Coding Dojo

I was able to change my career and get a job in Tech two months after I graduated! My instructors were knowledgeable, approachable, friendly and that made my experience even better. After I graduated two of my friends signed up to Coding Dojo and one... Read More of them got a job three months after graduating at one of the top tech companies in the US, second one is close to graduating. Great school overall, would recommend to everyone!!

As the title says, if you're willing to put in the time & effort, Coding Dojo is an amazing bootcamp to get you started in a Software Development career. This probably applies to Software Development in general, but since Coding Dojo offers 3-stacks(not... Read More all 3 are required), it definitely is not something you're just going to be doing on the side, or when you have free time. Having graduating from the 3-stack program, I can tell you that if you actually put time aside to study the material, understand how each line of code works, understand how individual components contribute to creating an application & try to solve problems on your own without looking for someone to hold your hand every step of the way, then you will have a great foundation to build upon from there. As far as I know, Coding Dojo offers the most value in terms of languages, web technologies, etc, that are taught versus other bootcamps that I've looked at. BUT, as I said, you have to put in the time & effort to get the most out of it, do not just do the bare-minimum. You're given the most in-demand tools(the ones most job postings are looking for experience in) to equip yourself with in order to help you get started in a new career in Software Development. Half-way through my second stack I felt comfortable enough to start applying for jobs, so I ended up landing one before graduation. If you plan on doing the bare minimum, i.e., just turning in the required assignments & passing the exams, then this is a career that you should reconsider. I learned a LOT at Coding Dojo, then continued to further my new skill sets on my own after having a solid foundation of each stack which has led me down a never-ending rabbit hole of information(in a good way). Take the tools that Coding Dojo offers here and put them to work.

Some of this will repeat my TrustPilot review, but I will organize it here as pros/cons. Pros: --The sheer BREADTH of tech you work with in Coding Dojo is quite exemplary: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, TypeScript, Bootstrap, Python, Flask, MySQL, MongoDB, Mongoose,... Read More Node.js, React/Express, Postman, jQuery, JSON, Ajax, Java, SpringToolSuite, SpringBoot, APIs, AWS, Azure, and there is so much more nitty-gritty I could name here for each stack. (Note: I took MERN. Some students take MEAN, which is Angular over React, or C# or other stacks, and some take or have taken Python which uses Django rather than Flask, etc. but this was the tech I personally worked with) --Being integrated into a community learning environment is great. You have instructors, TAs, and your peers. You are together in Zoom lectures, you can pair program in Zoom "breakout rooms" with a few people, and you can communicate in Discord servers/channels. I learned to really be pro-active in asking questions and seeking help, whether from instructors, TAs, or peers who had more knowledge/experience than I had, depending on the situation. --You can continue to stay connected after graduating, whether through alum Discord channels/servers, connecting w/a community on LinkedIn, using career services support, etc. It's definitely a good starting point for building a network. Cons: --The biggest one to me is that access to the Login/Learn platform is cut off at six months after graduating. I will be frank that this strikes me as a bit ... strangely miserly. I mean, students are paying quite a bit of money for the bootcamp. Why cut off their platform access after such a limited amount of time? Especially because, again, speaking frankly, most students will still need to practice with a lot of these concepts after graduating, given how fast-paced the bootcamp is. I think students would look a lot more fondly on the program without this red tape. --I said this elsewhere, but tech that's not directly a part of building a fullstack server for each language/library gets treated a bit haphazardly. JSON and APIs are touched on, but working with APIs is something that comes up during project week and is largely left to students to work through on their own. APIs can be very complex, so giving a week for a student to make a project w/API integration is a bit of a problem. Especially because you may not even have a week: many students need a little extra time to complete the 90% core assignment requirement of the stack and have to take exams a bit later, or they may need an exam re-take (or two), in which case they don't even have a full week for projects. Peers are preoccupied with their own projects, even TAs may struggle to really help w/API integration, and instructors can be a bit sparse during these final stack weeks. This results in a situation where the students who need support the most are likely to not get much and not have much to show, whereas students who already have a lot of tech chops are the most likely to produce flashy projects. I didn't have a very good experience with project weeks, personally. --Similarly and maybe a bit relatedly, some tech isn't actually taught, but is treated like sort of bonus material for Black Belts. For example, at no point were we really taught to deploy websites. There are deployment instructions on the Learn/Login platform, but this is something you self-teach for Black Belt features. Having options for Black Belt features is a cool concept, but being able to deploy websites seems like something that ought to be pretty integral to development. I graduated without being taught really anything about deployment. It's worth noting that Coding Dojo does offer optional certification in Azure, however. Overall: Really, what each stack in Coding Dojo is oriented around is creating an application/server with full CRUD functionality. To that end, the program succeeds in teaching students how to build these servers from the ground up w/Python, MERN, and Java. If you think of Coding Dojo as being mostly oriented towards this, then it succeeds in what it sets out to do. It would be nice to flesh out some of the other aspects of tech a bit more, though. I have nothing but nice things to say about the instructors and TAs. When they can be reached for support, their assistance is excellent. One of the other challenging things is that if you need evening or weekend support for assignments, it can be harder to find people around to help, which can be tricky because a student may have most of their time for work on evenings or weekends. I would sometimes fall behind in my assignment tracker because I needed to check in with my instructor or a TA the next day for an assignment due the previous day. In fairness, I think the program tries to help with this by just having a lot of TAs on Discord, so you have to be pro-active in searching around and messaging them sometimes just to see who is available. I understand people have lives and there's only so much you can do scheduling-wise in terms of support, but students should be aware of this and try to plan ahead and start assignments ASAP and as early as possible to guarantee sufficient support if they get stuck w/debugging.

Some of this will repeat my TrustPilot review, but I will organize it here as pros/cons. Pros: --The sheer BREADTH of tech you work with in Coding Dojo is quite exemplary: HTML, JavaScript, CSS, TypeScript, Bootstrap, Python, Flask, MySQL, MongoDB, Mongoose,... Read More Node.js, React/Express, Postman, jQuery, JSON, Ajax, Java, SpringToolSuite, SpringBoot, APIs, AWS, Azure, and there is so much more nitty-gritty I could name here for each stack. (Note: I took MERN. Some students take MEAN, which is Angular over React, or C# or other stacks, and some take or have taken Python which uses Django rather than Flask, etc. but this was the tech I personally worked with) --Being integrated into a community learning environment is great. You have instructors, TAs, and your peers. You are together in Zoom lectures, you can pair program in Zoom "breakout rooms" with a few people, and you can communicate in Discord servers/channels. I learned to really be pro-active in asking questions and seeking help, whether from instructors, TAs, or peers who had more knowledge/experience than I had, depending on the situation. --You can continue to stay connected after graduating, whether through alum Discord channels/servers, connecting w/a community on LinkedIn, using career services support, etc. It's definitely a good starting point for building a network. Cons: --The biggest one to me is that access to the Login/Learn platform is cut off at six months after graduating. I will be frank that this strikes me as a bit ... strangely miserly. I mean, students are paying quite a bit of money for the bootcamp. Why cut off their platform access after such a limited amount of time? Especially because, again, speaking frankly, most students will still need to practice with a lot of these concepts after graduating, given how fast-paced the bootcamp is. I think students would look a lot more fondly on the program without this red tape. --I said this elsewhere, but tech that's not directly a part of building a fullstack server for each language/library gets treated a bit haphazardly. JSON and APIs are touched on, but working with APIs is something that comes up during project week and is largely left to students to work through on their own. APIs can be very complex, so giving a week for a student to make a project w/API integration is a bit of a problem. Especially because you may not even have a week: many students need a little extra time to complete the 90% core assignment requirement of the stack and have to take exams a bit later, or they may need an exam re-take (or two), in which case they don't even have a full week for projects. Peers are preoccupied with their own projects, even TAs may struggle to really help w/API integration, and instructors can be a bit sparse during these final stack weeks. This results in a situation where the students who need support the most are likely to not get much and not have much to show, whereas students who already have a lot of tech chops are the most likely to produce flashy projects. I didn't have a very good experience with project weeks, personally. --Similarly and maybe a bit relatedly, some tech isn't actually taught, but is treated like sort of bonus material for Black Belts. For example, at no point were we really taught to deploy websites. There are deployment instructions on the Learn/Login platform, but this is something you self-teach for Black Belt features. Having options for Black Belt features is a cool concept, but being able to deploy websites seems like something that ought to be pretty integral to development. I graduated without being taught really anything about deployment. It's worth noting that Coding Dojo does offer optional certification in Azure, however. Overall: Really, what each stack in Coding Dojo is oriented around is creating an application/server with full CRUD functionality. To that end, the program succeeds in teaching students how to build these servers from the ground up w/Python, MERN, and Java. If you think of Coding Dojo as being mostly oriented towards this, then it succeeds in what it sets out to do. It would be nice to flesh out some of the other aspects of tech a bit more, though. I have nothing but nice things to say about the instructors and TAs. When they can be reached for support, their assistance is excellent. One of the other challenging things is that if you need evening or weekend support for assignments, it can be harder to find people around to help, which can be tricky because a student may have most of their time for work on evenings or weekends. I would sometimes fall behind in my assignment tracker because I needed to check in with my instructor or a TA the next day for an assignment due the previous day. In fairness, I think the program tries to help with this by just having a lot of TAs on Discord, so you have to be pro-active in searching around and messaging them sometimes just to see who is available. I understand people have lives and there's only so much you can do scheduling-wise in terms of support, but students should be aware of this and try to plan ahead and start assignments ASAP and as early as possible to guarantee sufficient support if they get stuck w/debugging.

I took the Data Science 12 week bootcamp. Be aware that in a 12 week course, you have 24 actual classroom hours (2 1-hour meetings per week) where the instructor goes over a powerpoint, then demoes some of the concepts you're learning that week. They... Read More attempt to get to the point where there is time for a group exercise (of which there is little value) but there is rarely time for that due to the overwhelming number of questions from students (in my class there were more than 25 -- hard to be sure because I wasn't clear how many were TAs of the 30+ that were logged in). Personally, I expected much more facetime with an instructor and was disappointed by this. I was also disappointed by the heavy reliance on a learning platform that was being built as we went along and was full of errors that I frequently reported. It's also worth noting that in my course, we had a highly qualified instructor for the first 4 weeks, a new to teaching instructor for the second 4 weeks (who had a backup to help with student questions), and another brand new instructor for the last 4 weeks that was actually a TA during the first 8 weeks. You should also be aware that they have a monthly drawing for prizes for people that submit reviews. Now, if you think this kind of experience is worth $8500+ then this is the place for you. I did not, and will not be recommending them to any of my peers.

Coding Dojo having the best ratings for coding bootcamp in the world? True? I say, yay, yay. Best of the best learning platform. Best of the best instructors, TA's, fellow Ninjas. Best of the best comunidad. Best of the best experience. 10/5 would recommend.... Read More

After knowing little to nothing about coding I was able to code and deploy my own full stack website after 4 months. The program is intensive and requires dedication to your learning. The more you put in the more you get out. The instructors are always... Read More ready to help and patient. I would recommend this course to any who is ready to make a career change.

I took the Coding Dojo Bootcamp, Did the Python, MERN, JAVA stacks. Even though the bootcamp was all online, I felt I was really learning at a good pace with not much trouble at all. The lectures were perfect, each instructor knew what they were doing... Read More and were so helpful when I had questions. I would definitely recommend the Coding Dojo Bootcamp to anyone wanting to start a career as a software developer.

Fantastic team! They've so many resources for you to learn, amazing instructors, and they create a great learning environment. You will learn a lot, but you'll get out what you put in. So work hard. I particularly enjoyed how they're always building on... Read More what you already know. So you'll learn something in one stack and use it again in another, but they don't go back over and installed teach you new things

If you want to become a software developer I think the value you get from Coding Dojo is well worth it. You aren’t just paying for videos or content to read, they really provide a robust and challenging experience that I will personally never forget.... Read More The friends you make in your cohort are essential for completing the program and becoming successful. The instructors and TAs are aligned with your goals and serve as teachers, mentors, and councilors. You get career service support and are able to become part of a community of developers which helps you transition into the field. These things combined with comprehensive and engaging content all combine to make it possible to learn so much in 14 weeks. The time estimates are all accurate, you will need to spend 50+ hours per week or more to succeed, but if you enjoy coding and learning it doesn’t all feel like work. I was actually sad to finish because I enjoyed the grind but now I have the tools and knowledge to continue what is the beginning of a new journey.