To comfortably studying course materials it is important to know the basics of programming in one of the languages: Java, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, C#. You can prepare using
recommended materials. For those who is familiar with programming in other language, might not be hard to start after briefly familiarizing with
syntax of the corresponding language and practicing a little on
basic tasks. Maybe not very quick but independent solving the problems at
exercism.io can be a good testing of your skills and readiness for the course.
It is very important to not have problems with
logic and
analytical thinking. It is preferable to take
this test or similar with 100% – our statistics claims that in this case the risk of a student not being up to the course is minimal. If the result is lower, everything depends on what questions were given wrong answers and that those answers were – in that case it would be beneficial to
take our questionnaire and our version of the test to get a review and final feedback with recommendations.
In fact, good
analytical thinking – is the most important pre-requisit. If you have it, you can start learning on this course immediately and get required skills and knowledge on the go, when either in recommended materials for tasks you'll find links to relevant materials, or the mentor will give you tips to how to improve your skills. For example, first task in the practicum already has the basic theory in form of articles and videos about first test automation, there are links to materials about selectors and introduction to Git. In the beginning the very basic understanding of HTML+CSS+JavaScript with materials for the first task would be sufficient. And for better understanding how frontend on JavaScript works, when working on 5 task you can read in a couple of evenings
Iakiv's book. The only thing you need to consider – is if you didn't learn basics before taking the course, as a result it will take more time, and if, for example, you'll discover a weakness in your coding skills, mentor can send you to extra training in our coding basics pool (it can happen between 2nd and 4th or after 14th task), where you'll be improving needed skills while solving algorithmic and code structuring problems, instead of automation. Therefore, if you paid upfront – you have nothing to worry about (the course duration is calculated with some leeway), but if you choose monthly payments it can increase your spending.