Technology, Programming | featured news

Looking for a career change, Ken Shimizu decided he wanted to be a software developer, but he didn't want to go back to college to study computer science. Instead, he quit his job and spent his savings to enroll at Dev Bootcamp, a new San Francisco school that teaches students how to write software in nine weeks. The $11,000 gamble paid off: A week after he finished the program last summer, he landed an engineering job that paid more than twice his previous salary.

Silicon Valley and several small companies and nonprofits are working to increase the number of women in the technology industry by teaching teenage girls how to write computer code.

With hack days and e-petitions they're pushing for education to keep up with the digital economy. People of an older vintage tend to balk when they see seven-year-olds blithely reprogramming their TV sets, or changing the background on their smartphones. But a few among them believe kids have even more potential when it comes to software — they can actually create programs, if they’re only taught how.

Mozilla is getting ready for the January semester of School of Webcraft, a 100% free developer training resource run in partnership with Peer 2 Peer University.