Deep Dive Coding

The best things about this bootcamp: The instructors created a very challenging but very supportive learning environment. All three instructors put a lot of themselves into the course, care a great deal about the students, and are expert coders. The instructors are wonderful people, and really good teachers.

The coding assignments, the work-along demos, and the team-based capstone projects were extremely good. The instructors were very good at constructing and leading those sorts of hands-on coding experiences.

The worst things about this bootcamp: In the first three weeks, there were way too many lectures, and students spent way too little time coding. On several days, lectures took the entire 8 hours! All-day lectures are not an effective way to teach, because most students can't stay focussed on difficult technical material for that long while being passive. I was surprised that the curriculum was designed with so many lectures, since the instructors are not very good at lecturing, but they are great at leading hands-on, active-learning sorts of exercises.

The course is very intense, as it should be, and there is a lot of material to cover in 10 weeks. However, the time taken for passive lectures could have been greatly reduced by simply organizing each lecture (and by spending less lecture time on jokes and trivial asides).  Also, the instructors could have used a "flipped classroom" approach, where students watch online lectures (e.g. from Lynda) at home, and nearly all of the class time is used for active, skill-based exercises.

TL;DR  I learned a great deal by attending this bootcamp. The course has serious flaws, but the instructors have the skills they need to improve the course.

I enjoyed the DDCB experience, however, for someone will very little programming experience going in it was difficult. I was lucky to be on a team that had some programming knowledge before coming to the class, otherwise I would have been lost. The instructors were great, there were times though where the main instructor went off on stories that took up more time than they should of. The curriculum was truly extensive, but we are given so little time on some subjects that it almost didn't feel like learning, we were exposed to a language then we were expected to go do it. Yes, they do expect you to learn on your own using documentation but it was hard to get help when it was needed. You will be doing a lot of the work on the weekends and I do highly recommend it, but good luck getting any of the instructors to respond to questions. Our group all met together on Saturdays which was extremely helpful. If you can, encourage your cohort to do the same, I think I had one of the best cohorts out there. The job assistance was extremely helpful and even now that I have graduated I am still getting notifications of jobs and internships. Can I say that I feel ready to go get a job after this program? No. What I can say is that they have opened the doors to a whole new world of possibilities and have given me a foundation which to continue learning from. I appreciate all the insight the instructors have given me, and I loved how great the staff was in my time at the camp. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have to give this course a 7/10. Great people, just not great for those barely starting their programming journey.

DDCB is a valuable, challenging program that can get you started in the tech industry. Like other bootcamps, it requires full commitment in order to reap the highest benefits. The career assistance is excellent - I was employeed in a month after I started looking for a job. There are also alternative options, paid internships and similar portofolio building opportunities that DDCB provides in order to help students bridge the gap in experience so they can be employable. 

The course work is solid and you'll be exposed to fundamental principles of programming. Your best bet is to learn how to learn. You can't expect to be spoon-fed, but if you're willing to put in the time and effort you can graduate with enough knowledge and a polished portfolio piece to get you started. 

The Deep Dive coding bootcamp does a good job of exposing you to a lot of technical information. The problem is there's ALOT of behind the scenes magic that you aren't exposed to or that isn't even hinted at during the course so when you graduate you're left scratching you're head on things like database connections and other issues that are extremely relevant. 

Also, Javascript is the number one programming language on github and most highly sought by employers, but we spent less than half of a day learning Javascript and learned some Angular as we went along but with little to no formal instruction. PHP was the extreme focus of the course but is harder and harder to find jobs in, especially in the Albuquerque area.

The lead instructor is great, except he goes on lectures and rants that no where near deserve the time spent on them in relation to the importance of hands on learning needed to leave as a competent web developer. The assistant instructor was almost worthless as a technical assistant, as she was proficient in only front end languages and even then seemed lost or had an inability to explain some concepts with any understanding. 

The time spent on "guest speakers" and non technical related things amounts to ALOT more of the course than you would think, and keeps you from learning more technical issues later in the course when you are in deeper technical water. 

Another big issue I had with the camp, especially in retrospect was that everytime you had a technical problem to overcome the instructor(s) would basically just fix the problem with little to no explaining overall. Also, the camp makes ALOT of assumptions about your technical background where it comes to programming. The problem is, many come into the camp with little to no background and don't get a thorough understanding of some pretty basic programming concepts. 

Job placement or assistance seems almost non-existent unless you're friends or close to the people passing on the assitance emails and opportunities. I think the opportunites should be much less discrimantory and have heard from other graduates that they feel the same. 

After meeting and speaking with many graduates and following their quest for employment in a casual manner, I'm sure that Deep Dive mispresents the employment numbers and opportunities that graduates have.