Coder Vox

I am a former Special Education Teacher that always has been interested in design and programming and considered pursuing it for a few years. I work at a school for 4 years, but realized that was not what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I decided... Read More to do some research on places to educate me in Austin. I found Coder Vox online and decided to give it a shot. After seeing that they were open to anyone, no matter what the experience they had, that won me over.

I expected to learn a lot about web development from Coder Vox. My expectations were exceeded! I felt a little overwhelmed at first not having a lot of experience. When I expressed this to the staff, they were quick to put my mind at ease and help me get on track. Once they discovered that my talents were more geared for Front-End Programming, they tailored the course so that I could be the best Front-End guy I could be.

I chose Coder Vox because of its desire to help anyone who wanted to learn to code and because of the culture there. During my interview while applying to Coder Vox, I found that the people there were very friendly and welcoming, but also had a strong desire to help me succeed.

The environment at Coder Vox was both relaxing and serious. During class, the environment was serious, where people were determined to get work done. During lunch time and breaks, people would just hangout and talk or play video games. It was a place where people could come to learn and get work done, but also have some fun.

I really enjoyed working with the Coder Vox Front-End instructor. The instructors and staff at Coder Vox are very open and helpful. Whenever I had questions or concerns, they would personally address them. I really appreciated the efforts they made to make us all feel comfortable.

Coder Vox also did great at helping me in my job search. I had a great Developer job within a month thanks to the efforts of Coder Vox. The Coder Vox staff helped me to set up my resume in a way that was very attractive to potential Web Development companies. They were able to attract some of the top companies in Austin to come to the bootcamp and let us present our final projects to them. They sought out available openings in whatever area of the country we wanted to go that would be the best for each student’s skill set. By end of my job search, I had 3 offers to consider and at least 3 more that still wanted to interview me. As a student, Coder Vox was able to prepare me technically for my current position. By going to Coder Vox, not only am I ready to start my career, but I was able to land my dream job right off the bat.

Coder Vox was a great ride and I highly recommend them for anyone wanting to pursue a career in Web Development.

One of the best parts of the curriculum is that they start you from the ground up. You write messy procedural code so you can appreciate object-oriented programming. You write straight SQL so you can appreciate an ORM, or a graphic user interface that... Read More you use later. Then, when moving into frameworks, you can create and debug with more confidence with the knowledge of how it's done the hard/messy way.

Another part of the course I thoroughly enjoyed is the ability to work on what you are passionate about. We had time in the middle of the course, as well as at the end, to work on something we felt was important or just fun. You'll learn so much and work very hard by doing something you're interested in.

In addition, a couple guest speakers from different fields in software development came and talked about their own experiences and what they were working on, which was particularly inspiring and motivating.

At times, I feel like there were some organizational issues but I believe these are easily fixed and did not significantly impact my experience.

When I first started looking for bootcamps, I was deciding between CoderVox and another camp. I'm really glad I went with these guys though, the instructor was super helpful and I always felt ok to ask questions. Every Friday the instructor would also... Read More ask for feedback and ask what worked and what didn't in regards to the teaching style, languages, and homework assignments. The course felt really dynamic and well suited to my needs as a student.

The greatest skill I learned was how to think when encountered with a programming problem. When I first started the camp I would get overwhelmed since we learned a language in a week or less. The instructor always inquired on where I needed help and it eliminated that feeling of being overwhelmed. With time everything become easier, and the language we learned the previous week became a lot easier to implement as well.

I become really comfortable in PHP since we learned pure PHP first, then frameworks later. In learning the basics of PHP first, we were able to really understand the benefits of frameworks and how to adapt our coding to multiple databases. We learned frameworks like Laravel and CodeIgniter for PHP. It's bizarre to think that we started off with HTML, CSS, and Javascript on week 1, since now I'm comfortable with writing data to databases using PHP with or without Laravel. We also learned Javascript, JQuery, and a little bit of AngularJS. Learning what was trending helped, but the instructor made sure we had down the basics first. We even learned Git (which is super helpful in the real world).

Every now and then a career expert would come in and tutor us on networking skills and how to also beef up our resumes and portfolios. I found it really helpful that the instructor had real world experience and shared what technical interviews would be like. You get a chance to do mock interviews and also learn what questions interviewers asked the most.

I seriously gained a lot of confidence after attending this bootcamp and will definitely come back for part time courses. The full time is definitely intensive, so if you're thinking of applying make sure you're secure financially and make sure you have a Mac. They have some there of course but its easier to take your coding with you. This camp is great for backend developers, but front end languages fall a little by the wayside. However, once you learn a language it's like you've learned them all since they're all so alike. I would definitely recommend this bootcamp for anyone who's ready to change their career. Seriously, ditch technical support jobs and take the risk, it's worth it.

Coder Vox has given me the confidence and skill to approach women. I used to be filled with such anxiety before approaching the opposite sex, but now I'm all like, "I can't decide what area I'm more into - your front-end or back-end application," before... Read More launching into a detailed explanation of my relational database structure and my algorithm using Big O notation analysis. 60% of the time, it works all the time.

In all seriousness though, since starting the bootcamp, I've gone from a 0 to 100 real quick. I came in, having dabbled in HTML and CSS and left being able to integrate JavaScript/jQuery, architect relational databases, leverage APIs, and use MVC frameworks. It's a HUGE amount of information concentrated into a 12-week period. Just one week in and of itself could technically be spread over 12 weeks. Coming from very minimal experience, at times it felt overwhelming and insurmountable, but you're kind of forced to sink or swim. While the staff is there for support, they don't necessarily hold your hand through the material. But the way I see it, when you get your first job, they aren't going to hold your hand either: you'll get a new framework thrown at you and you're going to have to deploy all the resources at your disposal to solve the problem. Software and web development is by its nature a mercurial, fickle creature. The ability to adapt and learn new concepts independently is an important skill to develop early. If you need an accelerated kickstart to your web development career, I can't recommend Coder Vox enough. It's really one of those situations what you get out of it is what you put in. I found it necessary, eight weeks in, to constantly go back and reinforce my understanding of older concepts from week two while still trying to process new ones. Expect your life to be consumed these twelve weeks. Expect your dreams to be rendered in code.

I was part of the very first full-time class and in that sense I found the class very flexible and receptive to input from the students. I'm glad I got to be part of this experience and I feel like I now have the tools to land a job in this field.

Coder Vox's full-time course exceeded every expectation I had. I expected to be able to write simple programs by the end of the course, however, what I gained was much more powerful. I feel completely confident in designing/building a full website from... Read More top to bottom on my own. It's an incredible feeling. I graduated from college in the spring of 2014 and had no background in computer science. But now I feel that there is nothing I cannot create.

The course covered both back-end and front-end languages as well frameworks such as BootStrap and Angular. For the back-end. we primarily focused on PHP and MySql and later worked with frameworks such as Laravel and Code Igniter. Towards the end of the program, we took the skills we had learned and applied modern programming practices such as the Model-View-Controller approach and the SOLID principles to our work. And this is a very small portion of the material we covered.

The team is amazing and works really hard to make sure that the course caters to the needs of the students. If there is a new language in high demand in the work place, they are not afraid to add it to the curriculum. As well, they have members of the team specifically dedicated to job placement.

Overall, the skills I've learned while studying at Coder Vox are life changing, and I'm extremely satisfied with the program.

I was part of Coder Vox when they taught ruby. The instructors were top notch and taught us how to not only code, but how to code well. Throughout the course, we had various assignments and projects, showing us how to apply what was previously taught.... Read More At the end, our final project was to create a dating app, which pieced everything together. Coder Vox really challenges their students but the instructors make the entire learning process doable. I highly recommend anyone looking for a career switch to take their courses. It's also a great platform to network and connect with tech companies looking to hire developers.

I highly recommend you take this course if you are looking to learn to code. I took the CoderVox course when they still offered part-time, I don't expect very much has changed in the core leadership or structure. The environment really promotes learning.... Read More You'll find it very easy to find someone from CoderVox to meet up with you at anytime to help you with any coding problems you might face, and they really encourage you to learn outside of class. I definitely took more away from this course than I'd expected. I came into the course with absolutely no programming experience and wanting to build a mobile app that I had an idea for, and by the end of the course, I had written a fully functioning back-end for it on my own, without any help from the instructors (keep in mind this was after the part-time course; you'll learn much more in the full-time).

Price is lower than other coding schools (such as Makersquare) because they're a relatively new company, but I don't think that takes away from the quality of their teaching. I'd expect the prices to rise in the near future as they start to grow. Overall, I'm really glad I took the course, and I would definitely suggest you look into them if you're in the Austin area and want to learn to code.

Overall I am glad I took the course. Student/teacher ratio was awesome, instructors were open to all questions, and held regular office hours.

If you are not familiar with any back end programming language, I would recommend doing the course pre-work... Read More they recommend because some of it (arrays- I am looking at you) can be pretty tedious.