When Joviane Bellegarde wanted to complement her university studies by learning more about programming and software development, she turned to JetBrains' online Academy.


"It has various topics and lots of practice to supplement my university knowledge. It helped me understand the intricacies of Java, get better at coding, and become a more successful student," explains Bellegarde.


"Assignments don’t seem so scary anymore -- I know JetBrains Academy is here to help."


Bellegarde, a student at NortheasternUniversity in Boston, USA, is reading for a master's degree in computer science after qualifying as a bachelor of biochemistry.


"I wanted to go into a field where I didn’t need years of education to get a decent salary. I wanted to be able to have a job where I could work from anywhere. I wanted to have flexible hours," Bellegarde says.


However, after being accepted onto the course, she found that she was struggling. For example, her first programming class was in Python and her assignments seemed complicated, taking enormous amounts of time to complete.


After coming across JetBrains Academy, however, she began to get better at coding.


"If you asked me a few months ago, I would’ve said I don’t like Java. Now, with JetBrains Academy being a big part of my supplemental learning, I think Java has become my favorite programming language. JetBrains Academy fills in lots of knowledge gaps and covers the questions I have after my classes," Bellegarde says.


JetBrains Academy gives her the knowledge she needs to succeed despite the accelerated nature of her course of study, where she cannot spend a lot of time on the basics, like learning how to declare a variable or run a program.


JetBrains Academy is not only integrated with JetBrains IDEs like IntelliJ IDEA but provides comprehensive theory and practice from the most basic concepts to the very complicated, according to Bellegarde.


"I shared it with all my friends who were struggling with programming," she says. "I got responses from my friends saying that it was the best platform to learn programming!"


Developer skills training available via JetBrains


JetBrains has just updated its list of educational courses on JetBrains Marketplace -- expanding opportunities to learn and teach programming on JetBrains' multiple tools.


JetBrains' Igor Gerasimov says the company wants to help users "roll up their sleeves" to develop a deep understanding of the tech with which they work.


"This is where our educational products help most," Gerasimov says.


"We will continue to expand and improve the materials available on our platform, and we are glad to invite anyone willing to share their knowledge. Our team will do its best to help you publish your own learning materials. If you are willing to contribute to existing materials, our repo is out there as well."


( Photo by Leon on Unsplash )