Coding and Fitness Bootcamp in cheap country

This is a bit odd, but I’m just going to shoot from the hip here: My contract is finishing in a couple of months and I’d like to get involved with something that involves the following:

  • Daily fitness routine (e.g. group exercise, martial arts, team sports etc.).
  • Full-board (lodgings, 3-meals a day with balanced diet).
  • Team coding: either learning together or coding meaningful up together.

I’ve been a developer for over a decade and have a lot of full-stack experience and many frameworks, CMSes, libraries etc. I’ve been using Angular 2 and Ionic for the past year and would like to work with React, but I’m not too tied to it, I’d happily work on a new Angular project.

I’m willing to work for equity, commission, charity or any combination of them. I’m expecting to pay for lodgings, fitness course etc, obviously.

I guess my question is: Is there anything like this? Does anyone else want to do something similar?

I’ve seen a few coding camps where they also have some activities (surfing etc.), but they are expensive and are only available sporadically. Ideally, there would be something like the muy thai boxing camps (£9000 for 6 months full board and training) but with coding for half the day.

I think it would be a really great experience, good for mind, body and soul! Depending on the work being done, it could even be good for the wallet, who knows?

Does anyone have any suggestions? I can find part of the package, but nothing that covers the whole thing. I’d even be willing to organise the ‘whole package’ if I could find, say, half a dozen like-minded people. The more the merrier! :slight_smile:

Cheers, guys, enjoy your coding.

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The world is a big place. Does location affect your decision?

I’m up for it! I put the idea of a cooperative coding retreat in Eastern Europe forward to the community just two days ago. Apparently I’m not a good salesman… I think if a few get started and promote it online others will trickle in and a nice cohort will develop.

Hi Rousabout,

That’s awesome! Glad to hear I’m not the only one thinking this way. You seem ideally located for it, too.

I just read your FCC Codecamp posts and we’re clearly on the same page. I am very keen to fit regular exercise into the routine, though (e.g. one hour a day) and hope that the same group mentality/camaraderie will support those efforts, too! I’m quite active (just off to play footie now, actually), but I’m trying to hit two birds with one stone. Basically, I want to come back smarter, fitter and with new friends and experiences :slight_smile:

I agree: if we get the ball rolling, the momentum will entice others.

Interested to see how many people are interested and what the various levels of experience etc. are. It would be a great bonus to achieve something while we were doing it (i.e. collaborate on an app/site), but as long as it’s intellectually enriching, I’m not going to complain. :slight_smile:

Not really, I’m very flexible on location, but obviously prefer places that are cheap, pleasant (i.e. not openly hostile or rife with crime/poverty). I’m expecting to be fairly focused on coding and exercise for up to several months, so the location isn’t really a big deal. I don’t speak any other languages fluently, so there’s no sway in that regard.

I think we are on the same page. I was active before I left home with swimming, mtbing, climbing, and surf sports etc. I miss that part of my life and thinking along the same lines as you. Activity partners are welcome if they want to join in, but if they don’t feel up to it I’m fine with that too. I’m just aiming for a happy community of likeminded people.

What dates are you thinking about? I like your idea of project collaboration a lot. If I knuckle down I think I can be skill ready for some collaboration when your done on your contract. ATM I’m idea rich, skill poor. Haha

Do you think if we make a single page website and pass the word around different forums and coding communities we can get more interest?

Cool, sounds good.

I want to re-emphasise the importance to me of the regular group exercise. I don’t have a lot of self-discipline for exercising alone and am relying on the group involvement to keep it regular. I am a member of two sports teams here and it’s not worth it to me to move somewhere where this isn’t happening. So while I totally agree that exercise shouldn’t be obligatory, I’m seeing it as a double-bill feature, if you know what I mean. :slight_smile:

To be totally clear, I’m expecting the sports/gym to be a part of the same location as the accommodation/coding centre. I don’t drive, so this all needs to be in short walking distance. For reference, look at http://www.tigermuaythai.com/. The apartments aren’t that pretty, but it’s part of the same complex as the training centre.

What coding are you currently learning? e.g. languages frameworks?

Ok I see. I like your determination. My only concern is that kind of thing might be a little specific and polarizing. I wouldn’t worry to much about not having workout partners. In my limited experience it’s more uncommon to get a group with no one interested in fitness. Have you considered rather than going through a large commercial enterprise you can hire local freelancers/coaches/trainers whatever you need. I find they are often better quality, more flexible and they’ll schedule wherever and whenever you need them. If it’s six am daily they’ll be there with equipment and coffee in hand. More fun, great for motivation and cheaper than the gym)) But I definitely think we can find a location with everything you need in close walking distance.

I’m working the Colt Steele course at udemy. It’s a js stack with node, jquery, vanilla… I don’t know what benefit jquery is for me so my plan is to do React on the side or when I’m done on the udemy course. Also I like the look of golang if I can make fit it in

Yeah, I knew it would be specific, which I why I prefaced my topic with ‘bit of an odd one’, but that’s what I want and it’s not hard to get them, just have to find like-minded people :slight_smile: You can get one or the other in dozens of places in any large city in the world, but the point here is that it’s a niche, or specific market. I’m willing to give up my job, move abroad and spend a bit of money getting fit and learning React while abstracting away the day-to-day stuff.

You’re probably aware that there are no big niches left. There’s a market for everything! To look at it another way, I’m interested in either joining the fitness/coding market, catering to the fitness/coding market or creating a fitness/coding market. I know a lot of people that just need a bit of social motivation to get off their arse, myself included!

Sorry for the repetition, but I’ve thought about this a lot and that’s what will get me out of the comfort zone with a belief that I will come back better. Even in a cheap country, it’s a big out-lay; time-wise, money wise and risk-wise.

Lol, Colt Steele? He better be fucking macho with a name like that. Sounds like a good course, though. I agree jQuery isn’t much use, it was a great tool about 5-7 years ago, but isn’t used much in the industry nowadays (I haven’t used it in over 5 years). There are specific tools for different things now and the JS API has improved so much it’s invalidated a lot of the boilerplate stuff.

React is a great one to learn, that’s why I’m moving on to it next. Angular is great, too, but I think it’s highly beneficial to have a grounded view of the popular frameworks.

OK, I’ve just bought ‘Bootcode.eu’, we should get together on the phone to sort out some details. Can we PM on this site? I’ll message you if so.

Cheers, hombre.