Haiku Academy

This review is somewhat lengthy due to a lot unfolding during my time at the Tortuga Coders bootcamp on Koh Samui. Below follows my best recollection of events as truthfully and objectively as I can muster. Suffice to say there is a lot more negative... Read More than positive so I will begin with the good parts.

I was part of the 3rd batch of students to attend this bootcamp, starting on August 13th 2019.
My partner accompanied me during my attendance staying in the provided accommodation (we opted for a private bungalow). The accommodations were basic but sufficient and I have no complaints about them.

Course material and tuition started off on a good note with general quality being high but fell off after moving beyond the basics. Advanced concepts were not as well explained and tution/attention lulled during the middle of the course. After feedback from several of the students the teacher/founder corrected course and started putting in more effort and the course quality subsequently improved. Overall content of the course was good, covering the full range of technologies and skills to develop a modern web application and if none of the following drama had occurred would warrant a reasonable review. I would go as far to say that the course is good value for money. It isn’t the best by any means but it’s substantially cheaper than other options and that alone made it worthwhile for me in addition to not needing a visa as a Thai national.

The other students were the highlight, I made some great friends and generally enjoyed everyone's company throughout the 8 weeks I spent on Samui.

However that concludes the good things I have to say about the course.

The drama started a few weeks into the course when immigration officers entered the classroom. They demanded copies of everyone's passports and interrogated a number of the students. The course founders and their Thai speaking staff member were present. Unfortunately neither the founders nor the Thai staff member rendered any assistance to the students, opting to hide away in the corner of the classroom while 2 of the students were extorted for fines for violation of Thailand's TM30 reporting law. This law requires landlords to report the stay of aliens (foreigners) within 24 hours. This should have been handled by Tortuga Coders or the respective owners of the properties they lease on behalf of the students. I attempted to assist being a native Thai speaker but at the time I wasn’t aware of this law and as a Thai citizen I have minimal interaction with and understanding of Thai immigration law. The poor handling of this event contributed to one of the affected students choosing to depart the course early.
Clearly this should have been something the course administrators should have handled and I was quite frustrated in being the only one that tried to help at all despite being only a student myself.

Following this a subset of the students along with the course founders and Thai employee attended the Full Moon Party on Koh Tao. I chose not to attend for personal reasons instead opting to return to my home in Bangkok for the weekend and as such have minimal information on what unfolded there. Upon my return the Thai employee had been fired as a result of events that occured that weekend.

I only go into detail about these events as they were mentioned in two previous reviews of this bootcamp posted by someone else on this site that have since been deleted. The reviews contained defamatory and potentially libelous statements about the legality of the Tortuga Coders bootcamp and were rightfully removed. I don’t condone such behavior and think the correct decision was made in relation to their removal. Whether there is merit to those claims or not doesn’t change the fact that this isn’t the appropriate forum to raise those concerns.

These reviews are the culmination of the drama and the raison d'etre for authoring this review.

Upon discovering the first of these reviews the course founder brought up the review in the class after it’s deletion, clearly suspecting one of the current students as being the author and adamantly defending his business legality. Going as far to say if you don’t want to be here then leave (paraphrased to be much more polite). On it’s own this would have been unprofessional but not entirely unwarranted, one can understand his frustration. The events described above were alluded to in the review and would seem to indicate someone with first or at least second hand knowledge of this batch of students experience at the course had written it.

However no sooner as this had occurred it was replaced by another review by clearly the same person that simply restated the same content, it too was promptly removed.

I was obviously aware of this as were the rest of the students and there was quite some sleuthing going on trying to find the real author.

Come Monday morning the course founder arrived outside our accommodation and accused me of being the author of the reviews, stating that he was sure it was me and that I had 1 hour to pack my things and leave. I was upset and my partner came outside to try and reason with him but he refused to even converse with him. At no point did he offer any evidence or allow me to defend myself in any way. Figuring we had no other options we simply packed our things, settled with the landlord and filed a police report recording our side of the story before departing Koh Samui.

Now it’s understandable that he would be angry at someone with a seemingly personal vendetta against him attempting to attack his business and livelihood but that in no way excuses his behaviour here. It was deeply upsetting and humiliating to be treated this way, being falsely accused is one thing, to also need to depart without any notice was doubly awful.

Regardless of what reasons he had to suspect me there was no proof (and couldn’t have been any, I didn’t write the reviews). While he was probably within his rights to terminate our agreement (it doesn’t have any protection for students in it) it was clearly a move motivated only by anger and revenge - which seemed to have blinded him sufficiently that any target would do. Not only that but the reviews contained allegations and statements easily proved false like the location of the business registration etc which can be found online via the Thai business registry. Such mistakes I never would have made and would have conferred to him if he had bothered to converse with me before passing summary judgment and removing me from the course.

I had my fair share of constructive criticism to level at the course but harboured no ill will towards him or his business until this occured and most likely would have opted to either provide my feedback privately or in a balanced review.

So while I would have liked to write something much more neutral that offered a reasonable recount of course and it’s prospective value my hand was forced by the founders behaviour.

I can’t in good conscience recommend this bootcamp to anyone.

Before I attended this bootcamp, I have no idea what

This bootcamp is very good for teaching you how to build a web application full circle. The content is loaded with material with a small enough class size it feels as if your learning with your friends. Tony is very very knowledgeable and will push you... Read More to work past your boundaries. At times you can feel overwhelmed but it is normal as the course progresses the overall picture becomes clearer. I would definetly reccomend this course to a friend. Many of the things we learned are exactly what the job market is asking for experience in. All in all good value for money plus the opportunity to experience a different culture and eat delicious food while your doing it!

I was attending the course from June - August. I'm reviewing this course from the view of someone, who has studied education before.

The course offers you a great set of skills, which you need for your future job as a web developer. Everything is in state-of-the-art!... Read More
The course included:
-Vanilla JS, React, Bootstrap as Frontend Libraries + Packages like Axios
-Backend technologies like NodeJS, Express and ODM like Mongoose
-Relational Database like SQL and non-relational Database like MongoDB
-Version Control Management (Git, Github)
-Tools for coding, such as GitKraken/GitTower, IDE, using the Terminal
-And much more...

Tony as a teacher is a great personality and is a genius in the area of programming. Not only does he balance very fine between theoretical input and practical training, also does he include some games, to make it more interactive. When I got stuck at some point with my final project, he didn't just write the code for me, but more encouraged me to try to figure out myself. Even though it was very challenging at tough at some points, but damn was it rewarding once I succeeded to fix my bug.
I was really impressed about how Tony is implicitly including important principles you need to have as good and inspiring teacher.

The course was extremely valuable for me, because not only have I learned a lot, also have I (and another guy from the second batch) already found a job in the industry even BEFORE the course ended.

I'm very grateful that I could attend this course.

The teacher Tony is extremely competent about the topic, it immediately become clear he has worked for years in the field and he gives the student a practical approach to the different topics, making them able to finish basic projects after 1 week from... Read More the start of the camp. This learning by doing method was highly beneficial for me. It is also clear he has studied how to teach things so he doesnt give anything for granted which is a key factor, especially for beginners as I was. I started from a close to zero level and I am happywe spend the first days toclarify some basic key concept, itmakes much more easier and faster the following learning process. The school is nextto the sea, soit is possible to go to the beach atthe end of the class, showers are also provided. Lamai beach, the location, is a quite area in Koh Samui so there is no space for distraction which was extremely important for me, givingthe factthe course is very intense, ithelped a lotto stay focused and improve faster. I extremely satisfied by the level I reached, a good junior developer lever, whichis more than I expected. I am also satisfied bytheappI developed, whichwaslikewise unexoected. I strongly reccommend this course, especially for thise who are starting to code and have just a basic knowledge of it, the course is extremely accurate and very well structured.

Being a Teacher I know how hard it can be to go up there and break something down as complex as a programming language to beginners, but I think Tony does a great job of it. Thanks for always being so patient with me and doing your fair-share to make... Read More this an enjoyable experience for us. I love the staff here and just wanna thank you all for your kindness and this experience. I already know if you continue to perfect your craft, this bootcamp will make it be way up there someday; and I'll be able to say, "I did it way before it was cool !". You will be missed!

I will write a positive review, as I've benefited greatly from this course.

Tortuga is set to become the Hack Reactor 2.0 of Asia.
I say 2.0 as there are improvements on Hack Reactor in several things, not just the price, but also the student to tutor ratio.... Read More

PROS:

Curriculum:

When taking a look at different bootcamps in tropical (paradise) places, this is the only curriculum that takes you from plain vanilla javascript through a JS framework.
There's no wasting time with Ruby on Rails or other things.
It's all about the top things in the market - Vue.js as the front-end framework, Node.js as backend.
If you get stuck when trying to customize something you did with the ease of use of a framework, you have the core nuts and bolts skills to go back on vanilla js and edit it.
That's the best selling point of the course imho.

Price:
Competing bootcamps in Asia don't give you this curriculum for such a price.
Hack Reactor costs 17,000 USD for the course alone.
Here, it's couple thousand USD with accommodation included. Perks as free house cleaning etc as well.
Unheard of and unique in the bootcamp ecosystem.

Founder:

The founder is the best value-add the program brings.
At this stage, where Tortuga didn't branch out across Asia, you will get his personal input at every step of the journey.
I always feel he is very concerned if I am falling behind, and he wants to ensure everyone comes out successful out of the course.
He has 15 years experience always in JS, and has a always-learning approach.
One example is my project, that is a video data visualization that requires some advanced coding that even falls outside of the course.
Yeah, before you ask, I am doing data in a JS project :P
At some parts, he tells me to focus on other things and he'll get back to me.
He then tells me to check github, and comes and sits for 1 hour breaking down step by step from the beginning what the code meant, so I understand what I am doing.

Staff:

Angela and Curley are great at making you feel at home, and always trying to ensure you're having a good experience off-campus.
There's weekly trips, where feedback from the class is sought for what we'd like to do, and then a trip gets organized at a very low price.
We did a complete Island tour, at 200 thai baht per person. That's 6usd :)

CONS:

This is aimed in general, at the expectation people have of learning to code.
You need to put in the hours.
I came to this course with zero knowledge of programming.
Somedays we start school at 9am, and I am leaving at 10pm.
Javascript , in all its aspects, is not a press the button and it happens.
Yes, there are great things like Lodash, Angular.js that will help you, but you gotta put in the time :)

There are two main reasons why I decided to attend Tortuga Coders bootcamp.

First of all, my academic background is mostly design-centered; I am a professional Web designer with a little experience of coding who is trying to seek a career as a Frontend... Read More Developer.
Here I am, almost half way through: we’ve been facing the basics of HTML and CSS first week, we proceeded with plain Javascript, JQuery and Bootstrap and finally we dived into backend with NodeJS and MongoDB.
An early knowledge and discipline are required in order to face this bootcamp.
The course is stimulating and challenging; whatever theory we’ve approached, it has been put into practice straight away.

Our teacher Tony is well prepared and experienced; his willingness is highly valuable but most importantly, his proficiency in teaching is to be acknowledged.

Truth is time flies and it’s never enough, but I feel certain about the fact that I’ll be left with enough skills which will grant me the possibility to determine my future and achieve my goals. In the end I’ll add that the price is more than reasonable.

Second, I wanted to travel and I was looking more for a “all-round experience” rather than a simple academic one.
Learning to code on an island in Thailand is priceless. Life is easy and relaxed. Adventure and exploring are always behind the corner. Also, Tony and his collaborators are welcoming, accommodating and friendly.

So far, where matters of coding and “exploring” are concerned, I must say that I am more than glad I joined this bootcamp, I am really satisfied with my choice and I highly recommend this experience.

Before I joined this bootcamp, I have worked professionally as a Java Developer for more than 7 years. One day, I was searching for information to learn more about frontend tools and technologies so that I can pursue a career as a full stack developer... Read More and I came across Tortuga Coders. I took a leap of faith enrolling and fast forward to today, I do not regret my decision at all! I learned a great deal of modern tools and technologies within the first three weeks, such as: modern Javascript (including ES6 syntax), jQuery, Bootstrap and User Interface Design, NodeJs, MongoDB, and more (Angular, Vue, React) for the next month. A typical class is usually started with lecture in the morning and then after that we will be given exercise / coding challenge to further reinforce the concept that was being taught. One thing that I liked from this course that it is sooo up to date with the modern technology, such that we do not waste time learning old technology. For example, we learned so much about Promises and not so much on callback, as Promises is newer and better than callback.

Tony, the instructor, is a great instructor. He is very friendly and knowledgeable and he knows what is in the trend and best practices. Some of the people / skeptics might argue that we can learn about all this stuffs from Google / API documentation / etc. Well, my answer to them is sure, you can learn all of it from Internet. But you will not be learning best practice of writing codes, for example what is the best way to refactor your code, and you will not be doing a lot of coding on your own. This course will teach you best practices and indirectly force you to write codes on your own (by doing pre-course challenge, mini challenge, project, etc).

One thing to improve in this course is probably the duration, as the duration is only 2 months so it is very hard to cover everything in the course, considering the amount of materials to be covered, so a lot of self studies and self explorations are also required. Also, ideally, the course should be divided into basic and intermediate / advanced level, as participants for this course come from various backgrounds (some people might have never coded before).