Lonca 💭

Lonca (Guild) is a school of software engineering that follows the software craftspersonship movement. In contrast to the classical education systems, it emphasizes an approach to equip students with industry quality software development skills. 

Lonca is an organization that aims to create the software culture of the future by means of bringing modern technology craftsperson together and forming a medium to disseminate the collective wisdom from the master to the apprentice in a similar fashion to old craft guilds, while giving priority to educating female software developers to reduce inequality between men and women in the industry.

Our main objective is to train successful and confident female software engineers who use latest technologies to develop software. While doing that, we also aim for creating a network of successful women from all ages and cultures.

Origins 👩🏻‍🎨

Occupations such as carpentery, tailoring, blacksmithing, etc. are called craftspersonship, and the people who practice in these fields are called craftspeople.

Today, becoming a good software engineer necessitates an extensive amount of knowledge and experience. As a result, software engineering is yet another craftspersonship.

Since the Middle Ages, craftspeople have formed various organizations called guilds to practice, improve and teach their trade.

One of the most prominent features of guilds is the bringing up of young apprentices. By training their apprentices, masters ensure the continuity of experience and culture. Therefore, guilds are the best environments to learn a trade.

Purpose 🎯

One of the most challenging shortcomings of modern software engineering education is the misalignment between the subjects covered at the university and the actual real-world problems that are experienced in the industry. That being said, software requires labor and delicate workmanship.

Lonca aims to fill this gap by assisting women who are dedicated to becoming software engineers to build necessary skills for the industry. Software craftspeople convey their knowledge and experience they developed over the years to the apprentices.

Another shortcoming is the solidarity between female developers. Lonca provides a network of female developers where everyone can give and receive help.

Activites 🐝

Since Lonca aims to create an ecosystem for women from all levels of experience, it is open for everyone.

To maintain this ecosystem, the instructors will hold weekly live sessions. The content of those live sessions can vary from code review to solving code challenges together. Even though the instructors will be the ones who are mainly responsible for these sessions, Lonca encourages every member to help their colleagues. This is the way to transfer the experience and to grow together as a community.

For those who are accepted as apprentices, there will be extra sessions where the instructors spend more time on the apprentices' improvement.

Apprenticeship 👩‍🎓

As the first step to be an apprentice at Lonca, every new member is given 1 week to finish all of the preparatory curriculum which is based on establishing their JavaScript foundations. There are no other languages or frameworks covered in this period. Anybody who suffices to show the necessary willingness and hard work in this week are encouraged to become an apprentice at Lonca.

Lonca adopts remote attendance over modern communication channels. Training starts by the request of the apprentice to learn an continues until she proves herself to her master without any time constraints. This "desire to learn" driving the apprentice's progress differentiates Lonca from traditional education systems.

The apprentice candidates are expected to deliver a devotion for this craftspersonship. Lonca is a demanding education experience. Consequently, attendees are assumed to deliver necessary hard work and dedication.

The apprentice uses many different resources throughout the learning process. All recommended resources are intended for learning and using modern technologies. After the apprentice reaches a certain level during the training, she develops a project that she wants to work on. Thus, at the end of the training, a real-life application is put into practice. The apprentice who delivers a successful project becomes a 'journey'.

Curriculum 💻

Lonca focuses on full-stack engineering concept and modern web technologies.

JavaScript

JavaScript is one of the most popular programming languages. Object-oriented and functional programming concepts, web applications, and frameworks are taught in JavaScript.

Vue.js

Vue.js will be the frontend framework that will be used to create single page web applications and user interfaces.

Node.js

It is possible to build high performance and asynchronous backend applications with JavaScript. In fact, end-to-end web applications will be examined using NodeJS.

MongoDB

MongoDB—one of the most widely used storage tier for modern web applications—will be employed for demonstrating certain database design, query, and optimization techniques.

Instructors 🧚‍♀️

Lonca is founded by Turkish entrepreneur and engineer Armağan Amcalar. He organized several successful workshops and assisted many engineers within the software industry. He plans to mold these activities into a sustainable and centralized structure within the umbrella of Lonca. Further, there are indeed plans for involving several other experienced developers to improve the capacity.

Merve Uygun Erdol

Journey

After working in a non-software industry for more than 6 years, she decided to become a web developer. After much research she met Lonca. For a year she followed Lonca's curriculum and quickly developed herself, becoming the first 'journey' of Lonca. Meanwhile, she completed a 1-month software internship at edelkrone and took her first step into the software world. Merve is working as a Software Developer for more than 2 years.

She also supports the participation of female software developers to Lonca by conducting interviews with apprentice candidates and guiding their training processes.

It's hard to put in words what Lonca has contributed to me and my life. I am proud to develop software as a woman in a male-dominated industry.

Gülistan Boylu

Journey

Gulistan graduated from computer engineering and co-founded a digital agency where she worked as an SEO consultant for 2 years. Upon discovering Lonca she decided she wanted to be a software engineer. Only one year after joining Lonca, she moved to London for an internship opportunity.

Gulistan found the job she was looking for after working for an agency and then another startup. She is currently working as a software engineer at the company that develops a Behaviour Driven Development (BDD) tool for software teams. She is working with React on the front-end and using Cypress for integration tests; and with TypeScript, MongoDB, and AWS on the back-end.

Gulistan fights against gender inequality in the software industry with Lonca. She also mentors female developer candidates in her free time.

Nowadays, Gulistan is learning microservices architecture, TDD, and AWS — and she enjoys doing pair programming.

Merve Kara

Apprentice

Merve met software during her university years. After graduating, she tried to work as a back-end engineer but after meeting the Lonca she decided to continue her career as a front-end engineer. She has been continuing professionally in the software industry for 5 years. In order to share her experience and excitement in the field, she has been actively participating in Lonca since 2015.

Neslihan Kara

Member

Before she changed her career, Neslihan was studying Linguistics at Bogazici University, Istanbul. In her junior year, she and her team were awarded a year-long funding from Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey and they co-founded a start-up on designing an app to teach Turkish Sign Language to deaf babies who are born to hearing families. Then in her senior year, Neslihan took the first step to change her career and applied Coyotiv School of Software Engineering.

She graduated from both schools in April 2021. Currently, along side with her start-up, she is working at Coyotiv both as a Software Engineer and as a Peer Assistant. In the Engineering team, she helps with performance optimization of a popular movie review website in Turkey. In the Teaching team, she helps the students by holding daily peer-programming sessions.

She is also actively contributing to Nimble Türkiye where she holds weekly sessions to solve code challenges and to teach English to the community.

Esra Paksoy Ocak

Apprentice

It all started when she chose computer programming while entering high school. She graduated from the database programming department here. Later, she realized that she wanted to advance in this field and switched to computer engineering. She founded a computer club here and served as president for one year. After graduating, she tried to work as a backend engineer but then she was more interested in being a frontend engineer. So she joined Linux Summer Camp and learned the basics.

She recently joined the Nimble Turkey community where she is improving herself with her friends.

Invitation 💌

Does it get you excited so far?

Then send an introductory mail about yourself to apply@lonca.works to get an access to our Slack channel.

Contact ♥️

If you want to get further information about Lonca, share your suggestions, give support, invite us to your organization or give a greeting;

You can reach us through hello@lonca.works.