The future participants of the Paragon full stack program, a total of 174 of them, are in the third week of Arena – a month where they are getting familiar with the basics of programming and preparing for the start of the program. The Arena is a selection phase and enables the acquisition of skills through work on daily and weekend tasks prepared by IT professionals and Paragon mentors.
Cool Facts About the Program
Interestingly, the participants come from 32 towns in Bosnia and Herzegovina, from Brčko, Bosanska Krupa, Tuzla, Sarajevo, to Nevesinje, Mostar, and many others. The program brought together people of different profiles and occupations, where the oldest participant is 47, and the youngest 18 years old.
Every person is working hard on their daily tasks in order to secure a place in the most complete IT education program in the region. Working hard and successfully completing this comprehensive 9-month program will give the participants an opportunity to interview with the most successful IT companies and get their foot in the door of a fantastic career in software development.
‘Given a lot of time and effort, this program surely enables a quality IT career upon completion. We have created a program that reflects the needs of software development companies, in order to provide absolute beginners with the full stack skills that are very desirable in today’s job market. We are on the right track, the participants are working hard and they will soon enter Paragon where we will share with them a full spectrum of skills that will enable their fruitful career in software development‘ – said the mentors of the program.
This modern online program is made by experienced developers. Over 6,000 hours were invested in its development, and a beginner needs 9 months to complete it and become a full stack web developer. Naturally, with the help of the Paragon professional mentors.
Who Are the Participants?
The Arena participants have been actively working on mastering the basic programming skills for the past 3 weeks in order to be able to access complex tasks in Paragon. During the Arena stage, they also have the opportunity to attend workshops in the field of UX / UI design, DevOps, Project Management, and Quality Assurance. In this way, experts from the company Mistral bring them closer to various aspects of work in the software industry.
So far, some attendees have given up, but those with the most talent, motivation and desire for a change are part of this new yet already strong community heading towards Paragon.
Tarik, one of the participants of Arena, points out that this has been a very exciting and interesting journey for him, considering the fact that he has encountered programming terminology and materials for the very first time: ‘For the first time I started getting very little sleep, 4-5 hours, getting up with a desire for a new task. I’ve learned a lot already. Every day when I get up it becomes clearer to me what I was doing the day before and I am ready to complete new tasks. Every day, I am looking forward to gaining new knowledge and increasingly respecting people who code. In addition, the focus and a kind of a trance that I fall into when I’m writing code makes it great for me to be in my own world, at least for a while. The most beautiful feeling I get is when there are no errors and when the clean code confirms my work and effort. I don’t worry about the results because it seems that the little things are those which bring great results.‘
Edelhida, a participant in the Arena, also doesn’t hide her excitement with being part of the program: ‘Completely unexpected! There’s been a little frustration, a little excitement, a little fear, a little optimism – but mostly the feeling of pride in myself because I managed to get through the first week with an 86% average with a 6-month-old baby in tow!‘
Paragon full stack officially starts on April 19, when up to 100 best Arena participants will have the opportunity to build an enviable portfolio of projects, and transform from a total beginner to a full stack developer with a successful career ahead of them.
We’re looking forward to seeing who will these 100 humans be! Stay tuned.