For those who have dreamed of developing a cool cell phone app or designing a hot new web site, Palm Beach County’s first brick-and-mortar coding school is coming to town Dec. 1.
Palm Beach Code School will offer classes in a structured setting that teaches students the essentials of computer programming, enabling them to build their own software.
“One of my reasons for starting the school was to create a program that taught the fundamentals of web development to help fill the projected 20 percent increase in job growth for web developers over the next 10 years,” said Jim York, the school’s founder. “The school commits to doing our very best to help graduates with placement in the industry.”
The classes will be given in a Palm Beach Gardens office suite and comprise four parts: an introduction to coding, design and graphics; writing code, both basic and complex; establishing and managing a database of web pages; and a capstone project, in which students will walk away with an original web site.
All of the curriculum is state-certified, and a diploma will be issued upon completion of the school’s requirements. Tuition is $3,250.
Each student must pass a 25-question aptitude test to be accepted. Those who don’t pass can enroll in a three-week primer course for a fee of $400.
“The educational objective of the Palm Beach Code School’s training program is that each graduate will be qualified for junior web-developer positions,” York said.
York is an accomplished education executive specializing in career-school start-ups. He founded the Palm Beach Film School in 2003 and oversaw the release of 300 productions in the institute’s eight years.
York has hired two web-savvy instructors to teach classes — Kim Moser and Paul Needham. Moser is a New York Institute of Technology graduate with a bachelor’s degree in computer science. He is a freelance programmer and web designer, with expertise is programming web sites for big businesses.
“I program web sites every day using the same skills I’ll be teaching,” Moser said.
Needham graduated from Florida State University with bachelor’s degrees in business and political science. He is pursuing a master’s degree in information systems. He is the IT director at a school in Hobe Sound.
“You must teach coding properly,” Needham said. “Many programs only teach students how to copy and paste and don’t teach them how the actual code works. Good coders are very difficult to find.”
For more information, call (561) 855-6575, e-mail info@palmbeachcodeschool.com or visit www.palmbeachcodeschool.com.
ABOVE: Teachers Paul Needham and Kim Moser with founder Jim York.
