devCodeCamp

The best decision I made in 2020 was to attend dev code camp. If you are willing to work hard and learn new things, this is the right place for you!  The teachers are not only knowledgeable, but  love to teach, and are always approachable. I had next to no prior knowledge of computers before attending this course, but I worked hard and now 4-5 months later I have a new career with plenty of opportunity in my future. If you are willing improve dev code camp is a powerful tool to help you reach your goals.

 A year before I began the bootcamp, I had graduated with a degree in IT, during my studies I had decided that I wanted to go into software development. However, I had only had one class on Java and trying to teach yourself code and software development while working full time is not a viable plan.  I had been casually looking at DevCodeCamp for about 9 months but was always afraid to pull the trigger and quit my job. When Covid hit and I began feeling unsafe at my current job, I decided it was time. It was by far the best investment I have made.  I’m sure it was a challenge to move from classroom based to a fully online program during this time and replicate the same feel. However, they did a great job of keeping you connected as a class and always feeling like you had the support and help you needed. The instructors were available in an instructor’s chat and if they weren’t able to answer it over chat, they would hop on Zoom to help you solve your problem.  You are immediately immersed in the world of software development from day one. You receive lectures, hands-on training, and develop problem solving skills. From the very beginning you are taught to think like a coder, you are given some information but to complete the projects there is a lot of research and problem solving on your own. You are encouraged to try and solve the problems yourself but are also encouraged and expected to ask questions if you are stuck. It provides you with a lot of real-world experience as you begin to enter your new career.  After graduation, you are provided job hunt resources such as technical interview practice, resume review and much more. As someone new to the field, upon receiving my first request for a technical interview I immediately reached out for some help and Mike T developed a mock technical interview for me. I am happy to report that a month and a half after graduation I received a job offer.  If you are having hesitations, I promise that this program is a great investment that sets you up for success in the future. 

I went into devCodeCamp with zero coding experience and 3 months after graduation, have received my first job offer as a developer! I have always been interested with tech, gaming, and computers maybe slightly more than the average person, but all of my career experience was in the customer service industry and medical field. I decided to look into this bootcamp because an old friend of mine had graduated from the program a few years back and spoke highly of it. I am so very happy that I took the leap to make a change for myself! The program is challenging and moves fast, but the instructors are there to support whenever you feel like you are "stuck." The curriculum does push you to start thinking like a developer right away and gets you feeling confident about self-learning. The instructors have done a great job with all the information and experience fit into the program without being overwhelming for someone who has never programmed before. My particular class had experienced the in-person campus as well as going remote about half-way through due to Covid. My unsolicited advice for anyone ready to invest in themselves with this bootcamp would be to dive in to the projects, ask as many questions as you can, and remember to give yourself breaks when needed! 

- The program at devCodeCamp has a very well thought out and holistic curriculum that gives you the programming knowledge you would expect while still building up other practical skills you need as a developer(working in and managing groups, using Scrum/Agile practices for meetings, time management and timeboxing, etc.).
- The lectures are very clear and give you the information you need without being overlong.
- The instructors make themselves very easily available to provide help and guidance when you need it, though as you become more capable they will expect you to handle most things on your own so that you will not become over-reliant on others and run to your manager for advice on every snag you encounter. 

Overall, the experience was both very informative and very enjoyable and I would recommend it if you are looking for a path to a new career.

devCodeCamp was great.  In the past, I have tried to teach myself to program multiple times. After a day or two I would lose my drive, or get bored or frustrated, and walk away.  Now I am a full stack developer.

At devCodeCamp, the pace was really engaging. They started us with basic syntax and logic puzzles, to shape up our brains into program logic mode, and after a week of that we hit the ground running making simple command console games while we learned about methods, classes, and data structures. 

I was in the first remote class, because Covid. I was pretty concerned because I knew I wanted the classroom environment to keep me focused, but it ended up great, morning lectures got me out of bed and working, and the format worked really well, no raised hands or waiting for instructors to be available, we just dropped a message in the instructor group chat and they were always ready to help.

I want to give a shout-out to the instructors, They were the best.  I have one memorable morning where I couldnt sleep and got up at some crazy early time in the morning, pulled out my code. I was having a problem, threw a question in the instructor chat, and pivoted to a different part of the project figuring I would hear back in a few hours, maybe 7:30 at the earliest.   Nope.  It wasn't even 5 in the morning yet when an instructor popped on and pointed me in the right direction to solve my difficulty.
Another time I pasted hundreds of lines of code to the instructors and just said "its not working" and David jumped in and started digging though it asking me a couple questions that told me he was definitely doing his best to find my bug.  The instructors are dedicated and want the students to succeed more than I think some of the students themselves wanted to succeed.

The days flew by at a frantic pace, and any time I was getting close to done with the proscribed project I would try and add my own flair, which helped me learn even more.  Then we got out of fun mode, no more video games, all of the sudden I knew about SQL and how to design a database.  I found out what a restful api was, and within days I was pulling data from the internet into my applications with ease.  I think they gave us 3 days and a weekend to learn HTML/CSS, and then on monday,  bam, make an HTML/javascript webpage that that pulls a restful api and shows the data using javascript.  I was pretty worried because we had only covered javascript for like a day, but it wasn't so different from the c# that the course focuses on.   This pace continued right to the end, and kept me focused on learning before anything else.  Lecture in the morning, code after till my program worked, day after day. 

We did a lot of solo work, some group work, and it was a grand old time, if frustrating.   I think that frustration is just part of programming.  

My biggest advice going in is never be afraid to take five, go outside and throw a ball at your dog, or take a few minute reddit break. I had quite a few naps.  If you can't manage and shed frustration you're going to burn out.  But come back to the code till it works, if you leave things broken over night it can be hard to remember what you were doing. 
Get in there, have fun with it, but remember it's a $17,800 course, treat it like you're in a cubicle at a hundred dollar an hour job, you will succeed and make more that in the first year out.  

I went to DevCodeCamp with zero experience and by the end of the course I felt really good about where I was and where I was going. The instructors are absolutely wonderful. They are super helpful, always encouraging students to ask questions and extremely welcoming. No one is discriminated nor is left out of the one-on-one hands on learning experience from these instructors. All the guidance I received was very positive. When I felt myself struggling, it’s like they knew the right steps to take to help me understand and move forward in a way that is sort of personal to who you are and how you learn. I attended DevCodeCamp a little before the pandemic hit and ended up having to go remote half through the course. The change worked for me and I never once felt like the one-on-one experience and teachings disappeared. It actually felt like they reached out more frequently to make sure we were all doing okay. Three months after graduation, I received a job offer. Mind you, this is during a pandemic. The school helped me with the job that I got and I could not be more grateful for all their help and assistance. devCodeCamp changed my life and if you’re looking for a bootcamp to attend, look no further. 

Absolutely awesome experience, would recommend to anyone looking to break into the Software Development field. Their curriculum is very in depth and fast moving, everything works together to bring you to a deep understanding of the stack their working in. The instructors are awesome, it's a perfect mix of serious knowledge and fun wittiness. The in class environment is great, the building is very accessible and easy to work in. Overall an amazing experience for anyone who is looking for a new career, or just looking to pick up some programming skills.

Working closely with instructors that actually cared about your projects. My personally assigned instructor Michael H, took all the necessary steps to in-depth explain programming principles, good writing conventions and conceptual background of some algorithms and data structures.

For our personal projects Michael T. Helped tremendously, helping guide my decision making and project direction when things inevitably got complicated. While at times some concepts were difficult to grasp; the instructors made an effort to go over the concepts again in a different way to really ensure we're ready to implement them in the real world. 

While at times, it was frustrating they would have limited involvement; the skill of learning how to research on your own will set me up to learn endless programming languages, with the added benefit of having them as a support team for concept that are increasingly difficult to grasp.