Mr. Enbar (Photo: Twitter)

If Mayor Bloomberg's billions of initiatives to help boost S.T.E.M. activity in our city didn't tip you off, New York suffers from a dearth of talented engineers. The Flatiron School, launched last year, has established itself as a coding mecca for professionals with no development experience hoping to break into the tech world and fill some of those empty coding gigs.

With a 10 percent acceptance rate, Flatiron has been pretty successful in placing applicants in jobs:  Last September, 100 percent of graduates scored fulltime developer gigs at places like Conde Nast, Universal and Contently, according to Adam Enbar, the school's cofounder.

Now, Flatiron is teaming up with Skillcrush, a New York-based digital literacy startup, to offer a two-week intensive program for high school students hoping to hone their developer chops. "The longterm goal will be to create a more sustainable after school program so that rather than kids doing ballet or karate or learning violin we can add coding to that mix," Mr. Enbar told Betabeat by phone. "We want to create a real ongoing program to help kids learn how to code."

The program, which will be taught by Skillcrush cofounders Adda Birnir and Kate McGee, will run from June 17th to June 28th with classes Monday - Friday 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. With such similar mission statements, both Flatiron School and Skillcrush have been looking for an opportunity to partner up, and offering a summer program for kid coders seemed like the perfect sweet spot.

"One of the things that's great about high school kids is they're going to be super fluent in all of the school apps," Ms. Birnir told Betabeat by phone. "But what we’re gonna do is say, 'You’re really excited about the Internet, here’s how you go from being a consumer of the web to someone who’s actively participating in it. It can be for fun: you can make video games or Tumblr blogs or animated GIFs, but there’s also a way where you can have a real impact on the world through the Internet and through building web applications."

The program will be divided into three parts. The first will be dedicated to teaching kids typical web terminology and introducing them to HTML and CSS; the second will get them into the terminal and train them to think conceptually about programming; the third will intro kids to the hacker and maker movement.

"Our goal is really to just get these kids super excited about programming and computers and get them thinking they can be active participants as opposed to passive consumers," Ms. Birnir said.

Mr. Enbar told Betabeat that the first program will cost $2,000 and will only be admitting about 20 students. Manhattan Prep has provided a classroom for free, and Flatiron plans to donate the proceedings saved from renting a space to a nonprofit that teaches kids how to code.

"As we can create a business out of teaching kids to code we can also be empowering these nonprofits that are doing really great work," Mr. Enbar added.

Ms. Birnir (addabjork.wordpress.com)

Much to the chagrin of Ladybeat, brogramming is again in the news today, but this time with an insightful piece from Mother Jones on the sexist slip ups fledgling startups are wont to make. Buried at the bottom is an anecdote about 27-year-old Adda Birnir, who decided to start a service called Skillcrush as "an online resource for women looking to learn code and feel comfortable doing it."

Skillcrush, which is still in its pre-launch phase, offers a set of online tutorials primarily focused on digital literacy--stuff like how to "beautify your blog," implement ads, and create an online store--aimed at helping everyone, not just women, beef up on their tech skills.

"What we’re looking to do is create an online technical learning community where people can come and do skill-based learning around everything from applied skills, like how to customize a blog and install it on a web server, and also [how] to learn HTML, CSS, Javascript, Ruby on Rails," Ms. Birnir told Betabeat by phone.

Ms. Birnir and her cofounder Jen McFadden think that the New York-based Skillcrush can help those with little web or coding skills wade into the wonderful world of the Internet. "We’re working really hard to think about how do we bring people in who have previously been not so comfortable with the Internet?" said Ms. Birnir. "We’re spending a lot of time thinking about how do we initiate people into this whole thing."

Skillcrush is helmed by three women and one man. Ms. Birnir and Ms. McFadden insist that while their experience with gender inequality in the tech sector may have informed the creation of Skillcrush, they want to make it as open an environment as possible. Translation: just because it's run by women and boasts a cute company name, doesn't mean it's just for the XX chromosomes.

"We're focused right now on trying to build a product that’s useful for whoever wants to use it," said Ms. McFadden. "We’re three women and one guy so I think that by nature of what we’re doing we have a little bit more of a feminine bent to it, but it wasn’t to create an exclusionary environment in any way shape or form... we just want to provide an environment that is fun and interesting and a little bit more light and accessible."

Skillcrush is still in pre-launch mode, but has an active Tumblr where the ladies post everything from quotes from their favorite tech-related articles to a helpful how-to column about tech troubles. The duo plan to expand Skillcrush beyond its current digital literacy offerings to include comprehensive programs on coding, as well as a potential partnership with lady powered Girl Develop It, an offline meetup for women who want to learn how to code.

"We love a lot of the things that are out there already," said Ms. McFadden. "We know the ladies from Girl Develop It and they’re doing amazing things...We’ve tried CodeCademy and it’s great but we see [digital literacy] as something that 3-5 years down the road everyone has to have a handle on. We want to provide something that’s more accessible to everyone."