DigitalCrafts

If you’ve spent a good amount of time preparing for a coding bootcamp, and know exactly what you’re wanting to get out of it, then don’t think twice about signing up. Put both feet in and you won’t regret your decision. Realize that nearly any bootcamp... Read More across the country will expose you to similar technologies and that you’ll only scratch the surface of each topic. There's only so much you can cover in 3-4 months. What you’re mainly getting is the structure of everyday practice in a collaborative, supportive, and social environment.

There were times during the program that I questioned my decision of enrolling and what value I was actually getting out of it. Most if not all that we learn is available to us online for free, but the momentum to keep going is not. Sometimes that’s all that I needed to continue pushing through roadblocks. Additionally, the opportunity to work with other classmates on projects was a valuable experience that is difficult achieve through the self-taught path.

It can’t be stressed enough that preparation before enrolling will only multiply what you get out of the program. Additionally, don’t expect anyone to hold your hand. The lecture is barely 2-3 hours and the rest of the day you’re primarily on your own. Learning to become independent is only going to make you a stronger developer. Your level of success is strictly determined by the amount of hard work you put into it.

Lastly, a lot of prospective students I met were concerned that they didn’t have the background appropriate for this sort of a program. I studied Anthropology & Philosophy as my undergraduate degree which has no relation to software development whatsoever. However, what every successful student at DigitalCrafts has in common is the willingness and determination to work hard and succeed.

No review is complete without some feedback on the program:

• I would make the pre-course work more challenging, and use the first month to cover more in-depth topics instead of covering the same material as pre-course work. The first three weeks were sort of redundant after having prepared for this program.
• Incorporate daily algorithm toy problems. I believe this is covered by the CS elective, but it would still be good to warm up before the day starts with a short toy problem sprint. This would also make a great opportunity for pair programming.
• Offer more electives that focus on UI/UX, and spend more time on GitHub, and launching/hosting our projects.
• Help students establish coding best practices. Writing clean code is something prospective employers will look for in a candidate, so knowing the good and the bad of clean code early on would have been helpful.
• Offer more diverse assignments. The majority of what we practiced building were to-do lists.
• Consider changing ‘Career Week’ to ‘Career Days’ that are incorporated throughout the program. This would give us more time to polish our resumes, portfolios, etc. throughout the entire program instead of cramming it all into one week.
• Lastly, I would encourage the instructor to be more involved in the students success. The instructor checked in with us during the first few weeks during lab hours, but throughout the rest of the program they were just made available to students for questions following lecture. I think there's a lot more to gain from having an instructor there full-time. Learn and connect with your students to understand who they are and what their professional goals are.

I have found the DigitalCrafts bootcamp to be a powerfully positive experience. You will learn quite a lot in short time span. In addition to the teachings, DC offers a lot of job support and you can tell they really care about your success as a software... Read More developer.

My time at DigitalCrafts was mostly interesting and fun. There were a lot of hurdles and and bumps in the road along the way but the experience gained was worth it. The curriculum is fast paced and you will have to put in a lot of hard work in order to... Read More succeed. Make sure you do the prework! There is a reason calls to do the prework is written in a lot of the reviews. Overall, my time at DigitalCrafts helped me gain friendships with my classmates and set the foundation for a career in web development.

The job support is decent. They will review your resume and portfolio along with other facets of your online presence and give you helpful tips so that you can maximize your exposure to potential employers. However, the Houston area isn’t as in demand as other places with tech job markets. If you are willing to relocate you will have an advantage in possibly finding a job sooner so it is something to consider before starting the course.

In closing, I would highly recommend DigitalCrafts as a way to launch your career as a Developer. Jason is easy to talk to and my instructor Azam has many years of experience and will give a lot of helpful tips on how to prepare better for the job search as well as teaching the different technologies and languages.

DigitalCrafts was a fantastic experience from the get go. One of the things I liked the most about them was their communication and transparency. From the moment I applied, Jason (Campus Director) was always very accesible to answer questions and quick... Read More to respond to my phone calls or emails. I also liked how upfront he was about the program. I never felt like he was sugar coating or overselling anything about it, or that he was looking to just "fill seats". There was a genuine effort to screen potential students out that were not the correct fit, and find ones that understood the most important thing about this or any bootcamp. You will only get out of it what you put in, and because of that my class was filled with like minded and hard working students, which was just as invaluable as anything else DigitalCrafts offered.

I came to DigitalCrafts in November 2017, having quit my job of two years as an IT Admin, and having saved up some money to support myself while I attended. I had a working knowledge of HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Python, but not a very clear picture of... Read More what I needed to learn next, or a road-map that would get me where I was going. Here I am, and it's March 2018, almost a week after graduation. I am in no way a master of the skills I've learned so far, but I've learned that I *can* accomplish what I set out to do, and that I can rely on my foundational knowledge, my devotion to my craft, and my ability to learn. I've proved to myself that I can be a developer through this class.

That alone is worth quite a bit of money - the identity shift that occurred for me. On top of that, though, I am now quite proficient in quite a few frameworks, and can safely say that I can develop in React and Node/Express with back-end databases, to create truly full-stack apps that I can be proud of. I am also ready and excited to learn more!

For those that crave a good structure in learning, and benefit greatly from a classroom setting where they can be surrounded by others in the same struggle, this course is for you. Why DigitalCrafts over the others? I'd say it's the level of transparency, communication, and attitude that the campus directors and instructors provided. These are a remarkably intelligent and compassionate group of people, and the support and advice I received was beyond what I was expecting. I feel as if the career-readiness program was all there in its ability to critique your portfolio, projects, cover letter, and resume, but nothing can truly make up for the effort that you yourself will put into breaking through to a job.

Before attending, you should consider if you are ready to devote more than a full-time commitment to this course. That's what it takes. You should be trying to work on finishing the remainder part of the assignment you couldn't complete, and then you should be pushing that work to GitHub daily; you should be attending meet-ups (no, really, you should DEFINITELY do this); and, you should already be studying for interviews on Day One. That will get your foot in the door at nearly any company you desire, and likely you'll be able to land a job right out of the gates. Try your best to give this course everything that it recommends you do as a task, and it will pay off - don't take the good advice for granted.

Do some cost analysis for yourself of dollars per day you're spending on this course, and make sure you're getting the learning from each day that that amount deserves. It's a little chunk of change, isn't it? But trust me, it's worth it. I'm feeling really excited about the future, and I made it happen because of my hard work! That's something to be proud of by itself, and the fact that it's going to help me get a job that will practically pay me back for the course is something I don't take lightly. Do some good research, talk to Jason, and be completely open with him - he will help you to understand how to approach attending this course. Yes, you can do it. And it'll be worth it.

Digital Crafts was one of the best decisions I've made in my life. They really care about your success in this field and they help you every step of the way. Although you can find alot of the information online I think that with the experience from the... Read More Digital Crafts team they are able to give you that extra leg up and an abilty to go out and learn more on your own. Im still looking for a job but with my knowledge now I feel confident enough to land a postion and continue my growth as a software developer. Also Azam is an awsome teacher if you are planning on going there definitely get Azam as your teacher you will learn so much.

I've started off with very little experience in web development. With only the basics of HTML, CSS, and a bit of JS. Now, I'm on my way to creating my own application to launch with what I've learned so far! Apart from what I've learned in the cohort,... Read More DigitalCrafts has made it easy to dive into new technologies and encourages to always continue in learning something new. For example, I've picked up on Apollo and GraphQL on my own during the cohort. What assisted me in easily understanding these two is what was first taught to me by my instructor Azam and that's learning the REST protocol along with creating my very own database using PostgreSQL. Azam has made it very clear to understand the lecture of the day while leaving helpful comments for his students to review over, and a big round of applause to for the continuous assistance in Job Employment while attending the cohort which was accessible to every student to have an equal opportunity to apply to.

If you're interested in learning what it means to be a full stack web developer and start creating amazing apps then I recommend DigitalCrafts to help with paving the way!

I just graduated from DigitalCrafts about a week ago. While I have taken classes on and off, I have no college degree, and have worked in the restaurant industry for around five years. I wanted to do something more with my life and after some free online... Read More classes, programming seemed like a great direction. I was tired of taking college classes that didn't interest me just for required credits, so after doing some research, a bootcamp looked like a great alternative.

Looking at the website and during the application process, I came in thinking I would be learning a lot of python, since I had taught myself some and found it interesting. During an interview with the team, they mentioned python is just used to introduce some core programming concepts. We spent two weeks in python, then moved to javascript the remainder of the bootcamp. This is a web development course, so make sure that is what you are interested in.

I also took the comptuer science elective course, which I think was very important knowledge to know in general, but not super applicable to writing code in javascript. After graduation, you could be getting a job writing in languages other than javascript so having the computer science knowledge will be a good start.

DigitalCrafts was a great experience all around. My instructor, Chris Aquino, is not only extremely knowledgable about the material, but is a wonderful teacher, which can be more important at times. The student services and operations teams were always there to make sure I was productive and comfortable, and constantly giving me opportunities to connect more with the coding community and potential employers. I feel extremely confident about finding a job that I can create a career out of.

DigitalCrafts was a great experience for me overall. I was a true beginner when it came to coding and computer science, I started coding about 2-3 months before the first day of class. Those 2-3 months I felt like I had learned a solid amount through... Read More self teaching, but it was absolutely nothing compared to the amount of knowledge I have gained through this four month course. Paul who was the teacher for our cohort did a fantastic job and is very knowledgable in all of the topics covered and more and there wasn't a single problem that I had that he could not solve. That is where I believe the value of the class truly lies. When you are trying to self teach yourself coding (especially if you're a true beginner), then you will inevitably run into many problems and get stuck often. While you could try for hours to push through the problems, sometimes you just won't be able to figure out the problem. Having someone who can clearly explain to you what the problem and solution is really does help a lot and I feel like that was very beneficial to accelerate the learning process. Also, having a structured course outline that covers many of the skills that are in demand in the job market was great too, as I would have been pretty lost trying to learn these topics on my own and may have take well over a year to do it on my own. I think DigitalCrafts is an exceptional school and in my opinion the best investment I have made in my life up to this point and I am feeling great about what the future holds for me with my newly gained skills.

Having previously worked in the banking and tech industries for many years, I felt jaded and stagnant with the career growth. I held some discussions with people around me and after some thorough introspection I decided to take a leap of faith and joined... Read More DigitalCrafts.

Before joining DigitalCrafts, my skill set was only limited to knowing HTML and some CSS and I was quite worried if I would be able to cope and keep up with the extensive nature of the curriculum crammed into a period of 16 weeks. Now that I look back on the last 4 months, I can feel nothing but happy at my decision. As I enter the final days of the course, I am excited and confident about my skills and what lies ahead for me.

The curriculum is designed to take a group of students with varied backgrounds and skill levels, and bring them all to a similar level of knowledge and understanding. Of course, the final outcome for each of the students depend, besides other factors, on their level of motivation, amount of hard work they are willing to put in and how effectively they utilize the tools and help available to them.

Due to the technical nature of the topics that are covered in such a class, it is imperative that the instructor kept it lively and interactive or they risk losing the audience (students). Our instructor, Paul, has been one of the best teachers I have come across in my life. I found his method of teaching to be highly effective and helpful. I was very impressed with his depth of knowledge of not only the material being taught but as well his ability to relate the course content with real life examples and anecdotes. His love for pizza, Pink Panther, cats, funny GIFs and all-things-nerdy made the whole journey so much easier and provided the much needed comic-relief in times of stress and frustration.

Time for some minor quibbles. The only thing I felt throughout the course was that the quality of content-slides and study material could be improved. While they are okay to follow during the lectures, they are not very helpful once you’re on your own and trying to revise or understand a particular topic. A video-recording of the lecture sessions will also go a long way in helping students to revise the course content over the weekends.

As a word of advice for those who are in the process of deciding or about to start life as a developer, I can not stress enough on the importance of taking the preparatory course work seriously. Paying special attention to JavaScript and Python before starting the course is extremely beneficial once classes begin. Otherwise you risk playing catch up all throughout the course because the course content is quite extensive fast paced. There will also be periods where self-doubt and uncertainty are bound to creep in and when you’ll feel that you’re not good enough. It is important that you regain your focus and keep working through these periods.