Flatiron School

I'm currently working my way through this course in preparation for the program. I've done some other self-teaching programs online and this has definitely been the best free resource I've found. I think it does a good job of walking the line between... Read More being manageable/understandable and challenging enough to really improve your skills. The chat feature is also very helpful and the response times are great, so if you ever do get stuck it's easy to find the help you need.

I initially started self-learning on Codecademy and found that there weren't enough practice problems for all of the material to stick long term. After finding Flatiron's Bootcamp Prep Course, I was making notable progress. I've since completed the course... Read More and in my experience, it was the best free resource for learning the fundamentals.

The course is designed so that you're required to think pragmatically which helps improve upon your problem-solving abilities. What's also super neat is that there's a chat function to ask instructors and peers for help if you get stuck on a problem. The response rate is within seconds and the responses have been extremely helpful every time!

Before doing the Flatiron Bootcamp Prep I was self teaching myself from various sources including a free cource on web development from Udacity and a course I purchased from Udemy.

Learning from the first two methods I always got confused when I got to... Read More Javascript Arrays. I just could not grasp the concept. It wasn't until I started the Flatiorin bootcamp prep that the lesson on Arrays started to click.

The way the lessons build on each other in the Flatiron prep is very helpful. What is more helpful is the ability to interact with your code through their IDE (integrated development environment) learning system.

Through this I learned how to problem solve and understand better the errors I was making in my code.

Since completing the bootcamp prep I have been accepted into an upcoming cohort and am excited to get started.

This is a great program! The instructors really work with everyone to make sure the information is well understood. The school also pairs a career coach with each student to make sure everyone finds a job. If you're unsure about the program, you can do... Read More the free bootcamp prep and see how all the lessons and labs work. I definitely recommend you try it out!

I decided to write a review to share my experience with online coding Bootcamps as I was confused before joining the flatiron school virtual campus.

Background: BS in Mechanical engineering, 10 years experience in the mechanical design, Mother of a toddler... Read More and 8 years old boy, super supportive family.

Timeline:
2016 - 2017 think about persuading a master degree in CS from a reputable institution.
Feb 2018 - Enrolled at Flatiron online web developer program
July 2018 - Graduated
Oct 2018 - got an offer and start a new position as a Programmer Analyst

School:
The curriculum is basically designed to let you digest what you learnt in the lessons in a non traditional way. The lessons, aren't just tutorials you have to follow, rather, every lesson tailed with assignment to finish. If you got stuck in understanding a concept or solving a lab, you can use the AAQ feature which is a live support from technical coaches. You can chat with them or request a 30 min screen share.
The curriculum covered Ruby as a basic language, then database fundamentals and queries instances, after that Rails " the fun part", following Javascript, finally React and Redux. Each one of those is a separate chapter, to finish the chapter, there is a project assessment. The assessment is an application from your choice covering all the chapter material and proves that you digested the material in a proper way.
The most important note is that this course teaches you how to read as the majority of the course are reading lessons, there is a video library with all the previous recorded lessons "it is a great library" which you can access in case you need further materials.
The project assessment with the technical coach lasts for almost 45 min. where you explain your code, do a live coding session by adding a new feature, etc, it goes as an actual technical interview.

Job support:
They have an amazing team that works for your sake to get the job you deserve. They sent you a weekly emails listing all the available meetups in NY, Boston, Atlanta and many other locations. There a career coach assigned to you with a regularly meeting schedule to refine your resume, linkedin profile, and the online presence.

Overall: I highly recommend Flatiron school. It is a great school with very dedicated individuals who are passionate about their missions and skillful at what they do.

Tips:

Online classes are convenient and cost effective only if you are super motivated and dedicated. Check out the free pre-bootcamp class and see if you like the course materials and learning styles at Flatiron. If you can focus and finish the pre-bootcamp under a month (20-30 hr a week), that's a good indication that you can focus and finish the whole program. And almost all of pre-bootcamp materials are part of the actual curriculum.

I am by no means an expert at anything just because I attended a bootcamp and switched career. I am happy to share my own experiences. Feel free to reach out to me on Linkedin if you want to chat more.

Have fun and enjoy life!

I decided with my husband that we both wanted to go back to school and learn software engineering. It was a bit of an endeavor of course, but I am thankful that the school offered a free boot camp prep so I could feel out the program and see if it was... Read More achievable to take on going to school. The boot camp prep for the most part was pretty easy for follow along and I really liked doing the labs. At times, it was challenging, but as long as you’re comfortable asking questions or looking things up at times, you’ll do just fine. I was also very thankful that the school worked with me on financing the program (as it was a bit challenging to budget two people in the house doing this program!) I am still in the course work and I have enjoyed the experience so far. Everyone has been very nice and worked with me as needed on any challenges I have come across.

Flatiron School's free Bootcamp Prep, for me, was a great refresher for HTML, CSS, and Javascript and completely taught me everything I know about Ruby. The Javascript and Ruby portions went over the basics, but also included lots of practice problems... Read More to solve, so you can start feeling more comfortable and confident when looking at functions and data structures. To me it seemed like a lot of this prep was learning and getting comfortable with Ruby, going into debugging, loops, classes, and a lot of projects. I was hesitant to learn Ruby at first, but after constantly using it and learning more about it, I've come to really enjoy thinking in Ruby. It's fun!
After completing this course I really felt I came a long way from when I started and I'm happy to report that was accepted into Flatiron School's bootcamp!
If you are unsure which bootcamp to attend or even just starting out with coding, I definitely recommend this prep course. There's no time limit, it's free, and I found it to be challenging and fun.

Doing the Flatiron Bootcamp Prep course changed my perception of what it takes to be a coder in the real world. The difference in my perception and understanding of what it takes to be a coder increased exponentially once I started using it, compared... Read More to the other free online resources I had used. The best way I can describe it is like having stabilizers removed after you've learned how to control a bike. The Bootcamp Prep course teaches you how to think and solve problems as well as teaching you key concepts, which really helps to solidify your learning, and prepares you for coding in the real world outside of a learning environment. The best part is it's completely free, can't recommend it highly enough, invaluable resource if you're thinking of applying to a coding bootcamp!

This is a great introductory course of around 75 hours covering the basics of Python, giving you a flavor of what's to come with the full Data Science course offered at Flatiron. There are lots of challenging labs and the learning curve is quite steep,... Read More but the content is very clear and well-written - so it's a rewarding process to work through the material. Highly recommended for anyone considering this as a career path, I'd say it's great value for money but that would be meaningless as - to top it all off, it's absolutely free!

I was shocked and delighted by the quality of Flatiron's free bootcamp prep curriculum. Having initially tried once or twice to find some free, online introductions to front-end programming, I had become used to platforms that--despite making big promises... Read More up front--only offered confusing, unhelpful, or overwhelming lessons that left me in the dark without any sense of progress made. Flatiron's bootcamp prep could not have been more different: evenly-paced, comprehensive, and with skill-testing labs at regular intervals to put your education into practice.

Even more impressive was the constant availability of Flatiron instructors & experts, even for the free bootcamp prep students like myself. On maybe five or six different occasions throughout the dozens and dozens of hours of online material, I found myself needing help from someone more capable than myself. Using Flatiron's built-in chat interface, I was always able to get truly immediate assistance from programming experts, who could help point out a mistake or make a suggestion to get me back on track.

After completing the bootcamp prep, I was successfully admitted to all of the rigorously competitive programs to which I applied. I could not recommend Flatiron's bootcamp prep more, especially for people like myself, who both wanted to see if programming was for them while--in the process--becoming a much better candidate for more advanced and thorough programming coursework.