DigitalCrafts

DigitalCrafts helped me make a career change, and while it was a tough journey, the staff there helped to guide me in the right direction (whether that be a debug issue, career advice, new tech, industry experience, etc.).  They will not teach you everything and you will need to put in work (either in class or after) to really get the concepts, but if you put in the effort, you will absolutely come out the other end a qualified junior developer.  It's the classic trope of you only get out what you put in.

Additional note: my immersive class had to go remote about halfway through the course due to COVID-19 but I commend the DigitalCrafts team for how they handled the situation.  The staff and instructor quickly and professionally adjusted the typical in-class plan, and the course was able to continue as close to normal as it could have!

Before I write this review, I just want to say that the best way to get an unbiased opinion about a bootcamp is to go to LinkedIn and connect with current students and graduates of that bootcamp. Once connected, you can ask them first hand how their experience was. I did this for the top three bootcamps in Houston (according to Course Report), and is why I ultimately decided to go with DigitalCrafts. The current students and graduates that I chatted with at that time (about five months ago), all had mostly positive things to say about this bootcamp, it's instructors, and the curriculum. 
So basically, it's VERY important to talk to actual STUDENTS because a campus director or enrollment coordinator of any bootcamp obviously will never say anything bad about their own bootcamp.

With that out of the way, here are the main take-aways from MY experience with DigitalCrafts...

• I received two job offers prior to graduation. I accepted one, and I've been working with them about a week now.
• My instructor was very well-known in the coding community, was a great instructor, and has a ton of Udemy courses.
• DigitalCrafts is located at The Cannon, a totally awesome startup community in a very new building. A lot of DigitalCrafts students (myself included) find jobs at startups there.
• The course material focuses on the PERN stack. While these are very marketable technologies to learn, they're not necessarily very marketable in Houston if you want to work for a bigger and/or older company. Most big companies here use .NET. The PERN stack is pretty popular with startups here in Houston though, and many companies on the West Coast. Also, PERN stack is becoming more and more popular for companies to use and therefore there's a strong argument to be made for learning it as soon as possible.
• Despite the above point, I know a few former students who got jobs with big companies that use .NET because they convinced the hiring manager that they were trainable.
• The course can get pretty tough. I recommend coding as much as you can before starting, and not just doing tutorials. 
• There is no job guarantee, but there doesn't need to be one honestly. Generally, the job market is hot for programmers right now and that doesn't seem like it's going to change any time soon. If someone doesn't get a tech job within six months after graduating, chances are it's because they gave up on the dream.

I'm very happy with what I learned and I enjoyed the time I spent enrolled in DigitalCrafts.
A typical day went like this: when class starts, we continued working on whatever we started the day before. Then there was a code-along, lunch, and finally exercises based on that day's topics. That was most days except when we were doing projects--then the whole day was spent on the project.
My instructor was Chris. He and his assistants did an excellent job. Where they really shined was making things that may be unintuitive make sense.
The staff and instructors were really great, and they will go above and beyond to make sure you're getting what you need (Chris, if you're reading this, I still have the thumb drive you lent me and I'll give it back as soon as I find it).
It was great overall and I'd choose them again.

Enrolling in DigitalCrafts Full Stack Immersive program is one of the best decisions I ever made. I came into the program with some frontend knowledge and an eagerness to become a web developer. The instructor was one of the best I have had. Chris is an empathetic teacher who breaks down challenging concepts in ways beginners can understand. The curriculum is current, challenging and reflects the  job market. 
You will get a lot out of this program the more you put in. I supplemented my studies with online courses like Codecademy and SuperHi, listened to podcasts, created assignments for myself, and read some thick programming books.
DigitalCrafts is located in Atlanta Tech Village so there is an exciting energy when you go in every morning. There are lots of events, local meetups, and resources available as a member of the building.

I attended DigitalCrafts full-time immersive program from November 2019 to March 2020. I came into the course with very little development background (could use Excel macros), and leave it with the ability to work frontend, backend, full-stack, etc. I feel very excited about my job prospects and opportunities coming from the program.

The instructor I had was honestly the best teacher I've ever had. They do an incredible job of breaking down a mountain of knowledge into just small tidbits, and I wish that my entire schooling career had been more like my time here. The skills they teach you are definitely in high demand, and DigitalCrafts is constantly asking for and getting feedback and changing the curriculum around that feedback from alumni, employers in the area, and current students.

The decision to go to DigitalCrafts to learn web development is probably one of the best decisions I've ever made.

TL;DR
I was working in financial services in Kansas City and wanted to not only move to Atlanta for personal reasons and also wanted to switch careers into technology. I went to DigitalCrafts in August 2019 for the Full-Time Immersive Program and graduated in December 2019. I started work at an investment management firm in February 2020 as a Junior Software Engineer.

My Background

• Studied Finance and Marketing in college
• Took 1 Python programming class in college. Never used it during my career.
• Was working in financial services prior to DC
• From Kansas City

Pros

• Collaborative Environment
  • Made great connections with some of the other students who I've stayed in contact with after the end of the program
  • Students help other students succeed. I've either helped others when they were stuck or someone would come over to help me when I got stuck. This happened all the time. People were willing to give their time to solve issues and it was great.
• Worked in several teams to deliver a variety of projects. Projects that later were on my resume.
• Work with tools that are used in the "real-world"
  • VSCode, Git, AWS, Terminal
• Exposure to Cloud Infrastructure
  • Really got to benefit from being walked through how to spin up our own EC2 Instances on AWS to self-host our projects. Great first-time exposure to cloud technologies
• Work with Python, get a foundation in HTML/CSS/Vanilla or "Plain" JavaScript before moving to React
• I appreciated the career week time to focus on building up my resume and portfolio and also being able to get that reviewed by the career services team.

Cons

• One suggestion would be to have more exposure to working on and refactoring code someone else had written. In most exercises, a student is creating something from scratch or a base template. It would be neat to have exercises around a project that has already been built where we had to make modifications to it.

Tips to a new student

• One of the things DC Staff told us near the beginning was that we would get out of the experience what we put in. Don't passively consume the information. It really helps to try and do some digging on your own, make mistakes, and then ask for help to get pulled up. I've personally learned so much from making silly mistakes I made on my own and after trying to figure things out, going to an instructor who can guide me to the right direction.
• Listen to software podcasts that give you a real-time pulse of the industry and some of the technologies that are being used today
• Ask Questions, be curious, try to boil concepts down and re-state them in your own words
• There will be a lot of information thrown at you. Don't get overwhelmed by trying to memorize and remember everything. No one can memorize everything and it's perfectly okay to Google and search for answers.
• Please take career week seriously. Get your resume and portfolio created and deployed somewhere during career week. Don't wait.

Last thoughts

• DC helped me get to where I wanted to go and was an integral part of helping me switch careers. I now work as a full-time software engineer in Atlanta. I would recommend the program to any one who is willing to put in the time to learn. The class went by so quickly and I had a lot of fun.

TLDR:  DigitalCrafts is the top-rated bootcamp in Atlanta for a reason. After my very positive experience there, I would not hesitate to recommend their Full Stack Flex Program for anyone looking for a way to level up their software engineering knowledge and skills.

INTRODUCTION:  When I began looking into bootcamps, I knew that I needed to find one that met several criteria. First, and foremost, it had to be a part-time program, because I have to work full time to support my family (a 15 year old needs all. the. things!) I also needed a bootcamp that offered an in-person option, as I tried several online "teach yourself to code" courses over a timeframe of several years and realized that I definitely needed a more structured experience in order to learn the curriculum. Ratings and reviews were also equally important, and, as it turned out, were probably my deciding factor. Finally, I needed a bootcamp program that would not cost a small fortune, and if financial help was needed, one that offered financial aid options. After going back and forth between several different bootcamp options, most specifically DigitalCrafts, Thinkful, and Hack Reactor, I chose to enroll in DigitalCrafts (Atlanta) Full Stack Flex Program for the April 2019 cohort.

THE GOOD:  My experience at DigitalCrafts was fantastic. I spent 26 weeks (Tuesday and Thursday nights, and Saturday mornings) with my fellow classmates learning all about HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Node.js, Express, Sequelize, PostgreSQL, React, and so much more. Our instructors, Lachlan H. and Aubrey R., were fantastic, and our DIRs (Directors in Residence) weren't so shabby either (HUGE SHOUT OUT to Ron C. and Jordan M. for giving so freely of their time, even when they weren't on the clock). Help was never more than one Slack chat away. My fellow classmates became like family to me, and we helped each other along the way, and even shared a few tears together when it was all over. Those 26 weeks of blood, sweat, tears, and "just one more line of code!" were all worth it. The career services offered by DigitalCrafts before and after graduation are second to none in the bootcamp industry. The career guidance counselors constantly provided us with resources, including mock interviews, resume reviews, and portfolio advice.

THE NOT SO GOOD:  If I could suggest a few improvements for DigitalCrafts' Full Stack Flex Program, it would be more data structure and algorithm lessons at the beginning of the JavaScript portion of the course, as well as more opportunities for "whiteboarding." And by "whiteboarding," I mean like the problem solving on a whiteboard one would expect to find during a job interview. In my post-bootcamp job interviews, I've had to attempt "whiteboarding", and didn't do so well. I know this isn't the sort of knowledge/skill that one can just pick up and run with without a lot of practice, but I feel that had DigitalCrafts provided more chances for the part-time students to gain experience with this, I might have been more confident going into my job interviews. (It is my understanding that the Immersive course students had a lot of additional opportunities to practice "whiteboarding," but that could just be based on an instructor's preference for providing that to his/her students).

PS: Jake, Liz, Tasha, Angela, Lachlan, Aubrey, Ron, and Jordan, if you guys are reading this, thank you from the very bottom of my heart for transforming my life into something amazing. It has been my pleasure getting to know all of you on a personal level!

I just finished my SRE bootcamp and I am very happy I took it. I did not know much of git, python, APIs, etc. before taking this training and although I am not yet a so called "programmer", I feel more comfortable with the tools we learned. The format of the training and the facilitators were just great, the zoom is a nice tool and we could take this training from everywhere. Veronica was a highly skilled professor, you can tell she is capable in many aspecs of the full stack velelopment, she's also very good at teaching. I definitely recomend DigitalCrafts and its trainings.

I had been trying to learn how to code for a few years before deciding to enroll at DigitalCrafts and I’m so glad that I did. It’s one of the best decisions that I’ve ever made!  I learned so many invaluable skills and lessons during my time at the bootcamp that I missed out on while learning to code on my own.  The curriculum was challenging and the group work fostered an environment for collaborative learning and growth. Throughout the course, we did a lot of pair programming and  were required to build projects in small teams. It was a great opportunity to work in teams, resolve conflicts and to learn to use git version control effectively.

You really only get out what you put. Expect to put in some serious time outside of class studying and coding. After all the blood, sweat, tears, and coffee…you will come out of the bootcamp with the knowledge and support to land your first coding job. You’ll also come away with some pretty great friends too!

My only regret is not taking the bootcamp earlier. I would definitely recommend DigitalCrafts to any friends looking to transition into a  career in coding.

Attending DigitalCrafts was one of the best decisions I ever made for myself. I felt stuck in my prior career and decided to make the leap into web development. I didn't know much about programming before I started (some free online courses here and there) and now I feel comfortable with the foundation and skills I gained over the last 4 months to jump into new technologies on my own and keep learning. 

This was definitely one of the most challenging things that I have ever done. Completing an intensive 4 month long bootcamp is in no way easy and you get out of it what you put in. DigitalCrafts has a number of instructors and teacher assistants who are there to help when you get stuck can't figure out a problem on your own. The staff really want to see you succeed and are willing to help in any way they can. 

If you are thinking about making the leap there's no time like the present and you won't be disappointed with the quality of the program or instructors at DigitalCrafts!