Concordia Bootcamps

Before I launch into a spirited review of DecodeMTL, a bit of context on myself will help reveal some important variables. First off, I come from by no means a CS background. Far from it, I have a Bachelors in Urban Planning and worked for several years... Read More as an infantry soldier.
Why this bears mention is that one of the most common fears about this industry is that it will be utterly beyond those without some sort of pre-existing CS experience. That is absolutely not true. Web development is far more accessible than you might think, but there are certainly things to ponder before you take the leap at a bootcamp...
I think the biggest question someone reading this wants answered: is DecodeMTL a legit bootcamp and will it get me an entry position as a Dev? Yes and yes; its a kickass bootcamp and I landed a job within two weeks. But there's more to it than that.
In my opinion, there is a way to experience this bootcamp to get the most out of it. These are your checks in the box to complete before day 1...
1. You've decided to do this for a reason. Its 6k. Its only 2 months. Do a soul search and make sure that this is what you want and you are ready to work your ass. The days are long and the info is fast and furious. You will need to dedicate 200% of your attention to this course in order to succeed, which brings me to my next point..
2. Prepare yourself. Yes there is a prep course and it does a good job of getting you ready, but if you want my advice, do as much damn Javascript as you can beforehand. If you are like me and you have 0 programming experience, I highly recommend Udemy's "Javascript: understanding the weird parts". If you get through even the first third of this course before you start, you will be arriving in a great place and everything will make way more sense. You will be far less likely to fall behind as you will have a better grasp on the critical fundamentals of programming in JS.
3. Don't expect the moon. DecodeMTL does what it claims to do and it does it well, but they cannot snap their fingers and turn you into Dan Abramov. This is merely the beginning of a career-long journey. It will be hard and frustrating but extremely rewarding. Dig deep and prepare yourself for this grind, only time and practice can make you a great coder. Have the patience to make mistakes and get lost. The right attitude will do wonders.
Everyone that attends this course will have the opportunity to emerge as competent, entry-level developers. The cirriculum is constantly updated to stay relevant (big emphasis on React here) and by the end you will have written some code that you probably couldn't imagine before hand. Some will squander this course by not abiding by the aforementioned points, but that doesn't have to be you.
The final day - demo day - will be the real shocker if you're someone like me. What surprised me is the sheer interest and attention (and propositions) you will receive from recruiters, employers and investors who will actually line up to speak with you. If you've done your research you'll know that the industry is always hungry for devs, and now I've seen it first hand. You will not want for job opportunities, its just up to you to pursue them.

I attended the first cohort ever for Decode MTL. The head instructor Ziad did an excellent job of introducing HTML, CSS, and the use of the Foundation framework for rapid prototyping. He was always around via email or phone for when we had questions,... Read More gave us cool assignments to work on, and even answered more advanced questions when we were curious. He personally showed me how to use Jekyll, which is a really cool front-end technology with back-endy features.

We didn't cover to much javascript as originally promised. It was a bit to advanced for us, given the amount of time we had. This is likely why they removed it from their front-end course.

All in all, I highly recommend Ziad and Decode MTL.