Turing School of Software & Design

When I had started Turing, I had just graduated college a few weeks prior. I had studied social work in school but realized my senior year that I wanted to go into software development. Rather than spending years furthering my education by traditional means, I decided to apply for Turing. 

Turing is hard. Turing is going to push you to your limits in many ways but if you can stick through it you will be a software engineer. I now have an excellent job and they've told me on several occasions that I'm closer to a midlevel developer than a junior developer. Thats after only 6 months of schooling! Turing will teach you everything that you need to know to become a software developer, period. 

My only critiques for the program would be the space. When I attended, Turing was in a basement of a building in downtown Denver. It definitely had its character, but not seeing the sun for hours definitely took its toll. My other critique would be the cost. Compared to what you get for the program, for most people this is an excellent option. However, I would suggest that you save up to attend rather than taking out loans. 

I graduated with a BA in English and worked in elementary education for 7 years prior to joining Turing. I left teaching in 2014 and enrolled in a semester of intro-level programming courses at a community college and quickly realized this was not going to help me develop the relevant skills I would need to transition into a career as a developer. After some serious agonizing about how to move forward, I bit the bullet and joined Turing's second cohort.

It's really difficult to summarize my whole experience here. What's most important is that, after a truly intense seven months of being pushed and stretched, I arrived on the other side, working as a full-time developer. This didn't happen because of some sort of magic or because Turing had some sort of special "partner company" placement deal. It happened because Turing knows how to build developers. They have a lot of experience doing this, and are always refining their process for shaping well-rounded, capable developers.

This is not a program I would recommend for someone who wants to casually explore whether he or she might like programming or web development. It's also not a program I'd recommend to someone who just wants to a different job. If, however, you want to build a solid foundation in best practices of modern web development, one from which you can grow and start a new career, I can't recommend Turing highly enough.

Just be prepared to work really, really hard.

I chose The Turing School for a few reasons:

1) The Executive Director--Jeff Casimir--ran Hungry Academy at my old company and is well-connected in the DC area (where I knew I'd be returning after the program), and in the tech scene in general
2) The long duration and high intensity of the program
3) The fact that it's a non-profit and has no interest in cramming classrooms with more students and/or depressing instructor compensation to meet a bottom-line earnings goal
4) I have friends that went through Hungry Academy and gSchool that raved about Jeff's teaching style, curriculum, and instructor quality

...and I have to say I wasn't disappointed. My seven months at Turing were seven of the most intense and rewarding months of my life. I was studying constantly, living two timezones away from my family, and forced to exist in an endless state of feeling like I was a half-step behind where I should be, but that's where the value of the program lies. And because I researched what I was getting into, I was mentally and emotionally prepared to be challenged.

I grew faster and learned more than I ever though possible in such a short amount of time, and made some lifelong friends while doing it. The instructors are fantastic, and the community is open and welcoming. Additionally, I graduated in early October 2015, received three job offers by Thanksgiving, and I'm now working at one of the three companies on my short list when I first started Turing on day one. I'm incredibly thankful that I chose to take the leap to move out to Denver for seven months to learn skills that have helped me love what I do everyday.

I want to make room for a few critiques as well, however:

1) Turing expects you to give back to the community. Fostering and sustaining a welcoming group of people that's dedicated to not only to Turing, but the larger development community as a whole, is incredibly important to the instructors. If that isn't something that drives you, it might mike your time there a little rougher.
2) When I started the program, it was less than a year old, so there were some growing pains, including one project that was assigned to us while the learning goals, technical expectations, and benchmarks for success were still being written and developed by the staff.
3) The space can be a bit depressing. While the instructors and fellow students are fantastic, and everyone does what they can to brighten it up, the space is located in a basement, so going entire days without seeing the sun--including some weekends during project weeks--can get depressing and impose a toll on your mood/sanity.
4) I can't stress enough the level of intensity of the program. Don't attend Turing until you KNOW you want to be a developer. You should know you're all-in on day 1, because it's not a place that's forgiving of apprehension. There were people who dropped out because they weren't prepared for what they were facing.

In summary, though, I would highly recommend Turing to anyone who's ready to take the leap and become a professional developer. I'm incredibly glad I did and I'm so thankful I found a community of friends and instructors (who are now software industry peers) that I can continue to learn and grow with.

Comprehensive software development program totalling an average of 1600 hours over a 7 month period. Immersive, difficult, life changing.

Turing is the most challenging thing I've ever done in my life. I was a former bartender with no programming experience at all. The terms console, command line, function, method, and variable all had completely different or alien meanings for me. Also, being in my 40's and well above the age average added some cultural and "getting up to speed" bumps.

Coming in I thought, "how hard can it be?". I had no idea what I was getting in to, but I don't regret one second of it. Turing was a crucible I survived and benefitted from in so many different ways. I know a new language. The language of software, and I can learn any derivation of that language because I now how programming is structured. That's what Turing gave me above all else. A firm understanding of what programming does. Armed with that, no software career is out of reach.

Turing isn't just about teaching you to be a developer though. They also it teach you to be a better human. The social and cultural events really bring out the more reclusive students, but in a very comfortable way, and for those who are already extroverted, the gear up discussions and programs like improv are a way to evaluate and challenge the way we think, and the way we act.

I recommend Turing to anyone who has even a slight interest in software and discovering what makes things tick. It won't be wasted time or money, even if you don't make an entire career out of it. The experience, the challenge, and the life lessons are what you will value most when all is said and done.

Turing for me was truly one of those once-in-a-lifetime transformative experiences. The program not only made me into a software developer, it also helped me re-evaluate my sense of self and who I am relative to the rest of the world. Does that hook you? (Maybe, maybe not, but either way, read on...)

Turing is H-A-R-D hard. They warn you about this up front, but trust me, whatever your preconceived notion of difficult is, this program in all likelihood takes the cake. Your personal life will suffer over the course of the program, but all worthwhile things are worth the sacrifices made along the way.

The quality of the instruction is top notch: I think one of the key differentiators between Turing and [insert-bootcamp-down-the-street-here] is that Turing is led by educators who happen to also be amazing developers rather than developers who may or may not actually know how to teach others. This detail is critical in a program this long and relentless.

If you want to learn how to be a professional developer, this is the only game in town. I will say that it is getting increasingly more challenging to find a job post-school and given the current enrollment (approximately 70-80 current students at any given time in the building), it can be challenging to get the same individualized attention at that stage in the game as it was perhaps a year ago when Turing was just starting to graduate its first and second classes. That does put the onus more on students to build their own job plan and seek out guidance, but that is sort of the deal for all of Turing. If you're looking to have your hand held, this is not the place for you, but if you're willing to be challenged in ways you never dreamed possible, this is your chance.

I came to Turing from a career as a Psychotherapist. I had dived into programming many times and always bounced out from frustration due to lack of good instruction but mainly due to not having the time or energy to commit to it. Turing provided the structure I needed to maintain focus. Turing is a grind, it is extremely demanding and does not leave time for much else, so if you have one, make sure your significant other is prepared to not see you much for seven months. I was part of the second class, and the Job Assistance piece was a bit lacking at the time, there were a few events but it seemed that many of us were often frustrated during that time. From what I've heard they have made quite an improvement since then in this area. All that being said, I got my first job as a web developer about three months after graduating, and have been consistently delivering more code than most of the senior developers with years of experience.

I enrolled in Turing on the recommendation of a close-friend and completed the program in 2015. Being an adult with a previous career and history I hope this will be a more clear-eyed and less infatuated review.

Anyway, what they expect out of you at Turing can border on the unreasonable but what can you expect when they are trying to pack 4 years into 7 months? They are trying to take someone with no experience and make them hirable as a junior software dev in 7 months. You need to be very serious about becoming a dev, intelligent, and not a dick if you want to succeed at Turing.

Honestly, to their credit they pull it off brillantly.

I feel like overall my Rails and Ruby knowledge that came out of the program was very strong, with my JavaScript knowledge being somewhat weak. The fact that I now am employed as a Python and Django developer and am excelling at my job goes to show the power of teaching one langauge and one framework very well is all you need to enter into software development.

As far as the curriculum, beyond feeling weak in JavaScript overall (they have since changed their curriculum to be more focused on JS), I think the complete lack of focus on HTML and CSS was somewhat of a detriment as it has a basic skill that has been required for being a full stack engineer. 1-week would probably be suffecient honestly.

The community itself is very strong and Jeff Casimir's support network/guest speaker list was truly incredible. Jeff has an uncanny ability at attracting quality people.

That said, the two main criticisms I have with Turing are:

First that the job search was much more difficult and time-consuming than expected, which was very difficult financially, even with Turing's help. I feel like this is less of Turing's fault than a shift in the market and a flood of other bootcamp graduates (who are likely less qualified in my opinion).

Secondly, while the Turing community is very strong, this strength was sometimes abused; I feel like the focus on non-software topics constantly is distracting and at times even felt like they were trying their hand at social engineering and experimentation, even if the progressive intentions of such were mostly positive. Turing is the brain-child of Jeff Casimir, and I have never met someone with a stronger personality or higher ambitions. Turing is in many ways a reflection of this personality for both good and ill.

Nonetheless, I strongly respect Jeff Casimir and all being said I still recommend Turing to anyone I know and still appreciate the fanatsic quality of the instructors (Jorge Tellez especially). They aim their sites very high and for the most part achieve them for the majority of students.

I'll start of by saying Turing is the best. You should shop around and look into all your options but I guarantee you will not find a software development program with a better curriculum, staff, or reputation. 

One thing I didn't see other reviewers touch on is that Turing is run using agile methodologies, meaning every 6 weeks the staff will make small-large changes to each of the modules based on how the previous 6 weeks went. It's a great way to do, well anything, but it's kind of revolutionary in education. It means the experience is always getting better and evolving with this ever-changing industry. The only con to this aspect of the program is that you sort of feel like you're part of some social experiment, because you kind of are, but it's really for your benefit, and for the benefit of future students (you're welcome). 

I moved from NY to take this course becaues of the quality and duration. In any 12 week course, there is only so much you can learn so lots gets left out. The instructors and curriculum are great, they know thier stuff and invest so much in everyone. When I was there, they were less than a year old, so much has changed for the better. So they definitely have made mistakes and will continue to make some but they are always listening to alumni and students for feedback. This is a HARD course. Make sure you are dedicated for 27 weeks. Everyone in my class found it well worth it.

Turing is hard. From day one I was pushed. Before Turing I was a bartender and restaurant manager. I could use social media and type, but that was about the extent of my technology experience. More than once I thought about taking a break or leaving the program completely. Those thoughts stemmed mainly from self doubt and stress, but 6 months after I finished the program I can't believe I ever thought about quitting. 

Best decision I ever made. Also one of the harder more stressful things I've done, but the 7 month sacrifice of a personal life, free time and generally all leisure time paid. 

I don't think this program is for everyone, but if you're ready to put your head down, work hard, and change your life then I'd recommend Turing for you. 

I am a graduate of Turing and I think these reviews have summed up a lot of the great aspects of Turing. The curriculum is top-notch as are the instructors. The length of the program is commensurate with the amount of material covered, and needed to be covered in order to become a real developer that is ready for work in the field. I had done my homework before applying to Turing and anticipated most of these qualities, but what impressed me most about Turing were the things I wasn't expecting.

I think where Turing truly sets itself apart is outside of the classroom. Turing has quickly built a large community and it puts that community to work for its students. When I was a student we had small groups assembled of several current students, some from each of the four "cohorts", and mentors. We held weekly meetings with these small groups and the topics ran the gamut of simple tips and tricks to checking in on workload management (because there is a lot of work), but the real value is making connections and setting you up for success. The thing that helped me succeed the most while in Turing as well as post-Turing was spending time with mentors from all walks. I could get any question I needed answered, but in addition I often left with more than I asked for in wisdom imparted on me. For someone that is new to anything, that wisdom can go a long way since you don't quite know the right questions to ask. This community goes to bat for its students when it comes time to find a job as well. Turing has alumni all over the country and likely in several other countries as well at this point. 

Turing is what happens when a bunch of immensly devoted people with a ton of experience in both the tech world and education go into a basement in downtown Denver and try to re-imagine how education itself, and the tech industry as a whole could be better... I'm obviously referring to the instructors and staff, but they also want each student to be an active participant in their quest. There's a vision, there's a huge emphasis put on community, there's that scrappy start-uppy (start puppy?) attitude of constant improvement and questioning.  Turing continuously re-evaluates it's curriculum, they ask for feedback every week from every person so that things never get stale.  It's hard, but there's no wasted effort.  Like I said, it's located in a basement, which can feel a bit stuffy at times, but it's Denver... Denver rocks.  Just make sure to take periodic breaks to come up for fresh air and see the sun for a few moments.  I have tremendous faith in Turing as a "non-institutional institution."   Super glad I took the plunge, highly reccommend it, I made my roomate do it after I finished.  You should too.