Coding Dojo

I was working as a therapist and I wasn't happy where I was in my career. I didn't enjoy it as all my other colleagues were and I felt like there was something more out there for me. I ended up quitting and took a break for 6 months trying to figure out what I wanted to do. I stumbled upon Coding Dojo and saw that I could have a new career, be a full stack software engineer in 3 months! And the pay?! Amazing. I went to the open house and everyone was incredibly friendly and informative. It was geek heaven for me! I signed up and I'm so glad that I was able to go through the course. It's extremely full of hard work but the end result is so worth it. All the instructors are so kind and patient- they really really help you through your struggles and come out the other side as a better developer. I couldn't have asked for a better support system than the one at Coding Dojo. 

Before I started to code, I would do a lot of manual number / data crunching on Excel, and after I started tinkering with VBA to automate my work, I decided I should learn more about coding to launch not only a career change but a chance to impact lives on a larger scale. 

Coding Dojo supplied me with a friendly environment to delve more than 10 hours a day being able to help and ask for help. Being able to write clean, consistent code, reading through documentation, and having good testing habits are only a few of the valuable skills that I obtained from going to Coding Dojo. If I had the choice to go back in time and decide to attend or not, I would definitely attend again.

Thank you Coding Dojo!

Before I talk about this coding Bootcamp, I want to tell you a bit about myself and what I do. I am currently studying and is majored in Electrical and Electronics Engineering. I had some experience in coding C++ and PLCs. You might think, "Why's an EE student studying software?". The reason is simple, it's because studying software allows me to create virtually anything, only limited by my imagination with little to none capital. This idea is what really draws me to learn to code even though I don't really enjoy coding that much.

If you are a beginner like me in coding, Coding Dojo is a great place to start. Instead of jumping straight into programming Android or IOS hardware, I think, learning web development is the more versatile choice for starters since a website can be accessed in both Android and IOS as well as computers.

Expect hard work and having to stay late if you are a beginner. This Bootcamp requires the student to be serious in the course, but don't worry if whether or not you'll be able to grasp the concepts. The onsite instructors are very helpful and you can ask them to explain difficult topics. 

What I like best from this coding Bootcamp is its learning platform. For those who don't know, the learning platform they have in Coding Dojo is a website for students to follow through day-by-day. In that platform, they have assignments, videos explaining topics, and the best part of the platform is that they take you step-by-step for each stack. Coding Dojo has a selection of stacks you can choose from: MEAN, Python, C#, Java, Swift. Each stack takes about a month to complete, then you move onto the next one.

Before the course begins, I had some doubts if this three-month course is going to be too tough for me since programming is not my area of interest. I was worried if I can't do it, but then I thought to myself: "If I can just go through this and tough it out just for three months, then the result would be rewarding". And so, after completing the three-month onsite course, I feel like I can create anything I want. It is honestly a really good thing to learn for everybody since coding can be applied everywhere. The future for coding looks very promising with more and more IoT devices being introduced. Going to Coding Dojo is one of the best decisions I did. It provided me with a very powerful skill that not all people have.

Had a great time while at the Coding Dojo.  For one, they take the GI Bill, which for me was the only way I was able to go.  The culture there is cool, laid back, yet tight knit.  The instructor staff (including teaching assistants) are very engaged, knowledgable and prepared.

Being able to learn 3 separate languages was a really great experience.  It has given me confidence that I am able to learn any technology, as well as helped me realize which language I really enjoy working in and why.  

I would highly encourage anyone considering a boot camp to strongly consider Coding Dojo. 

The Coding Dojo is an excellent way to introduce yourself to the programming world. I come from a musical background and went into their web development course with very little knowledge of programming. Yet the teachers made sure that every student would succeeded. If you come into the bootcamp with a positive attitude and you put in the hours, you will be rewarded. The triple full-stack aspect of the web development course really prepares you for the coding world, providing you with the knowledge, flexibility and independence that is vital to any good programmer. 

I had a really good experience with my Coding Dojo course over the past 6 months. There's a lot of information that they teach you and it gives you a solid foundation to build upon your programming skills, whether you're brand new or have some exposure already. The instructors are fantastic and engaging. Plus the instructors and TA's are always around and happy to answer any questions you might have, so the support available to you is invaluable. That's not to say it's an easy ride and all you have to do is attend; you will definitely have to put some time into it to get the best results. What you put in is what you get out, but if you're driven to learn, then you will get a lot out of this course.

I completed the Coding Dojo on-site web development bootcamp in an effort to change career directions. I came into the program with a background in quality assurance testing in an IBM mainframe environment and only had some early HTML 2/3 and Java experience from the long past epoch of GeoCities pages with embedded MIDI files and too many animated GIFs so this course ended up being quite the catch-up experience for modern web standards and practices.

The course takes a very wide and shallow approach to various web technologies including HTML and CSS, then moves on to Python, JavaScript, and lastly C#. JavaScript, Python, and C# are introduced in a general fashion for each leg of the course with students learning how to write algorithms and solving computing problems with them and then later learning how to use common frameworks with those languages. Angular and Express.js were covered for JavaScript. Django and Flask were utilized for Python. C# was used within ASP.NET MVC. Learning these languages and frameworks is done via reading materials and lectures from instructors.

Even though the approach is wide and shallow the curriculum is aggressively paced and taking this course is effectively a full-time commitment. If you are not able to devote 40-50 hours a week to the program you probably aren't going to have a good time.

The course also includes several "project weeks" where a theme will be presented for students to create coding projects around. There is a lot of flexibility for students to create anything they want even using technologies that aren't necessarily covered in the normal curriculum.

I found the instructors to be friendly, helpful, and extremely knowledgeable about the technologies. One gripe is that some of the teaching material is presented in the form of videos rather than written word which I personally do not like, but video content is the direction everyone is going so I guess I should get used to it. As of this writing I'd estimate only about 15-20% of the material is in video form.

The post bootcamp job hunting materials were also useful and based on real world experiences with useful tips on what to do and also what to avoid in resume writing, LinkedIn management, and actual interviews.

Overall, I would recommend this course for people looking to get into web development (front or back end) and aren't really sure where to start. For the more experienced coder or someone with a specific technology in mind Coding Dojo does offer courses more focused on certain areas that may be of interest.

Coding Dojo... 

If you don't have any coding experience i encourage you to learn on your own especially if you have an idea of what languages you may or will be learning while at the bootcamp(you should).I was in the bottom half in terms of coding skills in my cohort, but the great thing about onsite learning is you have intelligent and very hard working cohort mates that are happy to help aswell as the instructors who are great too. My only regrets is that i didn't come in to the coding dojo with more of a foundtational set of skills it would of made my bootcamp time better as well as keeping my work ethic and motivation high through out the bootcamp which was like a rollercoaster. It's alot better to be ahead than to be on track or struggling to stay afloat.It relieves pressure which allows you to code more efficiently and work on projects during project week.If you're looking to be a FULLSTACK developer coding dojo is the way to go. 

I really enjoyed my time at the Seattle campus of Coding Dojo. A huge reason for that was because of the great staff and my amazing cohort! While attending this bootcamp I really understood what it meant to be a self-sufficient web developer. I came into this bootcamp having little to no experience in web development, but if you really dedicate your time to learning the curriculum and live by their mantra, "Strength through struggle" I can guarantee that you can become a great web developer.

The staff/instructors were really great in their own ways, they were helpful, caring, and steered you in the right direction. They really care about each student and making sure that they fully understand what is going on in the curriculum, they are always there for you whenever you are stuck in your code and dont know what to do.

I came to Coding Dojo with a little bit of experience in computer science. I gained a lot of knowledge and learned a lot from there within 14 weeks. The instructors are really helpful and knowledgeable.

Their 20 minutes rule is training us to become independent and self-sufficient developers since we have to figure out how to fix the bugs and how to improve our codes on our own by reading documents online when we work in tech industry. I highly recommend Coding dojo to future developers who are willing to learn and put efforts.

I recently graduated from Coding Dojo taking the full time online course with stacks in Web Fundamentals, Python, and MEAN.  For background information my first programming boot camp experience was as a resident student at Skill Distillery in Colorado with a four month boot camp focusing on Java 8 using Spring, MySQL, and AngularJS 1.5.  I also entered the bootcamp scene with a Bachelor Degree in Electrical/Computer Engineering from UT in Austin with my first two years as a Computer Science Major.  I graduated from Skill Distillery's boot camp in 2017 and decided to attend another boot camp after getting a job at The Washington Post as a Software Developer because they were using Python, MongoDB, ReactJS among other technologies I had no exposure to.

What led me to Coding Dojo is their advertisments of five full stacks, online courses, and physical location near my geographic area in Northern Virginia.  I should also note in addition to working while attending Coding Dojo's full time online course, I was also in my first year as a graduate student pursuing a Master degree in Software Engineering from George Mason University. 

I will save a true review of my experiences and some comparative analysis of the two boot camps including online versus resident after I hopefully recieve a response from someone at Coding Dojo about taking additional stacks. I hate leaving a cliff hanger like this but since Coding Dojo advertises five stacks and partially why I chose their program, it is only fair I defer until I get the full monty.  Coding Dojo, as an alumn I have made multiple attempts in getting information in how to gain access to advertised resources, if I do not receive a response within a resonable amount of time, I will write a full review based on my own assumptions.