Covalence

I came to Covalence knowing absolutely nothing about programming but eager to create a new opportunity for myself. I was initially anxious about my lack of experience (I had no idea what JavaScript was) but was relieved to find out many of my classmates... Read More were in the same position.

Covalence's instructors are undoubtedly what secures their program's reputation as a five-star boot camp experience and sets them apart from other programs. My instructors, Will and Jio, were enthusiastic about my learning experience and always ready to provide the help I required. They were willing to come in before class, stay after class, and even offered assistance on weekends if needed. This is not to mention that the entire Covalence community of instructors and students was only "a click away" 24/7 on Slack (a community messaging platform) to help with any problems or questions I had.

My classmates included beginning level programmers, as well as students who had considerable experience with code, and both experience levels were able to find what they needed with Covalence's curriculum. More experienced programmers were challenged and learned valuable new skills alongside classmates new to programming. The curriculum was fast paced and downright arduous at times, but it was designed to be so. Covalence was acutely aware of this and ready to step in to assist with or speed along my understanding when necessary. Our instructors genuinely valued the class's feedback and continuously made adjustments to the curriculum when appropriate. The last two weeks of class were dedicated to a final project, during which the instructors began to step back and challenged us to find solutions to our problems with less assistance from them. This time proved to be especially valuable as I became significantly more confident in my coding skills and my ability to perform on my own once in a job setting. Preparing for an entry-level programming job in ten weeks was a demanding process that required me to put in work outside of class in order to keep up with the concepts. If you are willing to dedicate personal time to your learning, this curriculum is designed for your success.

Initially, after graduating Covalence, I began the job search process and was pleased with the effort and enthusiasm Covalence's Director of Student Success, Kimberly, provided me with. She helped edit my resume and cover letters, would send us job listings, and reached out to potential employers on students' behalf.

I eventually decided to continue my programming education instead of directly entering the workforce. I'll soon be moving from Tennessee to California to pursue a degree in computer science. I'm attending a program I surely wouldn't have gotten into without the education and portfolio Covalence equipped me with. I do, however, believe I would have been ready to begin my career as a Full Stack Engineer after attending Covalence had I chosen to.

Well, there you have it! Should you decide to attend Covalence I hope you are able to thrive with them just as I have. Good Luck!

Overall Experience:

This was a career change for me and getting another 4-year bachelor’s degree in computer programming was a ridiculous and expensive pipe dream for me. Like with any career change, I needed something that could prepare me to become a... Read More software developer. I came across Covalence thru a Google search via the Course Report website and signed up for the January 2017 Nashville Full Stack Software Bootcamp that lasted 10 weeks. The location of the class was at the Refinery inside Houston Station, which was a nice safe environment with decent parking. Most students in the class were sailing the same unemployed ship as I was, so people were motivated to succeed in the course in order to get a job.

Curriculum:

I went in knowing nothing about how to code a website or a mobile app. You will see a lot of reviews saying that it was the hardest class they ever took, which in most cases, it will be difficult since it is like learning multiple foreign languages. It is a 10-week course, so I expected that learning all the bits and pieces of what goes into Full Stack Development (Front End, Back End, and Database) was going to be at a fast pace. For me, the first two days was the biggest hurdle to overcome since there were a lot of tutorial videos in the morning and coding projects in the afternoon to absorb on HTML and CSS. By the time we switched to JavaScript in the first week, it was pretty straightforward from there because the curriculum is structured to build on what you learned in the prior labs, so by the time you get to your final project, you should be able to build a website/app with less hand holding from the instructor and teaching assistant. My favorite troubleshooting tool was “console logging” all my variables in order to see how the data was flowing thru my project from Front End to Back End to Front End. This feels like a nerdy coding anecdote, but there was a point where I enjoyed using console commands so much, that I ended up using “console.dir();”, which allows you to see data inside of an “object Object” in the console. There was a moment in my final project where my React Native code stopped working if it was not in debugger mode, which had my instructor stomped for a moment because React Native doesn’t console log errors unless it is in in debugger mode. When I let him know that I was using “console.dir” in my code, he realized that my “console.dir” were giving a negative one aka undefined when it was not being debugged, so he wrote me an if-else statement that would by-pass that problem, so that I didn’t have to delete all my “console.dir”.

Instructors:

We fortunately had an instructor who was a guru at computer programming and a teaching assistant who graduated from Covalence that was very knowledgeable of the course material. They helped guide us thru the coding challenges that came up every day. They tried their best not to just solve the problems for us but instead guide us in the right direction to get to the solution. For me, I didn’t want to be spoon fed a solution; I wanted to be able to figure out how to write the correct function, for loop, or if-else conditional statement on my own. If my attempt at solving the problem was a train wreck, it was comforting to have the instructor/teaching assistant there to help because I can tell you that Stack Overflow is not the greatest resource for coding problems when you can have a coding guru right next to you showing you what you did wrong. The funny thing is most of the time, it was misspelling a variable or missing a curly bracket or a comma somewhere. One of the best things about the course is when you have those moments where you solve something without needing to ask for help, but when the instructor looks at your solution, they make a comment that it could have been coded with fewer lines of code, which makes your great personal achievement seem like an okay personal achievement, but you silently agree that the instructor’s comment is right, which is the main difference of learning to code on your own versus having a coding expert right next to you.

Job Assistance:

Covalence has two team members that are dedicated to helping you update your resume towards a coding job and help you prepare for the technical job interview. They scheduled guest lecturers in the local tech industry to share their experiences with us, which helped us get a better idea on what we were getting into. Four things that you will get out of the course that helps toward your job search is a new skill set of computer languages, a Github account filled with your lab projects and final project, a LinkedIn account (if you haven’t made one), and resources to tech meetups that increase your chances to network with job recruiters/hiring managers. In terms of a guarantee of job placement after the course, this was not something I was expecting from a 10-week software bootcamp, but Covalence still tries to help you find jobs regardless.

Final Thoughts:

After 10 weeks, I am able to code a website or mobile app in ReactJS and React Native from Front End, Back End, and Database without help now. This to me is priceless since being lost and unsure on how to code was a huge mountain to climb over. Covalence helped me overcome that mountain, and now, I feel prepared to look for a software developer job on my own. You get to stay connected with a great coding community thru the Covalence Slack channel after the course is over. Lastly, Covalence provided me the foundation and the software tools to be able to learn new programming languages on my own because this is a career/industry that has many languages that handle Front End, Back End, and Database development.

Recommendations for Future Students:

1. If you can, bring a MAC laptop with at least 16 GBs of RAM. Your class experience will be smoother except make sure you have a root password set for you MySQL database when you get to that lesson…
2. If you want a head start, find a tutorial on how to make a website with a code editor (VS Code) with just using an index.html file that displays your web elements and a CSS file that styles your web elements. If you are a savvy coder, try to add Bootstrap to your index.html file.
3. (Advanced) After you successfully make a website with just an index.html file and CSS file, make a JavaScript file (App.js) in your code editor that uses jQuery or DOM to display web elements thru the index.html file.
4. You will realize over the course where your strengths lie; be it making things look pretty with CSS or adding more functionality thru JavaScript.
5. When dealing with Front End requests to Back End responses, know that you are sending some kind of “request” from the Front End to the Back End such as “get all images links from database”, and the Back End will send a “response” back with all the image links to the Front End. Make sure your Front End understands the response from the Back End or else it will just console log an error.
6. There is nothing wrong if you can’t be good at everything. Just be great at what you enjoy. Good Luck!

The environment:
The Nashville class was held at the Refinery business center, which provided a nice friendly and relaxed, yet professional work environment. Relaxed, yet professional really sums up the vibes of the entire course. The instructors and the... Read More students all like to have some fun, make jokes, take a small break to show each other a video, etc., but it never took away from the fact that we were all there primarily because we are enthusiastic about and determined to learn how to code. Also worth noting: Covalence runs a community Slack channel so we could all message each other with problems we ran into (and the occasional meme).

The curriculum:
What stuck out most about the curriculum most to me is how intensive it it. You will be building front end websites with HTML, CSS and JavaScript by the end of the first week. Keep in mind, the vast majority of students attending the class have little to no coding experience at all. By week 6 you will already be building full stack applications. To keep up in the course, you must always be engaged in what you're learning and not afraid to jump right in. For example: This is what I turned in for the lab assigned to us the 2nd Friday of the course, to be finished the following week: http://www.just-my-type.commonrealm.com/index.html

Your average day at Covalence for the first 7 weeks of class involves a video lecture in the morning and a lab assignment in the afternoon, separated by a lunch break. The video lecture normally consists of a PowerPoint laying out the general concepts of what you're about to learn, followed by a coding walkthrough teaching you what you're going to actually need to do. The lab typically provides a list of tasks which require you to apply the skills you learned that morning, and an advanced assignment to take things a step further, if you get through the basics with some extra time. During lab time the instructors do the best they can to move around the room and help everyone with any questions or problems they're having. The instructors are very patient.

For the final 3 weeks of the class the students are split up into groups of 3-4 and assigned a final project. The final project is a full stack application (web or mobile) assigned by the instructors, although they do allow you to suggest your own ideas too. You will probably learn just as much during these last 3 weeks as in the actual instructional period of the class, because this is where you really learn to tackle big problems on your own and become an independent, self-teaching developer. The final projects are presented at graduation to the staff, fellow students and friends and family. These projects are a great first big piece of experience to put on your portfolio.

Job support:
Two of the instructors, Estes and Kimberly, offer help with resumes, portfolios, cover letters, job applications and much more throughout the course. They will also personally send out your information to companies they have connections with to get your foot in the door. Covalence also had many speakers come talk throughout the course. Some of the people who spoke in our class include hosts of a local developer podcast, former bootcamp students and local tech recruiters. Throughout the course, Estes and Kimberly also send links for entry level developer applications which they think would be a good fit for us through the Slack channel.

In conclusion:
If you are determined to learn to code and not afraid to jump right in, Covalence is probably a great fit for you. I really enjoyed my time at Covalence and am optimistic about my coding career thanks to the skills I learned in the class.
P.S. Sorry for grammatical errors. I'm a programmer, not a writer.

The material in this program is good. They go over it with an online video everyday during the lecture part of the day and you are given an assignment in the afternoon for a “lab”. That is the basic structure of the class. You are pretty much left to... Read More struggle through it unless you ask the TA or instructor for help. Everyone seems to go at a different pace. Some people get it easier than others of course, and once someone gets behind some people seem to stay that way. It is EXTREMELY fast paced. ***ALERT**** The week before our projects were due, our instructor missed the whole week and no-one knew why. Until someone in class spots the instagram profile posts with him at HQ in BHAM teaching another class! So basically a week of all of the students paying for an unavailable instructor to go and make Covalence a ton of money in some other classroom. That to me is poor business practices and borderline unethical. Yeah our TA was here mostly, but I didn’t pay 11k for a TA. I expect when I pay for a product to get it the entire time. In my opinion Covalence should be offering 10% off to everyone in that class since we were left without our instructor for 1/10 weeks.

I was in the very first course in the Fall of 2015, and it took me a long time to determine whether or not it was something I should do. I was already learning web development on my own, but I wanted to get up to speed quickly in order to start my career... Read More as a software developer.

It was around this time that I discovered Covalence, and I vetted them as best as I could at the time (I didn't have the luxury of student reviews that all of you do!). After meeting with several prospective students and the instructor, I finally came to the conclusion to take the course, and I am very glad that I did as it has completely changed my life and its trajectory.

The coursework – while not extremely rigorous in nature – was very, very fast-paced, and so you may find yourself falling behind. That's normal and to be expected. It's a bootcamp, after all. Treat it as such from the beginning, and you'll get much more out of the course. Do your best; focus on understanding what you're learning and why. There will be a moment where things start to click, and it becomes much easier thereafter.

Since I was a part of the first course, there was a learning curve for both students and instructors, but there have been significant and beneficial changes to the curriculum infrastructure that make this bootcamp an even better investment in yourself. With that being said, that's how you should view the course. It's an investment in yourself - no one will be holding your hand through job interviews, so it's up to you to put the time, energy, and effort in to make the most of this opportunity while you're in the course. Moreover, use the opportunity to network with people as much as possible; you never know when a simple introduction will lead to a job offer or business venture.

I was very fortunate to secure a job as a front-end engineer soon after graduating, and the opportunities that have come from my involvement in Covalence continue to astound me.

I highly recommend this course, and I wish those involved nothing but the best. Happy coding, everyone.

I left the structural engineering field and took the training offered through Covalence. I'll say that Covalence doesn't make you a developer just by virtue of the fact that you finished the class, but it does give you some base skills to get in the door.... Read More