Become an Exercism mentor

help others improve their coding fluency

Exercism is looking for friendly people to help others improve their fluency. If you are comfortable with a programming language and like helping others, then this is for you.

Become a Mentor Tell me more

What is Exercism?

Exercism helps people improve their programming skills with thousands of exercises across 52 languages with help from our dedicated team of welcoming mentors. Our mentors help guide others through a language track offering feedback and encouraging people to think critically about their code. It is crucial to Exercism that our mentors share our vision and care passionately about delivering feedback empathetically and that Exercism remains a comfortable and friendly learning environment. To support this we offer mentor guidance and ask that everyone contributing to Exercism follows a code of conduct which is grounded in research on how people learn.

What mentors do to help

Mentors are at the core of Exercism. Let's see how they're involved.

A mentor and learner having a conversation

A student joins a language track and submits their solution to a coding challenge.
A Mentor gives feedback and guides the student to a more idiomatic solution, helping them become more fluent in a new language.
With their mentors help, people complete all the challenges on their track and achieve fluency in a new language.

What are the benefits of being a mentor?

Being a mentor is great for the people you mentor, but also great for you!

Teaching is a powerful route to mastery. It's how the smartest people learn
Mentoring is a great way to give back to the community that has nurtured you
You can share your passion for your language with people who actively want to learn about it

Get that warm happy feeling of knowing you have helped give someone access to education and opportunities so they can better their life
Meet other mentors, get to know the Exercism community, and make new friends
Live longer

What makes a great mentor?

Based on our 2017 survey on effective code reviews and the feedback we've gathered from people learning on Exercism

You are passionate about sharing your programming experience
You can communicate in a clear and friendly manner
You have empathy for learners, and can adapt your feedback to suit your students

You can commit to giving an hour per week most weeks
You want to give back to open source projects and the tech community in a way other than coding

Sound like you? Become a mentor Want to help out? No qualifications are necessary, just come and get involved.