploy your second task to the world, and understand the reporting procedures in Hola

Now that you have already deployed your first engineering task, you will be introduced to how progress is communicated at Hola. You will also receive your second task that will likely take you the entire rest of the day. In this second task you will dive deeper into the Hola way of writing code. You'll understand the mechanism of testing it, and again you will deploy it to the Hola user base.

Schedule

09:00Get your second engineering task
13:00Chef lunch together with the team
16:30Commit session together with your mentor
17:00Deploy your code
17:30Test your code on the Internet

Day 3

Goal: Your first mini-project

After two days at Hola, you are now very familiar with how things are done at Hola and with the (hopefully few) procedures in getting them done. This is the time to start doing more complicated things. Today, if no bugs were found with your deployed code, you will start your first mini-project. Together with your mentor you will define this mini-project, break it into sub-tasks, and discuss the design and unit-tests that you will implement.
This task should take till the end of the week, split into small incremental daily commitable sub-tasks. You will go through the full development cycle of writing unit-tests, wring your code, debugging, commit session and deploy.

Day 5

Goal: Going through some DNA trainings

You are towards completing your first project, as well as finishing your first week at Hola.
It's time to take a short break and dive into our DNA fundamentals together with the DNA Manager.

Schedule

10:00 Handling your email - an email training, based on our Email Style Guide, provided by the DNA Manager
13:00Chef lunch together with the team
16:00Final commit session together with your mentor
17:00Deploy your code
17:30Test your code on the Internet

Week 2

Goal: Swimming (almost) on your own

Time flies when you're having fun!
You have finished your first week diving into the code, implementing your first mini-project, learning the internals and getting to know the team around you. If you have finished your work, and no bugs were found, it's time to take a deep breath and dive into more complicated tasks.
At this stage you are expected to be swimming smoothly almost on your own. You'll receive another task, but this time you are expected to go through the development cycle almost on your own. Your mentor is still here for you, but now he is your resource to use when you have questions, or when you call him for doing a commit session.
During this week, you will begin to learn about our products' internals using our videos.
Below is a list of videos which is recommended to watch during the week:

Week 3

Goal: Swimming on your own

You are almost there, finishing your first project on your own, as well as start doing commits on your own (Non-blocking asynchronous Review), receiving remarks from your peers, as well as start receiving more tasks which will be logged in your version plan.
For this week we have prepared some more videos which are recommended for watching:

Bootcamp completed! What's next?

Congratulations, you are now officially a Hola Noob!!
Few things to know and remember before you start your journey:
During the bootcamp you have modified several files and even wrote some code from scratch.
It's time to step forward and assume responsibility on the code you wrote.
You'll review your commits together with your mentor (using CVS Search), and take co-ownership of significant modules/files you wrote using the jdoc system.
One more thing; Remember your version plan? This is the place from where you start. By now it should have all the information you need for your near future tasks and the details of what you are about to do, typically for the upcoming month or two.
Welcome to Hola

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