My Journey Through Binary Studio Academy: From Self-Study to Team Development

Source: Dev.to

Introduction

I want to share an incredible experience I’ve had over the past few months: my training at the Binary Studio Academy. In just three months I learned more technologies than I did in a year of self‑study.

Project Overview

The most exciting part of the training was the final stage – a team project developed over five weeks from scratch. We built SmartSpend, a financial manager that helps optimize and track expenses. You can read more about the features and technologies we used in the project repository.

Team and Coaches

• Coaches: Nikita Remeslov and Vitaliy Kalenichenko – they shared their knowledge, motivated us, and patiently explained concepts we didn’t yet understand.
• Team: 9 developers and 2 QA engineers who worked day and night on the project, completing 325 tasks.

Daily morning stand‑ups and weekly demos with the Product Owner were unforgettable. Late‑night calls with developers, searching for solutions until 2 AM, were also memorable.

Learning Experience

The experience I gained at the Academy has prepared me to be valuable in my future company and to integrate quickly into working processes.

Recommendation

I highly recommend the Academy to anyone who wants to level up their skills and learn to work in a team.

P.S. Our coach said that when we join commercial projects we won’t feel much difference between the Academy project and commercial ones. I believe he was right, and I’m eager to verify his words in practice.