DevLeague

I just graduated from the Full-Time cohort and I am SO glad that I made the decision to go to Dev League. I've wanted to learn programming for the longest time but after a couple failed attempts to learn on my own and people saying that I wasn't the "programmer... Read More type" I wasn't sure if I could make the cut. I can honestly say that I'm a Dev now. I've never met a group of instructors, founders, and TA's that were so passionate and pushed so hard for their students to succeed. There was a lot of material packed into just 12 weeks, there was never a day that was easy. It was intense but we used humor to keep things positive and make our long days together enjoyable. The instructors and even the founders have always made themselves available to the students. They actually give a shit. They won't stop until we're hired. I've spoken to friends that have gone through other bootcamps and they said that they did not get nearly as much support as we did. Dev League is bigger than a bootcamp, they are building a better future for tech in Hawaii. I give my full recommendation for Dev League and my email if anybody wants to ask me personally about my experience: jonathan.tan808@gmail.com

I highly suggest going to a reputable bootcamp if you really want the bootcamp experience over this one. The people are well intentioned, but you will basically be subject to regurgitating free online study materials and awful teenage sexual jokes from... Read More mature instructors. It weirds me out how much they push for female students given the maturity level. Once the program matures and grows I'd be able to recommend it, however in its current state it is unorganized and not a good value.

Dev League has helped to introduce opportunities that would have normally been out of reach for me. I had no prior coding experience, and before Dev League, there was nowhere in the state that could give me the necessary experience and knowledge, in a... Read More relatively short time, that would allow me to enter the tech industry. The great thing is that it did not matter where I came from, who I was, what I knew or who I knew. All that mattered was that I wanted to learn.

I participated in the part-time course, and although class was three times a week, I would go to class mostly everyday to work on projects, and also worked on it in the evenings at home. So if you really wanted to, you would be able to turn it into a full-time gig. It was fast-paced, and we covered numerous topics. At times, it did seem overwhelming. It was definitely one of the most challenging things that I have done, but the training they gave us not only to code, but to learn how to solve issues has been invaluable.

Russel, Jason, Jon, Kelli, Ray and Tony are always supportive and available for any assistance we may need. They are all well connected in the start-up community here and have introduced us to many different opportunities. It is evident that they are genuinely interested in our success, as even after completing the course, they continue to offer their guidance and expertise.

I would highly recommend Dev League for those who are serious about coding.

I was a member of the second cohort. We were a part-time program. Our cohort lasted 26 weeks. This format has many positive qualities and man not so wonderful qualities. If you are considering DevLeague my suggestion is to go for the full-time program.... Read More What you sacrifice in intermediate opportunity cost you will make up with experience and income on the back end. Maintaining a working schedule in addition to DevLeague's rigorous class and project schedule was a continual challenge. I would also add that this format does not allow participants to approach the number of classroom hours that the full-time program does so you end of getting less for your money in terms of hours of class time. But like anything you get what you put into it. The teachers were always available so you could easily make that up on your own time by going into the DevLeague space and hacking on a project and getting help.

In terms of curriculum, it was very much project focused with lecture time kept to a minimum. We focused almost exclusively on the javascript stack. We worked with every technology that is mentioned on the website. The variety of concepts, tools and applications that we used to build our projects were always leading edge and industry relevant. The curriculum directly translates into industry ready skills. Most importantly, however, you will learn that the tools are always changing and you will learn the process of continual learning. This is perhaps the underlying message of the program: never stop learning!

As far as support goes, the instructors were awesome and I view them as personal and professional mentors. They were extremely knowledgeable about the technologies. Most importantly they possess the patience and grace to work through even the most tedious of problems with a smile. Outside of class, DevLeague is an important part of the technology and startup ecosystem so you get to meet lots of interesting people doing a variety of things. My imagination of what was possible continued to expand through these interactions. This is important since the entire time you are wondering what the next step is. The team at DevLeague is always exposing you to people to help you answer this question.

As far as outcomes go, I had 3 interviews lined up within one week of class completing. I only interviewed at one place and received a soft offer. However, since I planned to continue learning I declined the remaining interviews. I have no doubt that if I stayed in Hawaii or had returned to the mainland for work, regardless, there would be plenty of opportunity as a dev. Nevertheless, my plan is to attend a data science program and I can say that without DevLeague that would never have been possible. I can tell you that during the application process to this program, they were impressed that I was able to implement solutions to the problem in node.js. Most data science is done in python and r and they were surprised to see someone use the command line to curl api's and run algorithms through a node repl. I solved the problem slowly by trial and error working my way towards the solution by testing for what works and what does not work. I'd say it was a very good example of the way DevLeague helped me learn how to tinker my way to a solution by trying different approaches to see what works. This for me was a whole new way of thinking.

DevLeague helped me certainly to develop industry ready skills. More importantly, they taught me how to reimagine my own learning process and the taught me to reimagine how I solve problems. This is what I take from the program.

I had a lot of fun doing the Dev League Full Course. It was a lot of work but I learned a lot. Prior to coming to Dev League, I had some coding experience (a minor in ICS at UH) and was looking for something that would allow me to get more projects to... Read More showcase. I learned a lot about web technologies that I never knew about and never had a chance to learn on my own. The first couple days might be slow as you just recover the same material if you've coded before but it will soon pick up and have tons of fun meeting the technology community in Hawaii and coding even more. After Dev League ended, they worked tirelessly to help promote me and get a career started in Hawaii doing what I can now do best. Coding. It may feel overwhelming but you'll come out of it a better programmer.

Dev League was an action packed adventure with closures, recursion, and Big-O. With that being said, the level of difficulty for me was set at "extremely difficult" because I had no prior programming experience, although the program was very challenging... Read More it was not impossible and I'm proud to say that I've learned more in three months than I could ever imagine. Jon, Jason, Russel, and Kelli are brilliant mentors who are always open to sharing their wealth of knowledge and experiences (especially some really cool tricks of the trade you won't find on Stack Overflow). Everyday was a new challenge to learn, conquer, and master. There were points of exhaustion, but never the feeling of being burnt out because everyday was a new discovery and some fun to be had. On week one we were tackling algorithms and Big-O complexities. Dev League is a great Ohana (family) to be apart of, it's like the mob once you're in, you're in for life and you will always have the support from your mentors and peers.

I was fortunate to have found Dev League around the time I wanted a career change from my previous job. I was always interested in web development but I lacked the guidance and was unsure of the learning resources online. Dev League offered the structure... Read More and content needed for me to gain web development skills and seek out my first job as a web developer. In the first third of the program we were introduced to basic HTML/CSS/Javascript along with computer science concepts, a lot of which I had faced in interviews so I am very grateful for the knowledge I gained. The next third of the program we jumped into various Javascript frameworks and really dived into Node.js. This is where I really got a feel for both front-end and back-end development, and how many frameworks work together to build a complete web app/site. The remaining third of the program had us working on real-world projects, one of which we created a web app for a civic awareness event. I was one of the few graduates who left Hawaii after the program, but I was given a lot of help from the founders of Dev League in terms of job leads, which I am still grateful for to this day.

Dev League has introduced to me a lot of concepts and tools needed to make a start as a junior developer. At times I felt overwhelmed by the intense nature of the program (6 days a week, 9am to 8pm) and wished I just had more time to review what I had just learned instead of diving into the next. However at the same time I gained the skills of how to learn, and I was able to pick up new skills quickly because of this. I advise anyone who may prefer a slower pace of learning to try the part-time program, but if you are willing to devote your whole life to web development for 12 weeks, I highly recommend the full-time program.

Devleague's content was good, and it seems to have become more focused and organized to where it is a more solid curriculum. Devleague was my introduction to programming, and because of this, I sometimes felt overwhelmed as to how different frameworks,... Read More libraries, and other tools abstracted computer science concepts. I did end up with a fairly solid foundation in programming, but at times I felt lost just due to the ontology of different systems that we used. I have recently seen how the curriculum is constructed through google groups and other mediums, and it seems that the program has become much more streamlined. This will benefit future cohorts in not only learning computer science and programming concepts, but also in their ability to grok new materials.