DigitalCrafts

I attended DigitalCrafts' Sept 2018 - Jan 2019 Full-stack Immersive cohort in Atlanta, and it was the best career decision I could have made. After 20+ years in the telecom vendor industry, I was hungry for a career change. I dabbled for a couple of years... Read More with numerous online resources (edX, Coursera, Udemy, FreeCodeCamp, etc) but finally recognized I needed to attend a bootcamp with a strong, full-stack curriculum if I was going to feel confident enough to change jobs.

After researching several Atlanta-area in-person camps, as well as a few online options, I settled on DigitalCrafts because:
- the cost was reasonable compared to other in-person options,
- the Atlanta Tech Village (ATV) location was amazing and right in the heart of one of Atlanta's booming tech districts,
- the staff was incredibly friendly and helpful,
- the reviews from former students, as well as what I could see in their LinkedIn and GitHub accounts, were amazing, and
- the full-stack curriculum was heavily focused on JavaScript, and included very current topics such as React and AWS

All of the reasons that I chose DigitalCrafts proved to be true, and I never regretted my decision to attend. Being 47 years old, I was nervous that I would not fit in with the other students, most of whom where in their 20s and early 30s, but that was never an issue. There is a real sense of community, both inside the classroom, and throughout the ATV facility which is also home to many tech start-up companies. At the free lunch ATV provides on Fridays, you can sit with your fellow students, or grab a seat with a stranger and listen to them practice their elevator pitch for their startup (and maybe even get a job offer).

The reviews here are full of compliments about the instructors, and I whole-heartedly agree, so I won't repeat how amazing they are. DigitalCrafts does an excellent job finding experienced and knowledgeable people who know how to teach to serve as their instructors. Each cohort has a lead instructor and one or two teaching assistants and they all go above and beyond, frequently staying well after class and providing regular office hours to offer any extra help as needed. You not only learn how to be a full stack developer (with HTML, CSS, JS, and React on the front end, and Node, Express, PostgreSQL on the backend), but you also learn the important skill of deploying what you build on AWS cloud servers, which comes in handy when you want to quickly show an interviewer what you have created.

Lastly, the career services at DC exceeded my expectations. They stop short of guaranteeing you a job, but they do everything possible to put you in a position to succeed in your job search. There are frequent sessions where the importance of resumes, portfolios, GitHub, and LinkedIn are discussed, and the DC career services team works with you to build and improve each of them. Interviewing advice is offered regularly and you get to do a mock interview to practice your interview skills. We took a class trip to the office of a local web dev shop to see firsthand how their developers work in an agile team environment, and there were several guest speakers who came in later in the cohort to talk about job search and career advice for new developers. This all paid off for me (and several other classmates) as I had a successful interview, which led to a job offer during the final week of my cohort.

I am now enjoying the one week break from the end of my cohort to my first day at work as I start my new career as a software developer. I will be forever grateful to DigitalCrafts for helping to make that possible.

I am a former teacher and was looking to attend a coding bootcamp. I did some research of the available classes in Houston and found that DigitalCrafts had high ratings and success stories. I now know why they have such high ratings! I had Veronica as... Read More a teacher and it was an absolute blast. I didn't realize software development could be so fun!

This class is most definitely challenging, but it's rewarding. If you are thinking about signing up, do it. You won't be disappointed. Take the pre-work very seriously and be ready to work hard and overcome many challenges!

Earlier this year I decided to quit my job and attend the Full Stack Immersive Program at DigitalCrafts. I had no prior coding experience, so I was definitely nervous about understanding the material and keeping up with the pace.

The four months were... Read More definitely a roller coaster ride. There were days that I would quickly grasp concepts and then there were days where I struggled to put code on the screen. And as easy as it was to second guess my decision on those days that I struggled, I saw my struggles as a sign that I was learning and challenging myself. I wouldn't be gaining anything if everything was easy. Learning fundamentals is stressed throughout the course instead of introducing the easier shortcuts right away. The curriculum is robust, so you get exposure to different areas of full stack development. The projects are awesome because they allow you to go through sprint-like scenarios that you may encounter in a job setting. The projects also allow you to own the project from beginning to end. You are coming up with the project idea, then you design and develop your project, and then you are able to deploy it for the world to see! The project weeks were easily the most exciting parts of this course!

I truly enjoyed my time at DigitalCrafts. There is a reason why they are rated so highly. The staff was always supportive and there to help in any way they could. Our instructor, Jonathan, was so passionate about helping our class not only learn to code, but to code well. He emphasized the better and more conventional ways to do things and he encouraged us to avoid improper use of code. Jonathan had over a decade of experience but he was able to break down concepts and clearly explain them so that those of us with no coding background could understand. I feel well-prepared for my career change and I could not be happier with my experience! I definitely recommend this program to anyone looking to make the leap into web development!

When you enter the ATV location - where DigitalCrafts is located, you feel an eagerness budding. It has a fresh, well managed, and holistic feeling to it. By holistic, I mean ATV has a fully stocked kitchen, nap rooms, a gym, networking events, free (limited)... Read More monthly massages and open spaces attend to all of a member's needs. DigitalCrafts itself has a very holistic approach to a coding school: the paradigm of career - knowledge - support are captured well. Their teacher's assistants (referred to as developers in residence, or DIR for short) weave between students desks, to make themselves available for any student that is stuck, or needs clarification. The program director has a permanent presence at DigitalCrafts, and is incredibly accessible for all your concerns.

The career week gives ample time to focus on what the school emphasizes for gaining employment: writing a resume (with a full grade and broken down review) linkedin account, portfolio website, and interview etiquette - including this week is a mock interview. Also for the duration of the course, there are job related skills that are worked into the curriculum: the use of git (github in particular) for collaboration, pair-programming, agile-style stand-ups, test-driven development, AWS and deployment.

I researched bootcamps for a several years before choosing DigitalCrafts, and with its CIRR report (see below for more detail), comparatively high amount of instruction hours, raving reviews, and offer of in-demand programming languages taught in their curriculum, I chose DigitalCrafts.

The curriculum is comprehensive and most current for fullstack development. A student begins at DigitalCrafts learning command line (useful for any developer in debugging, running servers, accessing files/directories), then quickly moves onto Python, a robust back-end language that is used as an introduction to programming language syntax that can be translated to the languages later used in the curriculum. Then you begin what you spend the remainder of the course on: JavaScript and all of its many forms (frontend, backend (Node), React, Redux).There are projects interlaced throughout the program, that give a student the opportunity to demonstrate their prowess of what they have just learned. Along with projects, there are in-class exercises that have specific requirements and that as a class, you progress through the steps together that add complexity to that exercise, or application.  Don't confuse this with a starter kit, or a code along. It's neither, it's a bit of demonstration and instruction, with class time to execute that feature. This is where the beauty of coding lies: stumbling and error messages are where you’ll build up your repertoire in debugging abilities. These debugging abilities give you insight on the fundamentals of how that programming language works. I encourage you to embrace the struggle long enough to precisely understand where your problem exists and then ask for help from your instructor or DIRs.

The instructor I had was wonderfully meticulous, and taught us best practice in coding protocol. He redirected those of us who drifted off-road of the best practice coding, with grace and patience. His methodology of teaching was to cause a lot of active learning, a proponent of existing in a constant level of struggle to facilitate learning. What this meant is the program wasn’t easy, but my curiosity couldn’t have been more piqued by what I was being exposed to. He provided enough background information to let independent coding commence, but not enough to avoid subsisting in that level of struggle that the instructor favored.

This course brings with it a kinship to the classmates you struggled along side of during the 4 month long course, which for me wasn’t recognizable until the last few days together.

Speaking of the other classmates, I’ve witnessed classmates earn jobs before the graduation of our cohort, securing salaries that the report on Council on Integrity in Results Reporting lures you into the program with. The promise of a job isn’t a lie, but it is a result of networking and job applications. On their slack channel, DigitalCrafts (DC) publishes almost on a daily basis job prospects that you either apply directly to, or submit your resume to DC’s career counselor for consideration.

This experience has felt like it has been life-altering, but that’s also dependent on my commitment to continue with a forward momentum into this industry - by studying, active networking, and consistency in submitting job applications.

I have no regrets, and encourage you to do an on-line web development course to assess your true interest. If your interest persists after the on-line course, sign up for DigitalCrafts’ bootcamp.

My approach to learning coding was originally to learn content through online platforms like Coursera and Udemy while practicing on freeCodeCamp. I spent about half a year at it, and learned quite a bit, but I hit a point where I knew that to keep myself... Read More motivated I would need to find a classroom setting where I would have a structured environment to learn.

My background is that I have always been strong in math. I took an AP Computer Science course over 15 years ago and did well in that, but pursued Psychology in college and taught elementary school for six years before deciding to pursue coding again.

I gained a lot out of DigitalCrafts. The curriculum is fast-paced and even the material that I thought I had already learned was presented in a new light. I learned to think critically about not just how to program, but how to program well - what design patterns were elegant and what patterns should be avoided due to inefficiency or likelihood to cause bugs. The curriculum was geared towards developing a strong foundation of skills and then challenging students to figure out the more advanced tooling in teams.

The team projects were both difficult and enlightening. Working in groups, we learned both how to use tools to manage project collaboration, something you just don't learn on your own, and explored techniques and technologies that were not directly taught in class. In a field where new technologies are being developed all the time, developers must adapt and be ready to learn and implement them to stay relevant in the field.

We built full-stack applications with multiple features, having to set up database tables, backend routes, and front-end dynamic interfaces for each feature. This incremental development across the stack reinforced the skills learned in class. In addition, we built what we wanted to build, so we repeated implementations of technologies on intrinsically motivating projects, while learning new things required for each additional feature. I cannot think of a better way to learn.

The instructor was personable, dynamic, and interesting. The class environment was supportive and positive. The staff was full of friendly, helpful people.

I highly recommend this program.

I could not string together words in an efficient enough way to accurately describe how amazing my experience was at DigitalCrafts. Every step of the cohort was an amazing experience. Each member of the staff genuinely cared about the success of each... Read More and every student. Zakia and Liz work especially hard to make sure students are content and successful throughout the cohort.

My instructor was Johnathan and I cannot speak high enough about his skills as a teacher. He is a true genius and brings a great energy and heightened level of charisma to all of his lectures. He placed importance on learning the basics and foundations of programming - we would often learn stuff the 'hard' way first before moving on to material that better solves the problem at hand. This way we knew exactly what was going on behind the scenes when we were using certain functions in our programming.

Johnathan and our DIR's Rachel and Ben were all amazing - they were always eager to help someone through an issue, but they would never provide the answer. They would make efforts to guide the student towards to solution so the student could truly have that, "AHA!" moment when they understand the problem and the solution.

I attended college for 4 years and I can honestly say that I learned more in this immersive cohort than I did when I was at college, that is because I was learning entirely new languages and problem solving skills that were mostly foreign to me.

I had already had a foundation in CSS, JavaScript and HTML - but anything related to the backend, databases or React was entirely foreign to me. I walked away from the program able to make a fully functional app that I believe in, am passionate about and could garner investment from the right crowd.

If you are considering a bootcamp in the Atlanta or Houston area - I would tell you not to look any farther than DigitalCrafts. They are very good at what they do.

About five months ago, I made the craziest decision of my life: to quit my full-time job, move states, and join DigitalCrafts, with no background in technology. Now that I'm finished and looking back, I can confidently say it was the best decision I've... Read More ever made. Everyone at DigitalCrafts, from the students, staff, and instructors created the best, most optimized environment for learning. DigitalCrafts gave me access to tons of resources, from resume and portfolio guidance, mock interviews, and 480 hours of instruction, but by far the best thing they ever gave me was the empowerment to learn and try new things, things I was always too scared to try. The projects and knowledge I've learned through this bootcamp will undoubtedly allow me to bring value to any future workplace, and the relationships I've built with my fellow students will last a lifetime. I can't recommend DigitalCrafts enough, and if you're on the fence: Just do it. Take the leap. DigitalCrafts will do everything in their power to ensure your success.

Before attending DigitalCrafts, I was learning and coding in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript and not sure what step I should take to start being able to develop professional websites for startups and corporations. I found that DigitalCrafts had great reviews... Read More and decided to join and don't regret it in the slightest! Although DigitalCrafts starts off with basic fundamentals and is very beginner-friendly, most students seemed like they were at an equal skill level once we started backend technologies. For our final projects, many startups and agencies within the office building came in to pitch ideas and let us work directly with them to gain experence working with businesses/clients.

Veronica was an amazing instructor and was always able to teach complicated topics in a simple, understandable way, and the TAs were always there to help students with whatever problems we would face during our projects and homework. Veronica always made sure all of us were understanding what we were studying and made it fun. One of the TAs(James) even came to the school on a Saturday to help me and two others on issues we were facing on our projects and stayed till 8:30pm coding with us and making sure we understood the concepts we were struggling with.

I would definitely recommend DigitalCrafts for both begineers and CS majors and suggest to future students to do as much of the prework as possible so that once you're in class, you can spend more time trying to understand the more complex topics rather than struggling with the basics.

When I decided to make a change of career to Software Developer I was a little afraid I was gonna be really lost because I had no coding experience, but after doing a little research I found Digital Crafts, which had really great reviews and everyone... Read More said the program was amazing, so I decided to do it. Today I'm so happy I found it and I'm so happy with my decision to do it because it really is one of the best experiences in my life.

The amount of things you learn in four months is crazy (good crazy). It takes a lot of commitment, work and dedication to learn everything but everyone is so helpful and always willing to help you with everything. The instructors are amazing, the program is amazing, all the digitalCrafts team are amazing and friendly, so for everyone who is thinking about going for a change and are not so sure to just go for it because you have no experience or very little experience, my advice to you is to just go for it and go with digitalCrafts, you will not regret it and personally, i'm really impressed about where I am now, and where I was four months ago.

PS: The pre-work is really helpful to not be lost the first days if you're really new to coding; and if you're not its a good practice, so do it. :)

I'll start with the good stuff:

This course is the best investment of both my time and my money that I've made in my career. If you've been teaching yourself code through tutorials and books, but are having a tough time pulling all those elements together... Read More to build projects from scratch, DigitalCrafts will get you there. You just have to be willing to put in the work.

The technologies taught here are extremely relevant in today's development landscape, and there are many high-paying roles where you can solve interesting problems with the skills you'll learn in this course. I think you also get a good survey of the differences between back-end and front-end development, so you can make an educated decision about which to specialize in. Or, you can be indecisive like me and try to be both ¯_(ツ)_/¯

The instructors were another big positive here. Lachlan and Adam are both extremely knowledgeable, and have each carved out great tech careers. Folks that are lucky enough to find a technical mentor have a huge leg-up in teaching themselves to code. Not everyone has access to a mentor, so having these two industry experts to ask questions to and learn from for 6 months was a huge part of the value of this course.

I'd also say the folks leading DigitalCrafts are very open to feedback. We saw quite a few changes made on the fly based on feedback from students, and I've already heard some great ways they're improving future cohort's courses based on our experience.

Finally, the structure of a classroom environment and a cohort of peers all learning and struggling with the material alongside you really helps. When you try to teach yourself watching YouTube tutorials and you don't understand something, there's not much you can do other than find another one or keep re-watching until you understand it. When you are in a classroom and you don't get something, it's likely there are other classmates that don't get it either. The instructors are pretty good about checking for understanding, and can find another way to explain the topic until everyone's on the same page.

The less-than-great:

We started things off with a Programming Fundamentals section, which is an excellent place to start. However, it was taught in Python, which we never used after that intro. DigitalCrafts heard our feedback loud and clear on that, and I have heard they're just going to teach this section in JavaScript (the primary language used throughout the course) for future cohorts.

I'd offer the same critique as the Python section for the jQuery sections. Though it's still useful, jQuery is pretty dated, and we replace it with React later in the course. I think teaching the DOM manipulation stuff in vanilla JavaScript would be a better use of that time, and build familiariity with the language earlier on.

I don't count this as a "negative", as it's not part of what the course sells itself as, but Computer Science fundamentals like algorithms and data structures are not covered in the course. Learning these makes you much stronger in tech interviews, so I'd recommend taking the more CS-themed electives as they become available, and spending a lot of time becoming practicing these kinds of problems on leetcode.com or codewars.com.