Epicodus

I knew very little of the programming world before I attended Epicodus. In fact, I knew nothing at all.
I was a poker dealer in Montana for 10 years and realized that my career path had no future. I have a child and I own a house so I needed something... Read More more secure for my family. I was soon scouring the internet for code schools that would be affordable and worth it to spend that much time away from home. I came across http://bookertrex.tumblr.com/ and I was convinced after reading her blog about her experience with Epicodus. Next thing I know I'm standing in front of 64 other kids that all shared the same goal... All I can say is that it's very difficult coming from no programming background. Difficult, but doable. Try hard to keep up with the day to day projects, absolutely do the homework every night and no matter how you feel or if things aren't making sense, just keep at it and it will click at some point. Stay positive and and have fun and you should have no troubles. Oh and sleep sometimes too.

I graduated from Epicodus earlier this year, and it was a wonderful, positive experience.

I went into the course with minimal knowledge of programming, and came out with the confidence to teach myself anything. The curriculum lays a good groundwork to... Read More start from, and the environment is very collaborative and supportive.

My favorite thing about Epicodus is the staff. Michael really cares about the students and the mission of Epicodus, and the teachers were absolutely wonderful. I would definitely do the whole experience over again if I could.

I will always consider my time at Epicodus to have been a key turning-point in my life. I drove alone in Winter across the country, from Baltimore, Maryland to Portland, Oregon, because Epicodus was one of the few schools who had a payment deferment program... Read More for students who couldn't afford to pay upfront, which I really needed in order to even be able to attend. I actually couldn't even afford the gas money to get there; I'm blessed to have generous friends who sponsored my trip on GoFundMe. Web development and art are two subjects I'd always been interested in, but also considered myself not good enough, or smart enough, or privileged enough to pursue 'seriously', and limited myself to just doing work with them as a hobby.

I worried constantly that I still would never be good enough, even after I was accepted and started the program at Epicodus. Thankfully, I was quickly overwhelmed by how welcoming and engaging Michael, the director, and the rest of the staff and teachers were. They took a very positive, progressive approach, and strongly discouraged any negative talk - including negative self-talk. I have PTSD, severe anxiety, and morbid depression, and I'm endlessly grateful for the positive, empathetic, and inclusive support that the educators at Epicodus provided to me. Sometimes the stress and anxiety would get overwhelming and trigger migraines, but the classes are set up in such a way that you can access everything online, and Michael and my teachers were very understanding and flexible in allowing me to work from home when I had especially challenging days.

The classwork and program itself was excellent. Michael takes great pains to listen to and respond to student feedback, and refine parts of the program to make them more effective. Everything for class is conducted online and organized into units that build on one another, and the materials include video lectures, video and text tutorials, and links to outside resources, which is especially great if you want to revisit certain things or get ill. Videos are also transcribed, which I especially appreciated. I'm hard of hearing and having a textual reference to refer to when I missed something was fantastic.

In the end, I of course didn't need to worry about whether I'd ever be good enough. Before I even finished the program, I had secured a job back home in Maryland, working as a web designer. I didn't even do the internship portion of the program at Epicodus - I just went straight to full-time, with-benefits work. I'm so grateful that Epicodus was able to give me the training, preparation, and above all, the self-confidence I needed to finally begin a career that I'm happy to go to everyday.

I got it into my head that I wanted to learn computer programming and so I set out to learn it on my own. This proved to be wildly difficult as I had next to no direction at all in what to learn or how to learn it. After quite a bit of time doing this,... Read More Epicodus showed up on my radar, and I am really happy that it did! The format of the class, learning by doing, was a huge attraction for me when deciding on which coding school to go to. The idea of learning day by day with a partner (pair programming) was also a really great sounding idea, and it turned out to be quite a lot of fun, too!

You will mentally taxed learning the concepts and sometimes you will feel like you just don't get it, yet. Press on! Many of the concepts will become clearer and clearer to you as time goes on. You are not alone and there is nothing wrong with you. Reach out to the staff and your fellow students, and you will do just fine. A month will pass, and you will look back at previous projects, laughing to yourself that it seemed difficult at the time. That feels great! You will make friends and encourage each other through learning, the camaraderie of the students is a really awesome social experience :)

More than just learning how to program, Epicodus placed a very strong emphasis on landing your first job in the industry. After they place you in a five week internship as part of the curriculum, the awesome staff also provide leads on companies wanting to hire new grads, job interview techniques, as well as info on the local tech communities. By taking advantage of these resources, I was able to quickly get hired at a really great company downtown with a great dev team. Highly recommended!

I had a great experience with Epicodus. I moved from out of town to attend the program and it provided a great environment for making new friends. The teachers were very helpful and always pushed students to ask meaningful questions. This formulation... Read More developed thought patterns that allowed us to grow as students from helpless to empowered. Cooperation and communication are core values of Epicodus, and the pair programming reinforces these fundamental programming skills. I can’t imagine diving into programming any other way than with a partner. Having a partner allows you to learn how to talk about programming and it also keeps you focused because you are accountable to your partner and less likely to goof off. Pairing with a different student each day diversifies your communication skills even more. These by products of pair programming were vital to the success of the program, and I wholeheartedly back Epicodus as a proponent of the method.
The space itself was very nice. Bright, high ceilings, everyone in one big room chattering about programming. It gave me energy to work everyday.
The program is also very focused on helping students get placed in internships with companies on the Portland area. They bring in a bunch of companies and you get to interview with a couple of them that you found interesting. After the internship phase ends, they continue support by helping you reach out to companies looking for jr devs.
Anyone looking to get into web development. This is the code school for you.

I worked for 7 years as a meeting planner. I had a good job with good pay, but knew it wasn't the right fit for me in the long run. I knew I wanted to go back to school for awhile, but the thought of going to class for a few years and spending loads of... Read More money for some sort of new degree was in no way appealing. Fortunately I found the Epicodus program. No one talking at you from the front of the room (yay!) - instead you are living the life of a programmer from day one, which in itself is the biggest lesson one needs to learn when starting this line of work. The growth mindset that Epicodus helps preach has helped influence multiple aspects of my life and I am grateful to have been (and still am) surrounded by the support and positive/healthy attitude from everyone affiliated with the program. The class goes by fast and moves quickly through content, and it can be mentally and physically taxing. Knowing I was doing this for myself and my future definitely helped me through, and it helped develop a frame of mind that one needs on the job. You can only learn so much in 5 months, so being able to prove your ability and mentality to learn on the job is a huge aspect that I was able to take away from this experience.

I signed up for Epicodus because I wanted to transition out of marketing roles at venture-backed startups into a more technical role.

I got just what I wanted at Epicodus.

The classroom environment was collaborative, and each day we worked in pairs solving... Read More difficult coding challenges. Our reading and video homework was completed at night or over the weekend, so we could spend valuable classroom time coding.

At the end of the class, I was contacted by an engineering-focused development shop, DevelopmentNow, for an internship opportunity. Together with two of my classmates, we worked on a Backbone.js mobile responsive client project, and we were all hired by the end of the second sprint. I was really excited to be an employed junior developer just a few weeks after class ended.

I learned more that just coding skills at Epicodus. I learned how to work on a project with multiple developers with git flow. I also learned how to make scope adjustments in projects and what the tradeoffs really would be - considering we only had a day or two to work on each project.

I'm also super impressed with the school's dedication to student diversity. As a women in tech, I really care about companies and schools like Epicodus that fully embrace minority student outreach in the tech industry.

I would recommend this school to any self-motivated person who wants to change careers with a little help from a community of fellow learners.

I signed up for Epicodus because I wanted to transition out of marketing roles at venture-backed startups into a more technical role.

I got just what I wanted at Epicodus.

The classroom environment was collaborative, and each day we worked in pairs solving... Read More difficult coding challenges. Our reading and video homework was completed at night or over the weekend, so we could spend valuable classroom time coding.

At the end of the class, I was contacted by an engineering-focused development shop, DevelopmentNow, for an internship opportunity. Together with two of my classmates, we worked on a Backbone.js mobile responsive client project, and we were all hired by the end of the second sprint. I was really excited to be an employed junior developer just a few weeks after class ended.

I learned more that just coding skills at Epicodus. I learned how to work on a project with multiple developers with git flow. I also learned how to make scope adjustments in projects and what the tradeoffs really would be - considering we only had a day or two to work on each project.

I'm also super impressed with the school's dedication to student diversity. As a women in tech, I really care about companies and schools like Epicodus that fully embrace minority student outreach in the tech industry.

I would recommend this school to any self-motivated person who wants to change careers with a little help from a community of fellow learners.

Epicodus helped me transition to a new career and offered me month of hands on experience in web development. They are always upgrading their curriculum and are passionate about providing the best education possible. Studying at Epicodus was one of the... Read More best decisions I've ever made and I would recommend it to anyone.

Epicodus offered more than any other bootcamp out there. In fact, their job-search support is nearly worth the price of admission alone.

What made Epicodus an extremely worthwhile course in my mind?
1. Time: You spend hundreds of hours coding over the duration... Read More of the class, with other people, building actual working (for the most part) apps.

2. Content: You are exposed to a variety of programming tools, and considering the timeframe, get a rather solid foundation to continue learning once school ends.

3. The internship: The last month of Epicodus is spent at an actual company, getting a sense of programming in the “real world.” The interview process for these also helps take some of the edge off for your first tech job interview.

4. The people: The staff was great and I met a ton of smart, interesting people throughout the course.

5. Career support: Post-Epicodus, we (graduates) had amazing support from the staff as we searched for real work. The plus for job-seekers: Programming talent is in short supply and high demand. Some found jobs quicker than others, but we were in regular contact with the Outreach Coordinators at Epicodus, as they passed along job leads, interview and cover letter/resume prep, and general moral support. The luxury of being able to work on code projects while they did a lot of the job search for us, was priceless.

Of course, not everything was spot on. Figuring out how to pace yourself to keep up and retain knowledge is a real challenge. During our class, they were still figuring out best practices for running Epicodus, but constantly asked for, and often implemented, student feedback. I would have liked to have had some actual group lectures/teaching to introduce new concepts.

Last, I think it’s really important to know what you want to get out of a code school like this and what your goals are after it ends, before deciding to attend. Epicodus’ application process did a good job of giving you a sense of whether you have enough patience for, and interest in coding. The rest is up to you.

Overall, I would recommend Epicodus. You’ll get out what you put into it.