IT Land now has more than 40,000 users of paid and free products and about 300 graduates. IT Land is focused on helping with career guidance, and gives adults the opportunity to try different directions to choose what suits them best.
What's our point?
Because the school's flagship course is "IT Land: 4 professions", where in 3 months students try design, development, management and, of course, nou-code based on PuzzleBot. In each direction they make a small portfolio, and at the end of the course they are looking for orders and work in their chosen direction.
We chatted with Olga Kad, a serial entrepreneur, IT blogger, and creator of the IT Land school, and found out why the no-code and why PuzzleBot.
"A couple of years ago I started blogging about my work and life, talking about how I start startups at hackathons, get grants to develop them, learn a lot of new things and just live within the IT communities. People began to sign up for me, and later asked to switch them. When it became too much - we launched the first course.
Olga Kad
Why does the school give 4 professions, so many usually nobody needs?
People who come to the guys usually think that code development is the crown of creation and the only existing profession in IT, and if not the only one, then at least the most prestigious. But it's not so, there are many different professions in IT sphere and all of them are important to create products. In addition, many of these professions are better suited for students in terms of background, temperament, and interests. Many people say they wanted to become developers, but are insanely happy they found themselves in code or design because they really enjoy it.
The school consistently gives Design, Know-Code, Development, and Management. This is no accident. Once you understand one, you can understand the other much faster. So a person who has once built a bot in PuzzleBot gets to grips with Python bot development much faster, because they already understand the blocks that make up the bot development process.
Why is the no-code training based on the PuzzleBot service?
"We chose PuzzleBot because we ourselves made custom bots in it a couple of times before school, and used it many times for ourselves and our internal tasks (for example, I implemented a Daily-bot in it that asked my colleagues what they did yesterday and what they were going to do today)."
Olga Kad
PuzzleBot is very intuitive, has a nice interface and inexpensive monthly subscription fee. It's very easy to do something in the constructor for one day, and then you can set up scripts and posting, and these are tasks with increasing complexity, but all of our students cope with it.
It is much harder for them to connect the bot to Integromat, and thus connect it to tables or other know-how services; not everyone can handle it, but those who get to this stage consider themselves gods of know-how, and usually stay in this profession.
Students make completely different services, from self-help bots to mini-games with children's stories to dating services. Here are some of them:
🤖 The most atmospheric bot @jungle_jougney_bot
🤖 Bot that can help bring money to businesses right tomorrow @ArendaKgdBot
🤖 Bot @random_city_eu_bot shows a city in Europe with a similar number of people as the user
🤖 Business bot that can take the job away from the secretary @garage_detailing34_bot
🤖 Bot with great picture work @BrunchForYou_bot
🤖 A bot that praises cleaning and we ourselves want to start using @ten_min_clean_bot
🤖 Biggest bot by number of commands @Your_pocket_designer_bot
🤖 The personal rat-sender has melted our hearts @info_mir_bot
🤖 Bot on a complex and broad topic - about struggling with autism, we believe this bot can help many @LAuMoon_bot
🤖 Bot that solves real social problems, made for You're not alone @helptineodna_bot
🤖 The most philosophical bot @Need_some_help_bot
🤖 The most difficult bot for ordinary people to understand, but very useful to chemists @dr_bukatz_test_bot
After the Know-Code in the course comes the development block. And many students really wonder why everyone doesn't use the know-code when it's several times faster to develop an MVP product. Some of the students fall in love with the code, and the ease of using external APIs, but understand for which tasks it is easier to use PuzzleBot, and where it is better to write yourself from 0 in Python.
"The buzz of developing for zero code is that you can make a product in an evening. And it will work! If you came up with the idea yourself, you don't need any team - an evening of free time, and you can drive traffic to the product."
Olga Kad
