Haiku Academy

This bootcamp is very good for teaching you how to build a web application full circle. The content is loaded with material with a small enough class size it feels as if your learning with your friends. Tony is very very knowledgeable and will push you... Read More to work past your boundaries. At times you can feel overwhelmed but it is normal as the course progresses the overall picture becomes clearer. I would definetly reccomend this course to a friend. Many of the things we learned are exactly what the job market is asking for experience in. All in all good value for money plus the opportunity to experience a different culture and eat delicious food while your doing it!

I was attending the course from June - August. I'm reviewing this course from the view of someone, who has studied education before.

The course offers you a great set of skills, which you need for your future job as a web developer. Everything is in state-of-the-art!... Read More
The course included:
-Vanilla JS, React, Bootstrap as Frontend Libraries + Packages like Axios
-Backend technologies like NodeJS, Express and ODM like Mongoose
-Relational Database like SQL and non-relational Database like MongoDB
-Version Control Management (Git, Github)
-Tools for coding, such as GitKraken/GitTower, IDE, using the Terminal
-And much more...

Tony as a teacher is a great personality and is a genius in the area of programming. Not only does he balance very fine between theoretical input and practical training, also does he include some games, to make it more interactive. When I got stuck at some point with my final project, he didn't just write the code for me, but more encouraged me to try to figure out myself. Even though it was very challenging at tough at some points, but damn was it rewarding once I succeeded to fix my bug.
I was really impressed about how Tony is implicitly including important principles you need to have as good and inspiring teacher.

The course was extremely valuable for me, because not only have I learned a lot, also have I (and another guy from the second batch) already found a job in the industry even BEFORE the course ended.

I'm very grateful that I could attend this course.

The teacher Tony is extremely competent about the topic, it immediately become clear he has worked for years in the field and he gives the student a practical approach to the different topics, making them able to finish basic projects after 1 week from... Read More the start of the camp. This learning by doing method was highly beneficial for me. It is also clear he has studied how to teach things so he doesnt give anything for granted which is a key factor, especially for beginners as I was. I started from a close to zero level and I am happywe spend the first days toclarify some basic key concept, itmakes much more easier and faster the following learning process. The school is nextto the sea, soit is possible to go to the beach atthe end of the class, showers are also provided. Lamai beach, the location, is a quite area in Koh Samui so there is no space for distraction which was extremely important for me, givingthe factthe course is very intense, ithelped a lotto stay focused and improve faster. I extremely satisfied by the level I reached, a good junior developer lever, whichis more than I expected. I am also satisfied bytheappI developed, whichwaslikewise unexoected. I strongly reccommend this course, especially for thise who are starting to code and have just a basic knowledge of it, the course is extremely accurate and very well structured.

Being a Teacher I know how hard it can be to go up there and break something down as complex as a programming language to beginners, but I think Tony does a great job of it. Thanks for always being so patient with me and doing your fair-share to make... Read More this an enjoyable experience for us. I love the staff here and just wanna thank you all for your kindness and this experience. I already know if you continue to perfect your craft, this bootcamp will make it be way up there someday; and I'll be able to say, "I did it way before it was cool !". You will be missed!

I will write a positive review, as I've benefited greatly from this course.

Tortuga is set to become the Hack Reactor 2.0 of Asia.
I say 2.0 as there are improvements on Hack Reactor in several things, not just the price, but also the student to tutor ratio.... Read More

PROS:

Curriculum:

When taking a look at different bootcamps in tropical (paradise) places, this is the only curriculum that takes you from plain vanilla javascript through a JS framework.
There's no wasting time with Ruby on Rails or other things.
It's all about the top things in the market - Vue.js as the front-end framework, Node.js as backend.
If you get stuck when trying to customize something you did with the ease of use of a framework, you have the core nuts and bolts skills to go back on vanilla js and edit it.
That's the best selling point of the course imho.

Price:
Competing bootcamps in Asia don't give you this curriculum for such a price.
Hack Reactor costs 17,000 USD for the course alone.
Here, it's couple thousand USD with accommodation included. Perks as free house cleaning etc as well.
Unheard of and unique in the bootcamp ecosystem.

Founder:

The founder is the best value-add the program brings.
At this stage, where Tortuga didn't branch out across Asia, you will get his personal input at every step of the journey.
I always feel he is very concerned if I am falling behind, and he wants to ensure everyone comes out successful out of the course.
He has 15 years experience always in JS, and has a always-learning approach.
One example is my project, that is a video data visualization that requires some advanced coding that even falls outside of the course.
Yeah, before you ask, I am doing data in a JS project :P
At some parts, he tells me to focus on other things and he'll get back to me.
He then tells me to check github, and comes and sits for 1 hour breaking down step by step from the beginning what the code meant, so I understand what I am doing.

Staff:

Angela and Curley are great at making you feel at home, and always trying to ensure you're having a good experience off-campus.
There's weekly trips, where feedback from the class is sought for what we'd like to do, and then a trip gets organized at a very low price.
We did a complete Island tour, at 200 thai baht per person. That's 6usd :)

CONS:

This is aimed in general, at the expectation people have of learning to code.
You need to put in the hours.
I came to this course with zero knowledge of programming.
Somedays we start school at 9am, and I am leaving at 10pm.
Javascript , in all its aspects, is not a press the button and it happens.
Yes, there are great things like Lodash, Angular.js that will help you, but you gotta put in the time :)

There are two main reasons why I decided to attend Tortuga Coders bootcamp.

First of all, my academic background is mostly design-centered; I am a professional Web designer with a little experience of coding who is trying to seek a career as a Frontend... Read More Developer.
Here I am, almost half way through: we’ve been facing the basics of HTML and CSS first week, we proceeded with plain Javascript, JQuery and Bootstrap and finally we dived into backend with NodeJS and MongoDB.
An early knowledge and discipline are required in order to face this bootcamp.
The course is stimulating and challenging; whatever theory we’ve approached, it has been put into practice straight away.

Our teacher Tony is well prepared and experienced; his willingness is highly valuable but most importantly, his proficiency in teaching is to be acknowledged.

Truth is time flies and it’s never enough, but I feel certain about the fact that I’ll be left with enough skills which will grant me the possibility to determine my future and achieve my goals. In the end I’ll add that the price is more than reasonable.

Second, I wanted to travel and I was looking more for a “all-round experience” rather than a simple academic one.
Learning to code on an island in Thailand is priceless. Life is easy and relaxed. Adventure and exploring are always behind the corner. Also, Tony and his collaborators are welcoming, accommodating and friendly.

So far, where matters of coding and “exploring” are concerned, I must say that I am more than glad I joined this bootcamp, I am really satisfied with my choice and I highly recommend this experience.

Before I joined this bootcamp, I have worked professionally as a Java Developer for more than 7 years. One day, I was searching for information to learn more about frontend tools and technologies so that I can pursue a career as a full stack developer... Read More and I came across Tortuga Coders. I took a leap of faith enrolling and fast forward to today, I do not regret my decision at all! I learned a great deal of modern tools and technologies within the first three weeks, such as: modern Javascript (including ES6 syntax), jQuery, Bootstrap and User Interface Design, NodeJs, MongoDB, and more (Angular, Vue, React) for the next month. A typical class is usually started with lecture in the morning and then after that we will be given exercise / coding challenge to further reinforce the concept that was being taught. One thing that I liked from this course that it is sooo up to date with the modern technology, such that we do not waste time learning old technology. For example, we learned so much about Promises and not so much on callback, as Promises is newer and better than callback.

Tony, the instructor, is a great instructor. He is very friendly and knowledgeable and he knows what is in the trend and best practices. Some of the people / skeptics might argue that we can learn about all this stuffs from Google / API documentation / etc. Well, my answer to them is sure, you can learn all of it from Internet. But you will not be learning best practice of writing codes, for example what is the best way to refactor your code, and you will not be doing a lot of coding on your own. This course will teach you best practices and indirectly force you to write codes on your own (by doing pre-course challenge, mini challenge, project, etc).

One thing to improve in this course is probably the duration, as the duration is only 2 months so it is very hard to cover everything in the course, considering the amount of materials to be covered, so a lot of self studies and self explorations are also required. Also, ideally, the course should be divided into basic and intermediate / advanced level, as participants for this course come from various backgrounds (some people might have never coded before).