Hey everyone. I am pretty new to coding. Lately I’ve been doing a lot of research on Front End bootcamps. I’ve applied for two of them so far, DevMountain and Hack Reactor. I was just wondering if anyone here has had any experience with a coding bootcamp.
I have a few questions. Are they worth it? Am I more likely to get a job if a graduate from one? Please list the bootcamp you attended, when you attended it, and what you took away from it. Thanks in advance!
You’re more likely to get a job faster if you attend a good bootcamp. Hack Reactor is definitely a good one, though hard to get into and expensive. I don’t know much about DevMountain.
Check out Course Report for some other schools to look into, and other helpful advice.
If you’re just getting started, you’ll want to get prepared for admittance interviews for these schools. Most of them don’t accept raw beginners, and Hack Reactor actually wants its new students to know quite a bit. If you complete the front end certificate at Free Code Camp, you’d most likely be ready for any boot camp interview.
Hack Reactor also has a pre-camp for getting ready for their main program. App Academy has a program that advertises it will get you ready for any code camp interview.
Whatever you decide, good luck!
1 Like
Hello nialgcm, this is a short interview from the guy behind freeCodeCamp. I found it very informative. He talks about Hack Reactor and other bootcamps. Here’s the link:
I found it useful. Maybe you will too.
1 Like
Haha funny enough, i JUST graduated from dev mountain. i was DM-12 (DevMountain 12 cohort) which is the same cohort of Matt Tran (that guy in the youtube video above).
mod edit: [ no affiliate links here ]
I was in the Web Immersive (Full Time) bootcamp in Provo. Their curriculum is ok but it’s too fast paced to be fair to people brand new to code. I was already familiar with linux, git, github, html, CSS, and a could barely code a todo app in JS/jQuery before I attended. Out of the 30 people in my cohort, ~5 deferred (this is similar to being held back a grade in the US) and 3 dropped after the first 2 weeks. I wasn’t the best in my cohort when it was over, but I was far from the worst.
They have one (yes ONE) really good teacher and the rest are either surprisingly subpar or average. They rotate their teachers on the different topics. My cohort unfortunately got a subpar teacher for Angular (he’s no longer teaching) which hamstrung a lot of people in their self-confidence, which then led them to want to use more time to review (but because it’s a bootcamp, there’s no time to review so you’re forced to move onto NodeJS, then SQL, then create your personal project, then your group project, then learn ReactJS, then learn how to host your projects, then career week, etc). If you’re self-disciplined enough to study on your own and apply yourself, you should consider this; if not, think hard about what you want and why you’re doing it. This bootcamp doesn’t offer the best it should yet, and I don’t know how quickly they can iterate and improve after each cohort (they’re currently running the 15th [DM-15] full time web immersive cohort). They do survey their students a lot and definitely make adjustments as they go along though.
I can go into more exact detail since the experience is still very fresh in my mind.
The free housing is SOOOO worth it. They have a really cool person that manages the housing and is your point of contact for all your housing needs. You’d think that maybe they’d give you crappy housing with a crappy housing manager since it’s all free, but no, this is definitely one area where they don’t skimp on. They also have utensils, a vacuum, medkit and onsite laundry machines (the machines are in your unit, not some central location for all tenants to share). The only thing you gotta worry about is getting shitty room mates (which is not dev mountain’s fault at all).
Ultimately, bootcamps offer more than just the education. Help with getting a job is one (even after you graduate, dev mountain has a guy that keeps bugging you and supporting you in your job hunt. he’s really good at his stuff too). There’s also your classmates. Yes, your social circle expands in a very meaningful and important way when you take a really hard class and are with the same people over 3 months. This bootcamp is harder and more impacted than a semester in college O-Chem. You make friends quick. I’m still close with a lot of the people from my cohort.
2 Likes
Overall would you say your experience was pretty good with DevMountain? I just accepted there today! I’m stoked to go, but I want my expectations of the curriculum to be realistic.
Congrats on getting accepted!
Overall my experience was pretty good, but everyone’s different.
The biggest benefit DevMountain will have over just using FreeCodeCamp is the extra discipline being in person will put on you. If you understand yourself enough to be able to take advantage of that, then this bootcamp will be great for you.
Since you live in SLC, I highly highly suggest living in their free housing in Provo. There will be a ton of situations where you’ll wish you didn’t live an hour away just so you could stay and study with your classmates after hours or go do random things with them. It just makes your life easier/better if you live right across the street.