DockYard Academy

The DockYard Academy curriculum is an open source curriculum to help students learn Elixir. The beta_curriculum is a work in progress effort available for feedback and contribution. When launched, this curriculum will be used as the primary teaching material in DockYard Academy.

Contact Brooklin (brooklin.myers@dockyard.com) or DM at @BrooklinJMyers on Twitter if you would like more information.

Want To Get Involved?

Contributors and beta testers are welcome to go through the course, raise issues, and make PRs. See the Contributor Guide.

See our list of Open Issues. Comment on any issue and mention @brooklinjazz to get support.

QuickStart

Clone the project git clone <URL>.
Install a compatible Elixir and Erlang version. See .tool-versions. You may wish to use asdf.

Install Livebook:

mix escript.install github livebook-dev/livebook

From the project folder run the command below. This opens the navigation page where you can find the course reading material and associated exercises.
```
livebook server start.livemd
```

If you cannot see mermaid.js graphs, ensure your Livebook version is correct.

Troubleshooting

Raise an issue or contact brooklin.myers@dockyard.com if you are having trouble setting up the curriculum.

Could not compile dependency :aws_signature

When installing Livebook mix escript.install github livebook-dev/livebook you may see the following error.

** (Mix) Could not compile dependency :aws_signature, "/home/user/.mix/rebar3 bare compile --paths /tmp/mix-local-installer-fetcher-Ao9gNA/deps/new package/_build/prod/lib/*/ebin" command failed. Errors may have been logged above. You can recompile this dependency with "mix deps.compile aws_signature", update it with "mix deps.update aws_signature" or clean it with "mix deps.clean aws_signature"

To resolve this issue, update rebar3 by running the following command.

mix local.rebar

Then try installing Livebook again. This time it should succeed.

Livebook: Command Not Found (ASDF)

If using asdf you need to create the shim for livebook.

asdf reshim

Livebook: Command Not Found

After installing livebook mix escript.install github livebook-dev/livebook you may see the following message:

warning: you must append "/home/user/.mix/escripts" to your PATH if you want to invoke escripts by name

This means we need to append .mix/escripts to the PATH variable in order to find the location of the .mix/escripts folder when we run the livebook command.

Try running the following to confirm you can run Livebook. Stop Livebook once you have confirmed it runs successfully.

~/.mix/escripts/livebook server

Different operating systems use different configuration files, typically either .bashrc on Windows and Linux or .zshrc on MacOS. If you want to run livebook instead of ~/.mix/escripts/livebook, add the following at the bottom of the appropriate configuration file.

PATH=$PATH:~/.mix/escript

Then close your terminal and reload it, or run the following. Replace .bashrc with the appropriate configuration file.

source .bashrc

Now you can run Livebook using the livebook command.

livebook server

LiveBook Desktop App (Currently) Not Supported

Unfortunately, the curriculum is intended to be run from the command line in the project folder. If you're using the livebook desktop app, livebook files will fail to correctly install dependencies. We're working on a fix as soon as possible!

For now, there is a workaround by running livebook with the Mix standalone runtime connected to the utils project.

To run the project in Mix Standalone mode:

start livebook.
open the curriculum folder in livebook.
open start.livemd or any other .livemd file in livebook.
Go to Runtime Settings.
Click the gear icon.
Select Mix standalone.
Select the utils project in the curriculum folder.
Click Connect.

You should be able to use the curriculum normally now.

Livebook server not starting (Windows)

This is a known Livebook issue (196, 194, 1042) that happens when some Erlang files don't show a dialog for its firewall approval on the first Livebook execution after being installed.

Before calling Livebook, execute iex --sname test on terminal.
On appearing Windows firewall dialog, approve permission for epmd.exe.
Both erl.exe and epmd.exe should appear on firewall-allowed apps.

Spell Checking

This project uses codespell for spell checking.

If contributing to the project, install codespell and run the following command to fix any spelling errors. Ensure all corrections are correct before committing altered files.

codespell --skip="./utils/deps/*,./.git/*,./utils/lib/assets/*" -w

Course Outcome

Students will be competent developers prepared to excel in the Elixir industry. They will have a solid grasp of Elixir fundamentals, Elixir project development, Phoenix project development, LiveView, and OTP. They will also have the researching and problem-solving skills necessary to expand their skill set and thrive throughout their career. Students will be capable of delivering high-quality, well-tested features to a production complexity codebase.

Curriculum Outline

The curriculum is still a rough outline subject to change and feedback. see start.livemd for a full weekly and daily breakdown.

Week 1 (Livebook Setup)

Course Overview, Command Line, Git, Livebook, PATH
Basics (Simple Types, Operators, Variables, Comments)
Complex Types (atom, tuples, list, keyword list, map, mapset)
Modules, Functions, Structs, Control Flow

Week 2

Problem Solving & Enumeration (ranges, map, filter, all, any, count, find, random)
Comprehensions, Enum.reduce
Built-In Modules (Map, Tuple, List, Date & Time)
Guards, Pattern Matching
String Manipulation (Regex, Charlist vs Strings)

Week 3

Polymorphism, Protocols & Behaviors
Performance (Immutability, Streams, Lists Vs Tuples Vs Maps Vs Mapsets, Big O, Benchee, :timer) & Recursion
File, .iex Scripts, Persistence, Data Validation (Ecto Changesets) (+Binary)
Processes (Processes, Generic Server, Genserver, Agents, ETS)

Week 4 (Dev Setup)

Mix Tooling (Credo, Dialyzer, Config, Deps, Documentation, ExUnit)
Supervisor Basics and Fault Tolerance (+Task)
BEAM
Ecto & Database Basics

Week 5

APIs & Parsing JSON
Networking Basics & Plug
Macros and use
Deploying Mix Project

Week 6 (Phoenix Setup)

Phoenix Framework & Generators (+ Testing Patterns)
HTML & CSS (+ Flex, Grid)
Ecto & RDBMS & SQL & Seeding Data
Tailwind
UX/UI Design + Accessibility (ColorZilla, Axe, Figma)

Week 7

Phoenix Authentication & Permissions
LiveView (+ Testing Patterns)
JavaScript & JS Interoperability & AlpineJS
PubSub & Channels
GraphQL & Absinthe (+ Testing Patterns)

Week 8

TDD Techniques (Red Green Refactor), Code Clarity, Mix Testing Tools (--slowest, --stale, tags, Elixir Test extension)
Metrics, Telemetry, Live Dashboard
Factories & Mocks (ExMachina, Mox)
Property Based Testing (Stream Data) + E2E Testing (Wallaby)
Code Coverage, Github Actions & Hooks

Week 9 (Group Project)

Software & Product Management (Agile, StandUps, Kanban)
Architecture Design & Patterns (Diagrams, UML, CQRS/ES, Contexts, MVC)
Advanced Livebook (Graphs, Tables, Connecting Projects)
Collaborative GitHub Patterns (PRs, Forking, Cloning, Issues)

Week 10

Emailing & Swoosh
Oban
Genserver Bottlenecks, Supervision Trees, Worker Pools, Tasks
Umbrella Projects
Nodes, Clustering

petros / beta_curriculum