Coding Dojo

There is an article where the founder Michael Choi mentions how he created CD based on how he trained Software Programmers, just to give you an idea of what you should have going into CD...

Not sure how to rate the instructors because they seem to lecture, teach directly off the online course so I'm not sure what they are capable of beyond that.

Peer programming only works if one or both are able to program and when one or both are able to converse, ask questions pertaining to the assignment. 

You could probably get the same if not cheaper education by reading couple of books on the same topic ie) javascript, algorithms, etc. available at the library, Amazon and some online courses. And if you want more explanations about online apps you can find books on Facebook apps, Google map apps

- Intense program. You learn 3 stack. Get to know a lot. Each language is about a month.

- Good algorithm. A new learning platform which still needs to be improved, which is what they are doing I think.

- TA, remote help at night. During the day they have "20-minute" rule. You need to try find the answers yourself before reaching out to other students, then come to instructor as a group for help. 

- They have residency program. You can apply and stay after graduation to finish portfolio, and look for jobs.

- Career service has been improved a lot. Different workshops, emailed job opportunity, resume session, etc.

- Tech talk, alumni panel, etc. Encouraging.

- They want students to be self sufficient developer. If you want to succeed, you need to have passion, and work hard. If you do not have a good discipline, do not work hard, and only think that by showing up you can get a good job easily, you are wrong. You will fail behind. 

- Do their prep work and learn alogorithms before showing up onsite!!

I hope this is objective enough. 

 

 

Pros:

- Learn 3 full stack web technologies and be able to put them on your resume to show that you know a lot of stuff

- Able to surround yourself with peers who work hard

- Free coffee, fruits and granola bars!

Cons:

- In the end, you're not really good at any particular technology or skills. The job market unfortunately usually only cares about how good you are at particular skills rather than how many different things you know little about

- Instructors have very limited knowledge of web development. None of the instructors (except Michael, the founder, which will NOT be teaching you) has real industrial experience. Most of the instructors are coding dojo bootcamp graduates, meaning they never worked a day as a web developer outside of the bootcamp. 

- The learning platform has a lot of errors that leads to tons of confusions and frustrations. 

- Algorithm "classes" are not particularly helpful. The instructors are often just as confused as the students. It's not really their fault because it's a hard concept to teach and there is no shortcut, only dedication and hardwork over long period of time. 

- The average salary of graduates is misleading. More than half of the students will drop off from the camp before it finishes. The ones that stays till the end often have a hard time finding a job also. Sure, if you are a super star coder that works 100+ hours a week then yeah it's probably no problem to easily get a 6 figure job after graduation. But the majority of the students coming in with none or minimal coding experiences and it's hard enough to keep up with the courses letting alone learning it well enough to land a dream job. 

 

I've been a graphic designer for about 10 years now, I decided 3 years ago that if i wanted to make it in the industry I had to learn how to code. So I started doing online training. HTML , CSS3, Javascript, Wordpress theme development etc. Websites like www.teamtreehouse.com and www.lynda.com really helped me get started.... all this sites are great and I really recommend them... but the problem is you have no one to ask when you have questions and this created holes in my learning where after 3 years I didnt feel confident to apply for Web development jobs. I was pationated about web development so  I decided to quit my job and go to Coding Dojo (HUGE RISK).

*The first thing I have to say is... Coding Dojo is not for everyone. If you know nothing about coding and you expect to leave the course with a great job right away you are wrong. Unless you are a brainiac and a SUPER fast learner (web development learning takes time)

*If you have some experience and you are passionate about coding then Coding Dojo is for you. LONGGGG days of coding and lots of practice WILL make you a better programmer. But is ALL UP TO YOU. they wont push you. What they will offer is an environment where you can be surrounded by like minded people and where you can code 12 hours a day if you wanted to. 

* A regular day at the dojo is as follow: around 9am algorithim class. When I say class I dont mean they will "teach" you algorithims. What they will do is give you an algorithim problem that you have to figure out how to solve in a team of  3. This can be scary, but with the help of your cohorts and with time you get better at them. 

You will do this for about and hour, hour and thirty minutes.

Then you have a short lecture about the days work and whats expected for that day

then you go into the platform and start working on it. The platform is basically a combination of Videos, quizzes, and assignments. They are no different than any other video training out there. again, the difference is the environment you are and awesome group of people that surrounds you. 

In the afternoon you get annother short lecture about what youve been working on that day etc. this is the time to ask questions....

and really you do this for 3 stacks at the end of the stack you have to do a project in teams or as an individual to showcase what you have learned.

So here is my final thought: Is not about the platform, is not about the three stacks, hell is not about coding dojo.... This is about putting you in an environment where you have NO CHOICE but to learn or better yet where you are surrounded by people just like you and learning together.

Can you learn all this at home YES. can you learn it without spending all this money YES. iT will take you longer for sure.. you will have learning holes thats true. So if you are going to attend the coding dojo KNOW you will get what you put in.

 

Take the three months to learn and forget about any other aspect of your life and you will be succesful.

PS. I got a job 2 weeks after I was done with an AMAZING salary that I would of never be able to get if it wasent for me going to coding dojo.

If you have questions please feel free to email me :) 
 

I can say whole-heartedly that this program should be avoided - save yourself the money! I attended the camp in Seattle earlier this year and was horribly dissapointed with the experience! Here's the rundown:

* Lessons are mostly self-taught through videos with the majority being done by the companies founder. While I don't doubt that he knows the technical stuff I do not belive he has any background in instruction and that shows in his videos. They are low production, single take videos that are more confusing to watch than anything else and he is often incosistant with his terminology and grammar which creates added confusion later. 

* If you know nothing about web developement you will get lost FAST! Several people in my group came in with a complete blank slate and fell behind so quickly it wasn't even funny; with 1 or 2 dropping out after the first 1.5 months. They fly through the basics and fundimentals.

* They attempt to accomplish TOO MUCH! That is how they justify their high price tag - they advertize that you learn a tremendous amount of stuff in the 3 months you are there; namely three full-stacks. The issue is they go through it all too quickly and never teach you anything usefull. I spent the most time on the LAMP stack and had no issues with the related assignments and belt test to that stack. Try and look for jobs with those skills and you quickly realize you know next to nothing. They show you where the "on" switch is with these technologies but don't teach you anything useful with them. In fact, at the time I took the class, you leave having built nothing useful to use on a portfolio - they don't even include a course on MAKING a portfolio. 

* Most of the instructors are former students. So again, their ability to actually function as teachers is sub par at best. I had about a years worth of experience when I started this program and during the lessons about HTML and CSS (which they only spent less than a week on) the instructor had no idea what HTML5 tags were and asked me to stop using them on assignments/group work cuz it was confusing!

* There is NO job placement at all. They had a bulletin board in the building they said we should utalize but in the three months I was there only one job as added and they were all for jobs that required multiple years of experience and were beyond what was being taught in the program. They don't email you at all with job opportunities, they have no one working at the site with any connections to hiring managers or recruiting offices - you leave the program and you are on your own. 

* The issue of struggle/no-hand-holding: Here's the deal, everything worth having takes work. But the way the program markets itself as being super difficult where you have to struggle and invest the time if you want to be successfull, in my opinion, is a kind of an excuse to cover their butts. I was there everyday during the week from 8am to 5 or 6pm and did all the course work. But for 12k I expect WAY more from the instructors - as in I expected them to care about my progress. Instead you drop a ton of money and you get stickers...

 I have read some of the other reviews claiming Coding Dojo to be a "money making factory" and I can see how some people may not be able to adapt to the style of course that is taught at CD. I think CD is very upfront about it being a self-sufficient, no hand-holding, you have to struggle to make it style of course. Coding is hard, many of us don't understand what we are doing for over half the course. I suspect this just wasn't the kind of course for them.

 I definitely struggled but this course was perfect for somebody like me who does not have enough will power to stay on track while learning from online tutorials and courses. It was the right amount of resourses, support and accountability to be of immense value to me.

The courses do need to be proof read and cleaned up. It's really distracting and when you are trying to understand a highlevel concept when there are grammatical holes - I feel like that caused me to waste some valuable time. Another area they need to improve is time management. Your morning staff calls need to be finished before 9 am - when you expect your students to be there and when you set a time for something you need to follow through and respect your students time. Lastly on the improvments front, while the founder is a nice man who is clearly intellegent and great at programming, he absolutely should not be teaching any of the courses. He is much to busy to actually be available and I did not find him to be helpful in the teaching capacity. His demos are great and inspiring and that should be the extent of his involvement. He made me feel like I wasn't trying hard enough and said unhelpful things like "Oh, I think you guys should know that by now... If you don't know that... hmmm.. that's not good."

 I feel like my time at the Dojo was well spent. I give the teachers glowing reviews - they are all different in their approaches and they way they approach coding and developement that it helps you find your own style. I'm glad I chose Coding Dojo and I think with a little more attention to the details they will be top course in no time.

The Coding Dojo system is a fascinating one.  They honestly believe that with enough hard work and focus, people from just about ANY background can learn to code.  The other students in my class had backgrounds ranging from entirely non-technical, to college grads in sciences, to software testers and web designers.  The instructor Michael did a fantastic job of connecting with each student, determining (from their goals) the best path through the materials for them.  Perhaps Coding Dojo should invest in a copy editor, to clean up their newer materials.  Regardless, Michael did a great job of teaching difficult materials that are still changing rapidly.  

A company can't please everyone all the time, but in reading the negative reviews here, I'm puzzled because they don't ring true to me.  I never got the impression that Coding Dojo only wanted my money.  In fact, they were always very willing to work with students when unexpected circumstances arose, including a complete refund in a case I saw.  Also, to be honest, I really appreciated that the instructor kept the lectures brief and targeted -- that allowed me to get hands-on immediately.  

Of course you could save your money and try to teach yourself these technologies just through online resources.  In the same way, you could save your money and just get a gym membership, instead of getting a personal trainer.  With my instructor, I got someone who took the time to understand me, my progress, and how to help me get to my next stage.  

This is not a program that will foster a solid learning experience. Please save your money, study and apply to a more legitimate program e.g hack reactor or dev boot camp. I went through this program and can describe the experience as a factory. A MONEY MAKING FACTORY. THESE PEOPLE DONT CARE IF YOU LEARN OR NOT .... THEY CARE ABOUT TAKING YOUR 12 GRAND!!!!!!. AVOID CODING DOJO... YOU CAN LEARN THE SAME AMOUNT GOING THROUGH AN  ONLINE TUTORIAL (~$100 DOLLARS) INSTEAD OF INVESTING 12 K INTO THIS BS. SAVE YOUR MONEY PLEASE!!!!!!!)

Platform needs serious reworking. Laden with errors. Many online resources are the source for their material, however in the process they introduce errors, both grammatical and more importantly, code related (This isn't done as part of the learning, just sloppy proofreading and editing). This made it VERY difficult to learn, as you can imagine what learning incorrect info does for one's frustration level. Spent several weekends trying to get assignments to work, only to find on Monday that we never could get it to work, as the material had serious errors in it. In the end, most everything I learned properly came from other sources on the web. They really need to clean the curriculum up, as I certainly didn't get my money's worth. I would recommend using free or relatively inexpensive online services before even considering these courses. That being said, the instructors are great. No complaints about them. Just the actual material we are supposed to be studying.

This school made a major impact on my career and I couldn't be more happy with the experience. If you're on the fence about going here- definitely go to an open house and get a sense of what it's like.

The first half of the bootcamp was a lot of intensive learning, but the instructors were very helpful in a strategic way. After understanding the LAMP stack and how MVC frameworks work, picking up the MEAN stack was definitely easier. I studied JavaScript for ~8 months before the bootcamp, but learning from the instructors was a totally different experience. Jay, an instructor, was very passionate and excited when explaining how the mean stack passes data, sockets, and the benefits of using JavaScript across the stack. 

The learning platform has been iterated over and over and have many great exercises to learn concepts. If you attend, I highly encourage going to sports days. Ping pong and hanging out is inevitable. This bootcamp will be a lot of hard work and long hours but I promise it'll be fun and rewarding. 

First of all, I really appreciate that Coding Dojo helped me a lot to gain new technology skill sets and expand my knowledge of web technology. I had worked as a front end developer before the bootcamp, and personally I enjoy learning new technology. Sometimes it is hard to gain a new skill set from self-studies. I usually study new tech by myself from books or Internet resources, it is difficult, however, to know what is practical ways or how efficiently you perceive and acknowledge the skills. The platform of the bootcamp was a good guideline for me and all instructors at the school were my mentors to guide me to correct ways. For example, I studied a lot of algorithm and data structure issues when I was at college, but some methods of algorithms and data structures had confused me. After the bootcamp, I had solid understanding of both issues such as sorting algorithms, binary tree, linked-list and so on. Those are practical and basic algorithms and data structures in cs field. It is good to know to explain them in job interviews.(Thanks to Andrew.)

The Coding Dojo also offered me a good opportunity to work with their client who want to build an own web application from scratch. I worked on one portion of the project which is to make wireframes, high fidelity mockups and a clickable prototype. Through this project, I learned agile process that are to manage a project cycles. This was a really good experience to expose myself to the real client and practical to put this experience on my resume.   I have seen that some people complained their job assistance for their students. The Coding Dojo community is growing bigger and bigger, the school has been trying their best. I believe this issue will be better off. A good example is Hackathon with Uber. They held Hackathon with Uber last week on San Jose campus. Many students and alumni participated in this event. This would be a really practical experience for the participants and their resume. I believe the school bring more events for their students such as job fairs, hackathons and so on  in the future, so that the students can have direct connections with companies' people and it can be easy to knock the door if they have this kinds of networks.   I would like to say if you are eager to learn new web skills and want to meet awesome instructors, I definitely recommend the Coding Dojo is a right place you start.   hyunjunkim.com