RMOTR

After taking the introduction to python course, I'm not sure that the other reviewers took the same course I did. Because of the scheduled course times and promises of adding projects to our github profiles, I assumed this was a well-structured course with clear goals and expectations, but this course felt disorganized and disjointed. The syllabus is a bulleted list with no description of lessons or assignments, no dates. The lectures left me feeling unprepared for the assignments, and the lectures were very short compared to what I expected (often ending quite early). I expected 4 hours of lecture material prepared each week, but at least two of those hours were for working on assigments (as individuals or groups). Working in groups was extremely inconvenient, and I would have preferred about triple the amount of individual assignments during the first 3-4 weeks of the course, and then work on larger projects as a group (or individual, if preferred) during the last couple weeks once we all got used to working with github and the IDE, and comfortable with the overall flow of the course.

There was a distinct lack of awareness or interest in accessibility: transcripts are not provided for the lectures (I asked), and there is a heavy reliance on Google hangouts for voice and video communication. The teacher hopped around a lot when sharing his screen, flipflopping between tabs and windows, which made it very difficult to follow. He was very receptive when I brought it up to him, but the fact that I even had to bring it up (and the fact that providing transcripts is not something they will do) told me a lot. A RMOTR employee in the slack chat also used disabled slurs and did not respond when I messaged them privately.

The slides are provided for the lectures, but they are not super helpful, and they are white text on a blue background, and therefore not easily printable or useful for note-taking.

The course was advertised as a good introduction for anyone who wants to learn Python, and listed Codecademy's Python course as a good starting point and prerequesite. Other than Codecademy, I have very little coding experience, and felt completely unprepared for this course. The instructor and mentors kept saying "it'll all make sense soon" and I kept holding out hoping the next lesson would be "the one" where they tied it all together, but it never happened, and eventually 6 weeks passed.

In hindsight, I wish I'd requested a refund.

Out of desperate frustration around week 4, I searched for ways to supplement this course and to do what I set out to do (learn Python), and i discovered coursera's Intro to Python specialization program. This turned out to be much more appropriate for a beginner, and it actually covered much more material in a much shorter time-- if you've got no programming experience and want a more structured educational experience, you might try that instead of RMOTR.

RMOTR's intro to python course is probably great for people who have much more coding experience than I have, and are just looking to learn a little bit of Python to supplement their current skillsets. It is not for true beginners who are looking to learn Python as a first language.

The online environment needs some work: There's a students section and a learn section for individual assignments and for accessing lectures, and it's not clear which is which without loading them. The RMOTR environment for individual assignments is terrible if you need to higher magnification. Zoom is used for lectures, Hangouts and Cloud9 are expected for group work, Github instruction left a lot to be desired, Slack is used for general course information and off-topic memes or offensive conversations... At one point a google calendar went out, too, but I don't think it was ever updated. I highly suggest that RMOTR change their format so that it's more of an all-in-one experience, or lay out all the links, supplementing materials, expectations, and hardware/software requirements in one central location.

Mentors are available on a fairly regular basis to answer questions, which was helpful, but I wish that the material had been presented in a way that I didn't need so much handholding. With Coursera, all I needed to do was review the course materials a little more before figuring out the problems myself. The material really isn't available through RMOTR-- you really have to ask for help if you get stuck and don't have previous Python experience. The assignments for RMOTR are more about making tests pass, rather than about learning to write code.

I took this course because I heard about it through their new partnership with Women Who Code, and I feel like RMOTR has a lot more growing to do before I'd recommend this course or this company to anyone.

I've got many more comments and suggestions but RMOTR should hire me as a consultant if they want my expertise. :)

I've been learning to code on my own for a few years now.  I've gone through many books and online courses ranging from free to expensive, and I've completed a lot of coding challenges and exercises.  I got to a point where I felt like I had written so much code that I should be ready to build things that other people can use.  However, nearly every time I tried to write something from scratch I would stare blankly at my empty text editor, not knowing where to start, how to design or structure a program, how to create a whole product starting just from an idea, or how to break down a large objective into smaller pieces.  Sometimes I might make it work, but I would be frustrated and annoyed the whole time and it would take me ages to finally complete it.  How could I feel like I had no idea what I was doing when I've written so much code and solved so many problems successfully?

These resources I had been using all these years that made it easy for me to learn made it too easy.  It was too easy to solve each objective, and while I might have learned some syntax, logic or a nifty language feature, I wasn't really learning how to think like a programmer.  Programming isn't all that intuitive, despite languages and frameworks maturing and being updated with powerful new features.  Programming is ultimately writing instructions for a computer -- a dumb, fast machine -- that just does what you tell it to do, which is the problem.

The most valuable and powerful thing I learned through this course that made me feel like a better programmer who finally made it to the next level was not about Python, or fancy techniques, or code design.  It was the realization that programming is hard.  It's really hard, and it can't be made easy no matter how you break it apart.  And you shouldn't want it to be made easy, or at least I don't want it to anymore after this experience of working on multiple challenging projects per week for a month.  I've grown vastly more in the month of the course as a programmer than I had in the previous multiple years of learning to code the easy way.

Oh Python, you beautiful nasty devil.  I love you.  I hate you.  You make me feel smart.  You make me feel stupid.  You make me feel powerful.  You make me feel ill.  I previously only thought highly of Python and programming in general because it was so easy, but I hadn't realized I was rarely doing anything incredibly complicated with it.  Being challenged stretches you out in different directions and it mangles you as you travel around on an emotional and mental rollercoaster going from singing eurekas to shouting obscenities, but you come out of it an improved version of yourself.  That can be quite an uncomfortable experience during the ride, especially if you're doing it alone.  Thanks to rmotr, I didn't go through it alone.  I had fellow students alongside me who were getting beat up too, and we had the wonderful teachers and mentors to guide us and unstick us when we were too bloodied to go on.

And those fine folks are the value you're paying for.  The teachers spent the time laying out the curriculum, which is structured expertly with a concise weekly lecture and 12 fun projects that very effectively get to the heart of each concept and test your understanding at all times.  You don't just get high quality mentorship, or their well-designed code examples and explanations.  All of this has culminated in coding experience that has caused me to lose the hesitation to experiment, gain confidence to break things, and enjoy collaboration.

You can put any price tag you want on information, and that's what much of the education field is comprised of, unfortunately.  Who needs to consume information as their education when we live in a world that runs on information technology?  Almost no one nowadays.  These education systems are outdated.  People don't need to learn information, they need to learn how to learn, think, and solve problems.  People pay tens of thousands of dollars or more for university (credentials + information), ten to twenty thousand dollars for in-person coding bootcamps (interview prep + information + coding with other people in a desk-filled room), and a bit of money here and there for online courses or books (information).  There's mostly nothing wrong with any of those options depending on your situation, but they might be relatively wasteful or ineffective if there's a better way.  

If formative experiences are invaluable, information is abundant, and a person's time is scarce, how do you arrive at only $300 (or free if you get approved for their scholarship) for a month-long course that results in a formative experience that empowers you to be the productive, efficient programmer you've imagined you could be but couldn't figure out how on your own?  That must be rare, or perhaps even unprecedented.

Rmotr helped me go from stuggling to learn the basics on my own,- to understanding the basics of Python, and preparing me for a wounderful future of Python programming. I truly mean it when I say that taking this class has changed my life. I feel ready to get into the deeper more complex things Python has to offer, and their whole team helped me to get here.

This was the best experience I've EVER had learning how to program in any language. The RMOTR team honestly did everything abolutely perfect. Class on Wednesday, and 3 group projects spaced out untill the next class, plus the assignments on the learn platform.

The amount of programming that they have you do considering the fact I took the Introduction course was suprising, and it helped me to be able to put everything they were talking about in class together into a functioning piece of code. We worked on real projects that could have even been used in the real world. We even learned test driven deployment since day one. They really wanted us to understand test driven deployment, and they explained everything about it really well to us. Rmotr isnt just showing people how to become developers, they are showing people how to become good developers.

They flawlessly execute the classes and beautifully explain everything, always giving everyone the chance to ask a question at any time.

They also don't JUST teach you the basics of Python, we learned how to do things like use Github -Fork Repo's, Clone/Download them on Cloud9, Set up a virtualenv in Cloud9, use pip to install dependencies, commit our changes, and push our changes to Github. Also, the group projects teach you how to work in a group, coding with another person.. As a beginner this is hard to do because if you dont fully understand all of the concepts yet it may be hard for you to explain why you should do something a certain way to your partner. As time goes on this gets a whole lot easier and teaches you a valuable lesson, teamwork. 

Another thing to note, the general atmosphere of the Slack channels, and conferences is like we've all been friends for a few years. Everyone is very respectful, and friendly. The teachers and mentors are always there to help, and I found that so are your fellow classmates; Everyone works together to help eachother grow and understand everything as best they can.

I truly thank RMOTR for this wonderful experience.

Well I actually didn't get the chance to try their courses because they failed to attend our very first session!
I was scheduled for an interview regarding their Data Science course, and they even sent me 2 reminders on the day of the interview, then guess what, RMOTR interviewer didn't show up?!
I spent the next 30 mins hoping someone will show up, I even checked the time and date again just to make sure I didn't miss anything.
I also used their live chatting service, no response there as well!
A horoble experience without ever attending a single session!

I recently finished the Introduction to Python programming course put on by Rmotr. Coming into the course I hadspent some time familiarizing myself with the Python language through various interactive resourrces, but they all fell short when it came to learn how to actually problem solve with programming. It's a very different thing to follow a step by step process where all you have to figure out is syntax (like it's done in Codecademy etc...), compared to be given liberty to chose your own method to solve a problem. This is where Rmotr's teaching method really shines. They will let you lose to solve exercises along with your team mates, but follow up on you the moment you get stuck. This makes for a very efficient learning process where you gain confidence while not wasting your time beating your head against difficult problems.

As for the curriculum, there are essentially three separate parts: 2 hours of classroom/ lecture time each week, independent programming exercises and readings through an e-learning platform, and 2-3 group programming sessions of longer, comprehensive projects each week. The instructors are well-informed and clarify many difficult concepts in the lectures, but the real gem here are the group sessions. Working with other team members ensure that you actually communicate the programming concepts, which really help you tink on your feet and reinforces what you've learned.

The course is also a great intoduction to collaborative tools such as Github, Slack and the Cloud9 online IDE, and it has taught me lot about how to effectively work with others remotely.

Overall, expect for a fairly hectic 4 weeks of programming, but when you are finished you will have gone from being a newbie to being someone who can use programming to solve real-life problems. It really is a great value and I highly recommend this to those interested in learning Python programming!

The RMOTR team is up front about the course requirements: it's not for beginners, and it is intensive. I admittedly took this a bit too lightly and was quickly overwhelmed. I spent literal nights and weekends reading and coding to get through this course... I starved a little. My boyfriend left me. No just kidding but it was super intense, and I was in bed at 2AM reading through my course material and spending 12 hour straight Saturdays on project assignments.

This sounds bad, but in reality, it was the opportunity I needed to deep dive and wrap my head around concepts I that I was unable to fully grasp when studying by myself. In a month I went from wtf'ing 4 pages into the Django tutorial, to writing programs with my colleagues who had been using Python for years. It's also super neat to remain a part of the RMOTR Slack community, where everyone is more than willing to help out with my personal projects, chime in on concept and design debates, and put up with all of our memes. It's the best kind of virtual networking.

Our instructors, Santiago & Martin, are the perfect teaching duo who address doubts and questions quickly and succinctly. They exhibit endless patience and right away it becomes obvious that they genuinely want their students to succeed. Their passion and dedication is nothing short of admirable - it's contagious and inspiring.

Overall it was significantly trying, it was stressful, and while ultimately undeniably fun, in hindsight it was as close to the definition of a coding bootcamp that you can get. I recommend it 100%, to any and everyone willing to dedicate the time and effort. If I could go back I would endure the struggle again in a heartbeat. 

I found this course on reddit and applied, thinking that I was still pretty new to programming. I had been teaching myself Python for a while, but definitely felt pretty stuck on the intermediate side of things. I applied to Rmotr, got accepted, and took the course. It was one of the best decisions I made. (Full disclosure: I now work with the company as a TA)

The course took me though a lot of the more advanced concepts that I struggled to figure out on my own. There were excellent reading/studying resources, live classes over video chat, solo homework, and group projects. We tackled advanced mechanics of the language like decorators and generators, flask/web backends, and working with databases. We also focused a lot on the conceptual side, like when to use classes, when to use iterators vs generators, how to structure a project in flask, etc. The end of the class saw us forming a group and going from an idea to a coded, functional, deployed proof-of-concept project in a few short weeks. We got a lot of feedback from that, and also got advice on turning our new skills into a job (for me, this didn't apply).

I made a large investment of time, but got a lot out of it. They've recently restructured their course with feedback from former students like me and it's even more streamlined and focused now. As I said, it was definitely one of the best programming classes I've ever taken. It bridged that gap from self-study to actually working with python professionally. The instructors did a great job tying the things we learned together and definitely helped us build bigger projects as time went on. Aside from that, they continue to be super helpful in answering any questions (from "is there a library that does x" to "any tips on this job posting?") I or other classmates have had.

In the interest of full disclosure, I now work with the company as a TA, helping new students find answers and troubleshoot problems during their group work or in general. It's been about a year since I started the course and I am very happy to be a part of something I got so much out of. I definitely would have written this review if I wasn't working with the company, and I have written reviews in the past before I signed on.

While this course's time committment is fairly significant, several aspects of it, combined into the whole, make it unbeatable. The price point, the scope of the material, and the dedication of the individuals running the course make it stand out above other comparable online classes.

By using test-driven development and pair programming as a core part of the learning process, students are exposed to more than just coding, and gain experience with real-world development strategies that are just as important as knowing the languages involved. They gain experience delegating responsibilities and understanding best practices through instant feedback from peers.

As part of learning advanced Python concepts within the core language, students apply these concepts to crash courses in the basics of libraries like SQLite3, BeautifulSoup, and Flask, to create projects that have similar functionality to real-world applications. Git and Bash concepts are taught to give experience with tools that professional programmers use daily.

While this course is not quite as immersive or demanding as others like Hack Reactor or App Academy, it also doesn't demand such a steep investment. Even with its scope limited to advanced Python concepts, this course's value far outstrips even the less expensive options, which are of dubious quality and still more expensive than this course. 

The best part of this course is the knowledgeable instructors and mentors that, as a consequence of being distributed across the world, are able to assist throughout the day and night. For individuals who have odd-hour time committments or are simply in a different part of the world, they can get help as easily as any other student. 

I signed up for the web development track and they immediately failed to meet even the most basic assumptions.  Their platform appears to be about average but it was so buggy that I was submitting tickets several times a day trying to get them to fix it.  From there it's worse because they don't respond in a timely fashion.  Additionally, their "unlimited mentor support" really means a couple nights a week and if you're lucky you might get help on a weekend.  

I'm a very experienced developer in other languages and have a little experience in python.  

I give them a flat F for failing to think this through.  It very much feels like something they're running out of their basement to make some side cash.     

I just completed RMOTR's 4 week Advanced Python course (Oct - Nov 2016). I actually attempted to take the previous session in September, but found out quickly I was not ready due to not truely understanding the basics. Although there is a short quiz to demonstrate that you have the knowledge to qualify, be aware that this is the bare minimum. If you want to succeed, you should have a very solid foundation in Python. Despite feeling unprepared, Santiago, one of the co-founders, was extremely understanding and encouraging. He let me take the next session without any penalty, and even said I could continue with the current session.

However, I did decide to drop out after the first week to go back to the basics to really hone my skills, and it was well worth it.  The true value of this course is being able to code with others on interesting, difficult projects. Most of the class learning materials can be found freely online, so if you're looking for a course to hold your hand through learning new concepts, this is not for you. With that being said, the course instructors are more than willing to help you with anything questions you have.

The most important things that I took away besides new concepts, was how progammers actually code. As an amateur, it was insightful to see the tools and strategies that professionals use on a daily basis. Moreover, it was great to see how different people approach problems. While there is obviously bad code, the number of good ways to the solution surprised me. Everyone is expected to review other's code, and you'll learn a ton this way.

They say that you need 20hrs/week, but for me it was full time. If you have a very talented team, then you may get the projects done in the 3 hour time, but for most projects, I was coding for 5+ hours the first night, and then maybe another 3-5 the next day. Additionally, you are expected to learn the next week of material. So if you're an amateur like me and have a lot of time constraints, you will have trouble keeping up.

The teams were pretty good. Sometimes you get people that are excellent, some are okay, and some are baffling - just like in real life. Sometimes you will have a teammate that is in a very different timezone, so you may have to meet in the middle of the night to make it work. This is the inherent difficulty of having a remote course, but in general, the pros far outweight the cons.

Overall, this course propelled me to a new level of knowledge and skills I never would have gotten to if I had just learned on my own. I highly recommend it if you have a solid foundation of Python already, are looking to code like the pros, and don't have a lot of time constraints. The instructors are top notch, the projects are super interesting, and the curriculum covers all the best advanced concepts of Python. You won't regret it.

I can't say enough about how helpful this course was for me. It was extremely efficient in its teaching, and I have learned so much in only 4 weeks. However, you do need to be ready to put in the work for this course, as it is very content-heavy. 

A key part of this course is learning through doing, and the projects selected in this course are fantastic at getting you to really solidify your understanding of key concepts while completing your project. Lectures are only a fraction of the course, and the majority of learning will be focused on readings the student is expected to complete each week, and the projects. I think this way is a much more efficient way of teaching, since students can decide how they want to approach the material, and spend different amounts of time on concepts based on how much they know, and ask mentors if there are any difficulties. Also I believe that listening to lectures about coding is not as helpful as actually coding. The reason this course is able to cover so much material, and is so efficient in its teaching is actually because the course chooses this method of teaching and has a great mentor support system.

On top of that, their amazing support system of mentors makes it so you can always ask for help if you get stuck, and they will give you a little nudge in the right direction, or clarify any misunderstandings. Mentors will even go out of their way to check up on you every now and then to see how you're doing. Everyone is very friendly, and encouraging. Definitely a great environment to be learning in!

One of the most exciting part of the course is at the end, where there is a optional project, and students can collaborate together to make something for a demo day. I am currently working on mine, and I can't wait to see everyone else's projects too. :)

One suggestion is that maybe there should be a collection of previous demo day projects somewhere, like a display of some sort to see what previous students have accomplished. It would be also interesting to see progress of students as the course gets improved even more or changes! It would also be useful for prospective students to get an idea of what they will be able to do at the end of the course.