There is no speed limit for learning

I recently taught students at Harbour.Space University in Barcelona a three weeks course on how to build websites using vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.

It's always fun to see how much students can learn and apply new skills in a short amount of time. Some students had no coding experience before the course, yet they could code and launch a responsive website with animations in three weeks.

How is that possible? It takes some people years to learn these three technologies well enough to ship something presentable. It took me much longer to learn these skills back in the day, especially the JavaScript part.

The students don't know it all after one course, but they know enough essentials to do research for coding up a website.

There are a couple of keys to it.

The School

Harbour.Space is a modern, privately run school. One of the cool things they do is teach one course at a time so the students can focus entirely on a single subject at a time.

The Students

There is a high bar for entering the school where experience, knowledge, and ambition levels are explored, creating an environment of high achievers.

The Teachers

Many of the teachers work out in the field every day. In my case, I did front-end development for 20 years and, therefore able to distill a large amount of actionable knowledge into a short essential format. Teachers are also encouraged to apply healthy pressure on students to accelerate learning.

The Tools

We use online coding tools in the course to eliminate the need for deployment processes. Everything is on the web by default, making sharing and feedback loops quick.

It’s incredible what humans can accomplish, given the right conditions.