Coding Dojo

I attended Coding Dojo starting in June of 2019. Right away I noticed that I was putting together the dots that I was missing trying to learn this on my own. The course was very demanding, but in a good way. I was very interested in the curriculum, they made it fun with real life applications, and small games. I started off in the Tech industry as a Graphic Designer, and felt like I wanted to do a little more. Coding Dojo made this dream a little more visual and I seen that I could anything if I put my mind to it , it I persevere. After the Camp they helped me reshape my resume, and apply my skills to the job search. Im currently looking but I learned that the Journey isn't over until you reach your goals.

   I enjoyed finding out the environment and culture of programming. I learned so much! I appreciate learning about the immense value programming has for almost every piece of technology. Regarding the instructors, I appreciate how they told our cohort the high expectations, from the very beginning.

   Having finished a master's thesis only five months ago, the daily schedule during this bootcamp experience was more demanding! I learned to sleep less, think about homework more, and often work on coding through the night. If you would like to say "Hello World" to the "crunch time" that game developers talk about, if you would like to know the lifestyle of the programming greats, or if you would like to take on one of the most difficult challenges of your life, an onsite, immersive experience at Coding Dojo might just be the right fit for you. I recommend coming to an open house, talking personally with the instructors, and getting a tour of the Coding Dojo location that interests you.

I attended the Onsite Immersive Course, which is a 14 week course. You start in Web Delevopment, going into Python, C#, and then MEAN (MongoDB, Express.js, Angular.js, Node.js). After graduating High School, I was always at dead end jobs. After having my child, I knew I had to do something quick. My brother came up to me asking if I wanted to join this intense boot camp with him and I agreed. On day one we dove head on with code, learning front end development and algorithms. They ask you put in as much time as you possibly can, hoping for around 80+ hours. I myself, at the beginning, put in around that much, but as I became more comfortable, I started attending for about 60+ hours. There were multiple moments were I hit a wall, but having someone close who also attended definitely helped out. At some points, the curriculum would be outdated, or very unhelpful, but they highly incourage you to google as much as you possible can. Google is 100% your best friend during this course. If you are interested in the tech field at all, or just curious. There are times where an instructor can not be found, or they are in depth with another student, which can be very aggrivating. Having the other students around you will help with keeping you moving forward, and are very helpful if you get stuck. I highly recommend you come to this course; even if you do not plan on doing anything with coding, learning how the world around you works is amazing. Many times I will see something where I now think how it could run more efficently, or just how it may work.

I attended the onsite immersive program for 14 weeks at Coding Dojo in the Seattle area. Before I started the program, I had little to no prior knowledege or experience in the field of technology. I spent a lot of long hours, (80+) each day at the Dojo working on assignments. The goal of the program is to prepare students to become self sufficient developers by giving in-depth knowledge of the latest technologies that are in demand in the tech industry. You will spend most of the time learning the language on your own and sometimes with other small groups of people. One thing that sets Coding Dojo apart from other bootcamps is they have a one hour session in the morning that is mainly focused towards algorithims and data structures. The instructors give a mini lecture and students work in groups to solve real world algorithims that could be brought up during a real interview for a job opputunity. Most of the instructors were helpful with guidence and support. One thing to change could be updating the platform to what is current such as the versions of the technolgy. Overall, I enjoyed my time at Coding Dojo, putting long grueling hours was well worth it in the end of my 14 weeks! 

If I had to rate my experience while attending Coding Dojo Berkeley. I would have to say that deciding to attend the bootcamp was one of the best decisions that I have made for myself. The rate at which you learn is phenomenal. The amount of material that I learned in the three months whille in the bootcamp would have taken me years on my own. Not only did I learn all of these skills, I've met great people also. The instructors are really helpful and patient. The manager always makes sure that the students are always accommodated. Overall, Coding Dojo is great! I would highly recommend this place to anyone.

The program is intense. Be prepared to commit the time (80+hrs/wk) and energy. You will get out of the program what you put in. I averaged around 84hrs a week through the whole course, with some weeks being less and others much more.

DO NOT SKIP DAYS. Don't even skip morning algorithms. Get there early, get your coffee, and get motivated.

Your cohort is your team. They will have different backgrounds and approaches. Learn from them and they will learn from you. ALWAYS offer to trouble shoot their code if they are struggling and be welcoming to requests for help. Reading and diagnosing their code is of immense value to you and you have much to learn from the experience.

DO NOT GET HUNG UP ON THE WHY. There are decisions language designers made about languages and modules and libraries that will not make sense, often because their reasoning is beyond the scope of your initial learning. Getting hung up on why prevents you from progressing.

PART OF THE LEARNING IS ERRORS. You will get them. You will need to research them. This is part of the learning experience and it is VERY important to your future career. As I write this, my first software contract is for a machine learning implementation. I anticipate a lot of errors and there will be no one to tell me the answers or course material to correct my deficiencies. Which leads me to...

THE TWENTY MINUTE RULE- Obey. Do not sit there and churn your wheels. Seek help once you've spent the time giving it a good try. You may not resolve every problem in 20 mins and that is fine. You learn something every time. Continuing your progression, during the course, is more important than solving every problem on your own.

You will find errors in the material; you will encounter parts that are not as well-explained as you would like. Guess what. The same goes for technology documentation. While I'd love for ever part of the course to be explained in just the right way for me (and Coding Dojo should always try to improve their material), getting around these obstructions is a learning experience too. Do your part to help by giving good feedback and reporting errors when you find them. Several changes in Windows related materials were corrected post-haste when my cohort reported them and their solutions.

On that note, GET FAMILIAR with your computer. Do not buy it three days before course start. You want to be familiar with the computer and know it will be good to work from. You may find typing for a few hours, the keyboard is uncomfortable or that it is a lemon or defective. These are not things to find out on day one or two nor something to battle continuously through the program. If you can, practice working across two screens. This is very important skill.

MOST IMPORTANT- Your attitude. This program does not hand everything to you on a platter, much less one made of silver. You will work for your knowledge. This is good preparation for the working world. Your fellow cohort members will be like your future co-workers and your instructor will be like your leadership on a project. Learn to function in the environment.

Good luck.

    As cliche as it sounds you really do get out what you put in with this bootcamp. Given that, if you really want to get the most out of it, you should go into this bootcamp with at least some coding experience. If you have never coded before it’s a big risk just jumping into a bootcamp assuming that you will a) have the aptitude for it and b) enjoy it. When I joined this bootcamp I already had some coding experience: I have an engineering degree in another discipline and did some light coding when I was a kid (I believe I had a Geocities page at some point). For me this bootcamp was relatively easy but I definitely had moments where I did struggle. From what I observed from my less technically inclined peers, many of them struggled, but the ones that actually put in the full 70-90 hours a week (closer to 90) really excelled. For example, one of the students I worked with on a project had previously worked as an auto-body mechanic. He ended up taking one of the exams early because he was putting 12+ hour days, six days a week and prepared for this bootcamp weeks in advance. I would never have known he had no experience in coding before. So you really do get out what you put in.

    As to the actual content of the bootcamp, the camp is divided into sections. The first two weeks you learn HTML, CSS, javascript, Jquery, SQL and git. These are going to be the fundamentals you are going to use throughout the bootcamp. Next you start your first stack, the Python Stack which is three weeks. After Python you spend a week on projects and/or test retakes, you do this after each stack. The last two stacks are C# and MEAN which are also three weeks with a project/test retake week after. As you can see they move very quickly here, they probably only spend about two days on language fundamentals and the rest on frameworks. Because it is so fast paced, I personally feel we don’t get enough of a deep dive into each language/stack. Personally, and at least one other graduate has had this idea, I think they should only do two stacks and do a deeper dive into each stack.

    Most of your learning takes place from readings and assignments on their platform. The platform does enough to walk you through the process of creating web apps, however I wish it got more in depth as I mentioned above. After this bootcamp you really are going to have to buckle down and take a deeper dive into each stack to really understand them. Additionally, sometimes that platform is flat out wrong. For example, one of the instructors tried to do a deployment demo using the platform and he had to stop because there were to many issues with it so he said he was going to re-write that section on the platform, which he did. The platform also had videos where instructors would walk through code however most of the time I didn’t find it very helpful so I’d watch them at 2X speed. 

    The instructors are great, it is true that some of them are former students who haven’t worked in the industry before however they are still very knowledgeable (they go through a six month on the job training before they are full fledged instructors) and passionate. My only complaint about the instructors is that there were not enough of them or TAs. For example, because of some circumstances, the entire dojo only had one instructor for three cohorts for about a week. Many of us were not happy about that.

    In summary, while this bootcamp may have it’s faults, this is a great bootcamp for those who are highly motivated, can sacrifice basically almost all their waking time for 14-weeks, have at least a little previous programming experience and are independent learners.  

Although the pacing sounds daunting at first, I was pleasantly surprised with how smooth the bootcamp went! The staff at the Oakland campus are fantastic (Vinson and David, with TAs Drue and Ray) and they always do there best to assist you throughout the program. On top of that, the program does their best to ensure you can work as comfortably as possible by providing a stocked kitchen and some fairly flexible hours for the convenience of students. Speaking of which,  it has also been wonderful working with so many other pleasant students. Overall, the atmosphere of the program is very social and supportive, which makes for a great learning environment. It was super awesome to see how easy it is to take in computer languages after you get the ball rolling (this is coming from someone with no coding experience). Even though I was green in the field, I was able to make it through, which means I’m sure you can too :).

Deciding to attend the Coding Dojo onsite bootcamp in Oakland has easily been one of the best decisions I've made. I came into the program with no programming expierence and in just 3 1/2 months I am able to do things I never thought possible. The program is hard and very rigorous but it really changes the way you approcah programming and learning in general. The way the course is designed really gives you a ton of confidence in your ablilities to learn things quickly. They give you all the tools to learn 3 full stacks (Python, MEAN, and Java) in a short period of time. This really prepares you for a fast moving tech world where in an instant you might need to learn a new language. 

The lead instructor Vinson is one of the best teachers I've ever had. He really helps you grow as a developer by giving you the push you need to get better everyday. He is very enthusiastic and knowledgeable which makes the learning expierence fun and something to look forward to. The program manager David is also wonderful and does everything he can to help make the program run smoothly. 

Overall my expierece at Coding Dojo has been amazing. The friendships and knowledge I've gained has made my time there unforgettable. I would highly recommend this program to anyone!