Welcome to Progmeister!
We teach programming to students in Zurich
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Vision

When students learn programming they develop a broad skill set that goes way beyond simply using a programming language. Programming is an applied way to teach mathematical thinking, while writing and debugging their code students explore the real-world applications of mathematical concepts.

This is our vision and we are happy to encourage children to explore the fascinating world of computer programming. To aid our students in this exploration, we adapted a 5 semester programming course for students starting from 8th grade. (Full Article)

Jaroslavs and Pavel, course creators

Structure

5 semesters

is the duration of the course. By the end of the course, participants will have developed their programming skills and will be familiar with advanced topics such as memory management, advanced algorithms and data structures, recursion.

3 hours

is the duration of a single lesson. The lesson is split into an hour of lecture and 2 hours of practice led by experienced programming teachers and software engineers.

16 lessons

in a semester (one class per week). The lessons will take place in the evening on workdays online (due to the COVID-19 situation), starting in October 2020. The specific time, day of the week will be decided based on preferences of the participants.

6–12 students

in a single group. We start the course only when at least 6 students are enrolled.

Requirements

8–12 grade

school or gymnasium students can be enrolled for the course.

CHF 160

The course costs CHF 160 during the first semester. The price may be adjusted in the follow up semesters.

Mathematics

knowledge is a prerequisite for the course. The candidates should confirm it by providing an academic transcript and during the interview, which is part of the application process.

English

is the main language of the course. Participants should speak English at a conversational level.

The first semester curriculum

An overview of topics covered during 16 classes in the first semester.

  • 1

    Introduction and simple programs.

  • 2

    Variables, assignments and values. Arithmetics.

  • 3

    Logical operations, simple control flows (choices).

  • 4

    Control flows (loops).

  • 5

    Structured programming. Functions.

  • 6

    Deep dive into primitive types. Type conversion.

  • 7

    Introduction to arrays.

  • 8

    Advanced array topics

  • 9

    Introduction to strings.

  • 10

    Advanced string manipulation.

  • 11

    File input and output. Error processing.

  • 12

    Introduction to multidimensional arrays and lookup data structures.

  • 13

    Deep dive into multidimensional arrays and lookup data structures.

  • 14

    Introduction to efficient algorithms.

  • 15

    Information representation. Structures.

  • 16

    More about packages, text-based user interface.

Our Team

Jaroslavs Samčuks

course creator, teacher, software engineer

Pavel Zaichenkov, PhD

course creator, teacher, software engineer

FAQ

Course Information

Answer: The goal of the course is to help students develop programming, mathematical and problem-solving skills. We also hope to inspire some students to choose software engineering as their future career, as such courses once did for us.
Answer: The students will gain an understanding of fundamental programming concepts, will be able to design algorithms to solve problems and express those algorithms in code. The course will help the students to develop strategic thinking which will be useful in further education and career regardless of specialization, including, but not limited to engineering, law, medicine, economics, philology.
Answer: The goal of the course is to provide our students with additional skills and show how fascinating the world of software engineering is. While this is a great entry point to the profession, further education is necessary to become a fully qualified software engineer.
Answer: The course is taught by the course creators and experienced software engineers, Jaroslavs and Pavel.
Answer: We became passionate about software engineering when we were teenagers. Thanks to our teachers we have been motivated and inspired to make engineering our life-long journey. To give credit back to society, we decided to inspire the next generation to explore the fascinating world of programming.
Answer: We use Go as a programming language of choice for the course. No additional software apart from a web browser is required as we will use Go Playground in the first semester.
Answer: Students should have time for 2 hours of homework per week. The students will receive practical assignments that they will work on during class hours. The students are expected to work on unfinished assignments at home. We will also do our best to support students in their personal projects that they may decide to take on during class.
Answer: We will provide a completion certificate upon request.

Prerequisites

Answer: Learning programming today is hardly possible without English as most documentation is written in English. Furthermore, English is the language that most of the programming community speaks.
Answer: A conversational knowledge of English is good enough for the course. We are not asking candidates to provide a certificate or an academic transcript; it's the responsibility of the candidate to ensure that their proficiency in English allows to comfortably understand the course materials.
Answer: The fundamentals of critical and abstract thinking, and structured analysis are very important for both mathematics and programming. Therefore, formal methods of thinking that mathematics demands are tremendously helpful for tackling complex problems. Moreover, our course material relies on various mathematical concepts, such as number theory, algebra, geometry, formal logic, trigonometry.
Answer: Different schools have different curriculum in mathematics, which is why it is difficult to define a grade baseline for the course. The candidates will need to provide an academic transcript, which we will rely on while considering student applications.

Finance

Answer: The course costs CHF 160 per semester (CHF 10 per lesson) per person. In the meanwhile, we are actively looking for sponsorship to run the course free of charge in the future.
Answer: There will be no additional expenses during the semester. We will provide all course material. The software that is used in the course is free and can be used at home as well.

Logistics

Answer: Students should bring their own laptops to the class (the technical specifications are not important).
Answer: Normally the course takes place in Technopark Zurich. However, due to the current COVID-19 situation, the course will be online.

Enrollment

For course enrollment, please send an email to infofoo@progmeister.ch or fill this form. Reach out to us if you have any questions.

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