Epicodus

I was in the cohort above Sam Stoia, and his review is accurate and very well written so I won't repeat everything he said, but suffice to say I agree with him at least 90%. I'll just point out where I differ or have additional thoughts:

-the cost is low because the overhead is low. It's pretty bare bones and the teachers may not be paid as well as other places, or (especially) compared to a programming job, which would help explain turnover. This would also go some way toward explaining some of the curriculum being outdated. Developing new curriuculum constantly takes time and money.

-I think the cost being low is partially an ethical choice-- I think the owner is trying to make a bootcamp that is as accessible as possible. The first 5 weeks being free speaks to that as well. There are pros and cons to this. The obvious pro is that it's cheaper... and the cohort was more diverse than I expected, which was awesome. People from many different walks of life trying to make the same transition. But the curriculum and support were occasionally spotty. There isn't much handholding from staff. You have to support eachother. 

-To really succeed at this, I think you need to have enough money in the bank or support from family / partner etc. or loans to live on for roughly 8-9 months, without working a ton. The coursework is very taxing and if you're working 5 nights a week, it's going to be that much harder. Additionally, it often takes 1-3 months to land a job after the course. Some people get jobs right away, most don't. If I didn't have some savings and the support of my wife, I probably would have gone back to my old job before I landed a programming job. Being rejected over and over is hard! But you have to keep trying. It's a normal part of the process, even for experienced programmers.

-The lack of data structure and algorithm study is probably intentional. Those concepts are not very likely to be directly useful to you in your first programming job. Some interviewers ask you those questions, others don't. Really depends on the culture and background of the company and interviewer. I biffed an interview super hard where the main question was traversing a red-black tree. I'd never heard of that! I was mortified. All the people at this company were CS grads who'd worked at Microsoft since the 90's. Then I got an interview at a company where the programmers I'd be working with were almost all self taught, and zero algorithm questions, just programming questions. I aced it, which felt incredibly redeeming.

-There's so, so, so much to learn. While it would be great to have a bootcamp where you learn exactly what you need to do a job, then you get that job, I don't think that's the reality. You're learning a bunch of languages and concepts you may or may not use directly, but in the process you're learning HOW TO LEARN. The job I ended up getting uses mostly PHP, which I knew nothing about going into it, but the skills I was able to demonstrate in other languages convinced my employer that I would be able to quickly get up to speed. And I have. I was making PRs by my second day of work. 

-It's frustrating, it's difficult, you'll want to pull your hair out on an almost daily basis. As soon as you grasp one difficult concept you'll be on to something else just as baffling. Sometimes you never understand something, and you just move on. I've never felt so mentally lost as during this bootcamp. You have to have the confidence that you're learning anyway, and it's normal to feel this way. There will be a few people in the class for whom everything is "easy" and they find ridiculously simple and they build crazy apps while you're still debugging step one or two. Don't compare yourself with those people. It will drive you mad. You can still succeed and you can still get a job. You probably have other strengths that those people lack, which will come in useful in a programming job. (That's what I tell myself ;))

-If the coursework moves past you and you feel like you're totally f*cked (happened to me during Angular and parts of React) just keep your cool. Keep applying yourself. Even if you have to bypass the coursework. Look up supplemental stuff on YouTube or Udemy. Find different ways to continue moving forward. Be flexible. Don't give up. 

-Exercise, get 7-8 hours of sleep. Eat well. Cancel Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, everything! Seriously! Don't allow yourself to check out. Your brain gets so tired it wants to do anything other than keep trying learning this stuff. So you have to put distractions out of sight. Go for a walk instead, talk to your classmates, watch video tutorials online... do something different, but not something vapid and addictive.

As Sam mentioned, the internship is KEY. I stayed in my (unpaid) internship for 2 months, and although it was frustrating to being doing real work for free, I think it paid off. Every week I would add whatever I'd done that week to my linked-in resume. Even if it was something I'd only done once and didn't totally understand. I would even ask my supervisor at the internship to help me phrase it correctly. My previous career started shrinking on my resume, until 80% of the resume was 2 months of the internship and the other 20% was the past 12 years of construction. The job I ended up getting, I was only noticed for that position because of some tasks/skills I had listed on my resume that I had learned at my internship. Work experience is critical.  

All in all, I found this course extremely difficult. I was not in the top of my class. But after MANY job applications and a lot of work, I got an entry level job as a programmer that pays $15k more a year than the job I left as a construction superintendent, and it took me 12 years to get up to that role! That's what I wanted out of this course, and I got it. 

Whatever you do, don't give up! 

This review is for the Seattle campus where I was enrolled.  I hear Portland is very different and a bit more established, but I can’t speak to that.  I was enrolled in the C#/JavaScript/React track.

If I could, I would probably give Epicodus a 3.5 star rating.  Generally positive, but with a few sore spots. I’ll round up to 4 stars.  A little about me, I had absolutely ZERO coding experience and exposure before starting the course.  Of course, having some coding background could have helped me, but the course does truly assume no knowledge from the beginning.  I think all coding bootcamps are probably tough, and Epicodus is no exception. While the first 5 week unit (Intro to Programming) is no walk in the park, it only gets harder from there. The C# and JavaScript units move at a really fast pace, and pretty much everyone in my cohort, and the cohorts above and below me had their fair share of struggles.  Some of those struggles are based on the difficulties of learning new technologies from scratch. Others, were because of problems with Epicodus’ curriculum. I’ll try to review the entire experience as best as I can.

The good:

• Structure.  If you’re like me, you need a structured learning environment to keep you motivated and accountable.  While many people may have been able to teach themselves how to become developers through books and online tutorials, that doesn’t work for everyone.  Epicodus provides teachers who offer assistance when you get stuck, as well as a whole class of peers who can help you troubleshoot problems. The curriculum, while lacking (more on that later), does generally build throughout each week before you are given an independent project to complete on Friday.  The mix of teachers, course work, and independent projects does provide a structured learning environment that makes it easier to learn compared to if you tried to learn from scratch on your own.

• Internships.  I think this is where Epicodus stands out.  The fact that an internship, albeit short(5 weeks), is built into the program, means you get some on the job experience as well as some familiarity with going through the job interview process.

• Support. I imagine every new wave of students is different, but my cohort developed into a really close and supportive group of people.  Having them go through the exact same struggles as me helped build a sense of camaraderie and made the tough times a little bit better.

• Price.  I don’t think there’s a much better deal out there for an in-person, full-time bootcamp.  $6,900 (if you pay up front) is generally about half of what other schools charge.

The bad:

• Curriculum.  It’s not necessarily that the coursework is always bad.  It’s that some of it is wrong or out of date and Epicodus is slow to fix problems.  There were weeks during the C# unit where the course work would flat out not build properly based on the lessons.  The cohort ahead of me experienced it, our cohort experienced it, the cohort below me experienced it. An instructor was in the process of rewriting some of the C# material, though, so maybe it will improve for later cohorts.  In the JavaScript section, the lessons teach you to build projects with old versions of certain technologies because they know those versions don’t conflict with each other. That would be fine, except many of those versions are no longer supported and have glaring security issues.  It would not be OK to build with these versions in the real world, so I’m not sure why Epicodus does not update their lessons to include newer versions that are not deprecated.

• Professionalism.  I don’t say this lightly, but Epicodus has an issue with how it handles itself internally.  I was at the school during a time of particularly high turnover, but it seems like the instructors are in a constant state of flux.  My cohort’s first teacher had just graduated from Epicodus about 6 months prior. While this teacher was competent, I do think people should know that you’re not necessarily going to be getting a seasoned developer as an instructor at Epicodus. We were meant to get a more established teacher for the last ten weeks of the class, but that teacher was suddenly pulled away to work on rewriting some of the outdated lessons.  Epicodus then hired one of the students who had been in the cohort just ahead of us to be our instructor, and this person literally only had 10 more weeks of experience with coding than our cohort. When my class finished, all three of the Seattle instructors i just mentioned left for other jobs, so I have no clue what the future of the program looks like now. Just know, your teacher is likely to themselves be a recent Epicodus graduate.

• Data Structures and Algorithms.  The course does not really go into these crucial aspects of becoming a developer.  This is mostly because there just isn’t enough time, and it’s not really on Epicodus to teach these. However, In order to get a job, you will need to learn some basic computer science concepts because they are pretty much all you will get asked in an interview.  I suggest buying a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview, and either buying a Udemy data structures course or taking the Harvard CS50 course on edX to supplement the Epicodus curriculum.

Conclusion:

Coding is hard. Even in the perfect environment, there would have been huge hurdles for me to jump over in order to learn this stuff. There is going to be frustration. There is going to be imposter syndrome.  You will get mentally and physically exhausted. But, if you’re eager to learn, this is a good place. Just know, you will likely run into issues with the curriculum at times, and your teachers might be limited in how much expertise they can offer.  That all being said, I would rate my experience as generally positive. I learned a ton, and hope to continue that learning process now that I’m done with the class.

I would say that my overall experience there was pretty great. Pair programming can be a struggle, and sometimes it felt like I was banging my head against a wall, but overall I learned a lot from the instruction given. 

I think the key to success was making sure you take the homework seriously. I found a huge difference between simply reading it, and really digging in and trying to understand things on an almost intuitive level if I could achieve it. It seems like this would be a no-brainer, but I felt like I saw several classmates do the bare minimum and it really reflected on their performance in class, and sometimes making pair programming frustrating because having not done the work, it would be teaching them all of the concepts again. Though that was really good too because then it further solidified the concepts in my head. 

The cirriculum was dated, and sometimes help wasn't available very quickly from instructors, but the lack of help was rare, all things considered. I did feel like the staff was stretched thin, but that was my perceptions, perhaps on the other side of the table it's a different story. 

The dated cirriculum was a bit frustration, but I can imagine with little staff to update the cirriculum, it wasn't easy to stay on the cutting edge. The other thing though... having gone through it, I realized that the cutting edge isn't necessarily the best place to be because it's often not vetted properly, so I became less frustrated with the dated cirriculum as I realized that, yes it's dated... but also it just works without unanticipated bugs. Most of the bugs we'd run into from our stacks would have solutions if we dug for them. Had it been the newest stuff, we'd be debugging javascript based issues without pre-existing solutions, which could drastically slow things down potentially. 

Overall I'd say it was a great experience, and nothing beats the value of the internship that they placed me in. Having even 5 weeks of real world work experiences was worth the value of the program without a doubt. 

I recently finished the intro to programming course and plan on taking the full-time course at a later time. Epicodus provides you with all the resource that you will need to enter the career field of programming and software development. Of course, you need to put in the hours but epicodus will be there to teach you the proper way of doing things. I think epicodus is very welcoming of anyone who wants to learn programming, there are people that are just starting and people with a bit more experience but everybody gets the attention they need. I will continue to master and have fun with what I learned at the intro course.

I graduated from Epicodus in September 2018 and got hired by my internship host company right away. Actually, one of the main reasons why I chose Epicodus was an internship, included in the course. But overall experience turned out to be great. The school learning curriculum was well structured, lessons were clear and easy to follow, still leaving a room for curiosity, and encouraging further exploration. Our instructor, John Franti, was impressively knowledgable and ethical.

After the course, I felt quite well prepared for the interviews with the companies hosting Epicodus interns (yes, you have to go through the real interview process to get the internship placement, which is an especially valuable experience on its own).

I would recommend Epicodus to anyone who has a desire to start a new career path in software development (and who is ready to put an effort to get there). 

I attended the night-time Intro to Programming course this last fall, and I was definitely not disappointed. I had tried doing some online free courses and, although I had learned a lot through those free courses, I knew I needed something more structured and with face time in order to really grasp some of the concepts. This class was perfect for that. Not only was Kyle a great instructor and there for any questions we had, but the whole setup of the class itself made for a great learning environment. I was a little nervous about pair programming, as I’ve always thought that I learned better by myself when I can just sit with something and go at my own pace, but I was pleasantly surprised. Working with someone allowed me to ask questions, explore, and learn with them in ways I know I wouldn’t have done on my own. The course material was pretty great as well, just because we covered a wide variety of topics and there was enough there to do in class to understand the basics, but also because there was plenty to do at home if we wanted to.

I haven’t had the chance to join a full-time class, but I fully intend to once I have the budget and time to do so. Taking the part-time class was totally worth it. I actually took the skills I learned in that class and made a brand new website for my company. Like I said before, there are plenty of incredible online resources, but if you find yourself needing more structure and a great learning environment — choose Epicodus.

I personally had a really good experience at Epicodus. After trying my hand at using free online resources to teach myself coding, I found that I really needed the structure of a classroom with schedules and deadlines to keep me motivated and on task as well as teachers and peers to help answer questions and improve my understanding. To this end, Epicodus was totally worth it. The course work was mostly very good. There were occasional issues since curriculum is often being updated, but the staff were responsive to feedback. I also found the response to questions was usually prompt and helpful, but even more important was my amazing cohort. Pair programming with other students every day was sometimes intimidating, but really helped me learn. From answering questions to helping interpret lessons to giving feedback on code, working in pairs (and groups for projects) was one of the most valuable features of the program.

The internship was a big selling point for Epicodus as well, and I was very fortunate to get a great internship. I know that the internship experience of my cohort varied, with a few students having major issues, but hopefully Epicodus will continue to increase their consistency with respect to quality internships. Regardless of internship, I feel that the career support for graduates is pretty strong and another benefit that makes the program well worth it.

I decided to attend the Intro to Programming Course (evening/part time) at Epicodus once I knew I was moving to Portland from NYC. It was a great chance to meet new people, learn some new skills, and see if I might be interested in changing careers. The Intro to Programming Course was perfect for me because it allowed me to get a taste of programming without having to commit to a full-time program and was flexible around a work schedule. The price point was also perfect for me.

Our instructor Kyle was great - he was happy to be as hands-on or as laid back as each programming pair needed. I loved pair-programming - there are so many online resources that you could technically teach yourself most of the programming stuff you'd need to know... but if you're an interactive learner like me that benefits from mutual accountability.... SIGN UP FOR EPICODUS. You'll learn so much from your partners, both about programming and how to think about problem solving. This course was totally worth it!

I’ve researched a few bootcamp school and Epicodus was the right fit for me. The price is reasonable for what I was looking for. Coursework is straightforward and the videos are great but wish there was a few more videos towards the end of the course which they are aware of. It was very challenging for me esp. with no coding experience but I was able to pull through with the support of the instructor and my cohort. The instructor is very knowledgeable and helped me comprehend the basics.

Overall, I enjoyed (even on the tough days) and learned the skills I need to continue to grow my business attending Epicodus.

Epicodus is a great place to learn how to code and become a developer.  Coming from a non traditional developer background, Epicodus gave me the skills and the confidence to land my dream job. The staff, teachers, and fellow students were and still are amazing support system. If you ever thought to yourself, “I want to learn how to code but don’t know where to start”, let Epicodus give you that start. “I would like to become a developer but I am not smart enough”, let Epicodus prove you wrong.

I enrolled in Epicodus during the late summer of 2017 and graduated as recently as March of 2018.  I started my first day at my new job in early July.  I wouldn't have been able to start this new position if it weren't for the skills and direction that Epicodus provided for me.  The instructors are top notch they do not coddle you and walk you through everything, they know how to proud your mind into thinking in a manner that you will eventually come to a conclusion and if you eventually cannot solve it they will find the time to assist you.  Class sizes are reasonable and the people there seemed very friendly.  The atmosphere is not competetive in any way, I was in no way shape or form the best person or strongest coder in my cohort, but I felt like in order to find a job after your classes are finished you must be relentless in applications if you want to work.  Also I knew from fairly early on I didn't necessarily want to work as an App Developer I just wanted to help build and design websites.