DigitalCrafts

I had a great experience with my digitalcrafts immersive boot camp. My instructor was knowledgeable and engaging, our teaching assistants were kind and helpful, and the class structure was well-planned and executed. I went from zero programming knowledge 16 Wells ago to feeling very comfortable creating full stack applications today. We learned the most common languages that I am seeing during my job search as well as GitHub and trello. The Carter services personnel are quick to respond and thorough in their presentations and evaluation of my resume and portfolio. It has been a wonderful experience!

My overall experience at Digital Crafts was exceptional. You never really know what to expect going into an immersive program that claims to have you job ready with a technical skills that you aren't all that familiar with 

Every class will have one instructor and two assistants that have completed the class within the last year or so that has a better idea of your level of expertise than the teacher might. I can't speak for every teacher,  of course. but I was stoked that my teacher has been coding since middle school and has an enormous amount of time and experience in the industry where things change so rapidly. My teacher would stop to make sure would understood complex subjects and even went above and beyond to teach things that may have not necessarily been part of the curriculum but, in their experience, was important to cover.

You can download the curriculum at DigitalCrafts.com. What's taught is always subject to change. My cohort was taught Python, HTML, CSS,  Javascript, and many different frameworks that applied to each language. You will be taught to build websites, create a database to connect to those sites, and the ability to make sites dynamic, or, in other words, flexible and more ready to change if need be. 

Its hard to say which part of Digital Crafts departments is their strongest but I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of effort that went into making sure you get employed. An entire week is dedicated to getting your resume, portfolio, and social media websites correct. Things you may have never thought of before are shown to you to enable you to be more successful in the job market. Getting employed as a junior developer with no experience is difficult but I felt fortunate to have a team of people whose role was to make it just a bit more simpler. 

What would my advice be to someone looking to go into the program? Study as much as possible beforehand and apply yourself as much as possible when you finally do. You will meet some amazing people as classmates and hopefully have the same experience with the teachers and assistance as well.

I completed the part time flex bootcamp. It was all virtual. I started in August and ended in March.I really enjoyed my experience. I learned a ton and really felt like the teachers and other staff care about me and want to do everything they can to help me get a software developer job.I tried learning to code many times, but lacked the discipline and plan to learn on my own. DigitalCrafts provided the support and plan that I needed. If you can learn on your own, that's the cheapest option.But if you are like me and need/want the support of fellow learners, teachers and a plan to learn then I 100% recommend DigitalCrafts!

I don’t know exactly where to start, so I’ll start here...I wanted to make a change in career and in life. Being a military veteran I’m used to staying busy, but with a purpose. Intro to finding DigitalCrafts and making the decision to jump headfirst into the rest of my life. I honestly can’t say enough wonderful things about the school, from the owners, the Director of Operations, Director of curriculum, Student Success Team, Instructors, to my fellow students and now fellow alumni. It truly is one big family that has nothing short of your best interest at heart and in mind from beginning until you tell them that you don’t want them around anymore (but why would you want to go and do a silly thing like that?!). 

My advice for ANYONE out there that’s nervously contemplating making a change in their lives for the better starting with DigitalCrafts...DO IT!!! Yes, you’ll have frustrating days, you’ll have days with epiphanies, you’ll have days where you feel defeated. STICK WITH IT! The feeling of family and accomplishment is more than enough to get you started in a flourishing career and a life that shows you that you CAN and WILL do better once you put your mind to it. 

MAIN DILEMMA
I enrolled into the October 2020 Full Stack Immersive Bootcamp, I think my experience at DigitalCrafts (DC) is a unique one, given that the original instructor was let go due to his inability to adapt to his students' needs. To elaborate, it is a given that bootcamps are fast-paced but instructors should also be wary of how their students are doing, because if the students are not understanding the fundamentals of what it being taught then regardless of how fast-paced the bootcamp is, the students will always be left behind. This is a 'skill' that the instructor needs to have, especially in the the world of programming since everything is built off of one another.

I took the time to mention this because DC made the executive decision to let the original instructor go and my bootcamp was replaced with another instructor, this new instructor was amazing. He took things a little bit slower and ensured that the students had a good understanding of concepts before moving on. He also took the time to review concepts when necessary and created resources / examples that demonstrated some of the complex concepts that we learned. 

I will say that I am a quick learner and that there are times where lecture was a little slow for me but this new instructor made assignments for those who were further along when he could. This was an okay experience since his attention would be divided but he still did his best to be there for all of the students. 

Finally, this transition from the original instructor to the new one changed the momentum greatly. Ultimately it was for the best but it wasn't a smooth transition especially when it happened towards the middle of the bootcamp. How do you make this transition smooth when concepts taught pre-new instructor were still hazy and we still had a schedule to adhere to? Well, to be fair, I don't think you can. The final capstone (graduation) day remained unchanged so we had to forgo some concepts and learn these concepts at an optional timeframe post-graduation. 

CURRICULUM 
I think the curriculum is a good one since it includes a lot of the popular technologies in today's industry but I think that the front-end development side of the curriculum could use more work. While I'm not exactly sure how this experience would differ with the new instructor, (at the time, my bootcamp was taught front-end technology by the original instructor), I still believe there is room for improvement. 

For starters, I think that SASS (or Sass) should be taught at DC, it is essentially CSS but a lot more to offer. Why do I bring up this up? Well when comparing other technologies with their relative field I felt like DC would not meet the standards of someone who would want to specifically go into front-end development. I understand that it is a 'Full Stack' web development bootcamp but the front-end development aspect was glossed over. Furthermore, other libraries and frameworks such as Bootstrap were introduced but the original instructor did not really go into detail with how to use such frameworks. You would think that they might make your life easier but depending on what you want to do, it actually might mess everything up. Many of my classmates tried to use Bootstrap but then ended up with fighting with it more than coding. 

Like I mentioned earlier, during this time it was pre-new instructor, so I'm not exactly sure the difference it would have with the new instructor from the beginning because at its very core, the curriculum was not enough for front-end development specifically in CSS / SASS. I had to learn new technologies outside of the curriculum and that is tremendously difficult given that lecture was about 40 hours / week but that doesn't include time spent studying the concepts and assignments outside of lecture. 

Another concept that I felt like was lacking was algorithms, this is a concept that is inevitable, any developer will be met with a technical interview and then there it is, algorithms. My bootcamp barely touched them. I'm not sure if they were even supposed to be apart of the curriculum or not but with that being said, we touched them for a moment and never turned back. It's disappointing because now when I am taking the time to learn it, I think it's important to understand the many data structures and algorithms that there are and how to use them to help solve issues when it comes to code readability, time and space complexity. It felt like the advice from DC was to just go onto LeetCode and do problems until something magically clicked for you versus, understanding what is the best method to solve the solution via data structures and algorithms. 

Overall I think that the curriculum was good for any new developer who wants to get a good foundation of what they should know and how to continue to grow post-bootcamp. But to be honest, you could do the same with a Udemy course, however you do have access to instructors and DIRs (teacher assistants) who can help you. I think that is the main perk of DC, that you have experienced developers that you can interact with and to help you to start thinking programmatically. 

FINAL THOUGHTS
In conclusion, would I recommend DC? To be honest, I would. Because like I said, in the beginning, my experience at DC is unique, it may not be the same for someone else. I met a lot of people from all over the world who shared the same passion as mine, and that is exciting! Everything that occurred during my bootcamp was unfortunate but DC did everything that they could to handle it in the best way possible and that's all you could really ask for. I made meaningful connections with other developers, the instructors and DIRs. We are a community that I'm proud to be a part of. I will say that if you are considering DC, please be prepared, do the pre-work that they sent out or take an introductory Udemy course. Also there is a lot of free resources (YouTube) that you could watch that will help you get acquainted with some of the concepts that DC will cover. Look over the syllabus and start exposing yourself to these concepts. This will only help further your mastery. If you are serious about a career change or this passion: what you put it is what you get out of it, and you cannot expect DC to do the work for you, it is ALL YOU. With that being said, I do believe that DC can help jump start your career in the right direction. 

I'm current wrapping up my fall cohort with DigitalCrafts and I have nothing but rave reviews. I've pretty much spent everyday of the last 5 months coding one thing or another and I've gained so much real world experience from it. It was also cool that there were so many vets in my program, I don't if if that's common but it was my experience. The instructors were great and had a ton real world experience. We weren't just building todo apps, we built real applications that are used everyday, one of the guys in my cohort build a gamer social media type app. Currently going through the job search as of the last couple days and I've already started going through the interview process with a company. Overall I've had a great experience w/ 0 regrets.

I wanted to make the most of the lockdown and took a suggestion from my brother to get into coding. After some self teaching I stumbled onto DigitalCrafts. To be honest I never thought it would be so informative and impactful. The teachers were always available and strived to make sure we continued to grow. After recently graduating I feel doors are opening left and right. I went from barely being able to read Javascript to building a full react website in a day. I highly suggest this course. I truly feel I learned two years worth of info in a little over 6 months. Don't be afraid to challenge yourself, the end goal really made this all worth it.