The Hacking School

This bootcamp literally focuses on building and strengthening your core concepts in programming fundamentals especially with data structures & algorithms. I can say its reliable and I definitely saw an improvement in the way I read code and understand... Read More the documentation. Would really recommend to anyone who wants to pump up their knowledge and become confident in building applications. Instructors have an amazing teaching style. Staff has a great vibe too.

Hello everyone,

I am Rizwan. I graduated from the Web Development course in The Hacking School on October of 2019. I had taken both Full Stack Web and Mobile Development courses, and this my review of the five or so months that i spent here learning programming.... Read More

To begin with, let me give you some context. I am a 17 year old and I just finished my 12th standard examinations in June of this year. I come from an absolutely great school in West Bengal named The Levelfield School. We leverage a lot of technology in the teaching process to help students learn. We have two web applications and about 12 Android and iOS apps. However, even though they were conceptualized in the school, the actual coding was done elsewhere. So, to rectify this, we came to learn web development ourselves, so that from conception to product, the entire building process was done in-house.

We spent 3 months learning Web Development, specialising on the MERN stack ( MongoDB for database, Express framework for server, React for front-end, NodeJS for backend ). I was fortunate to be part of a great cohort, full of very diverse people and all hungry to learn programming. Right from the beginning, our days were intense and packed with a lot of learning and activity.

With the exception of a couple of people, no one else in the cohort had any background in programming and by no background, I really mean none. We had no idea of the technologies or the tools that we would be using, no idea about the languages that we were going to learn, it really was point zero. So we all started from scratch, right from the very basics of HTML and CSS, even the very basics of computing and the internet itself, non-decimal number systems, IP addresses, MVC architecture etc.

Slowly but surely, we moved up and learnt amazing new concepts everyday and as we were learning we became more confident in ourselves. From plain HTML and templating engines, we moved on to ReactJS for making our Front-end UI. We are truly amazed at the awesome power of React, building super-fast applications that existed only on one page, so didn't need to reload. Then we were introduced to Redux, and how to avoid messy state management and complicated ways of passing information through Render Props. By the end of it, we had actually wrapped up our sessions about three weeks in advance and we were free to build our own projects.

We re-build our school's website on React, (earlier it was in plain HTML). After that, we build another application which was a Polling app for the school. In the process we learnt about Socket.io and how WebSockets work. How we can display changing data in Real-time.

We had a lengthy class on Cloud deployment, where were learnt everything from the best ways to build your app and deploy it in cloud, to learning advanced concepts like Docker and CI/CD with GitHub webhooks.

Overall we had an amazing experience learning Web Development in The Hacking School, we had truly moved from zero to being a full stack developer in a short span of just three months.

We even participated in a few Hackathons that were organized in Hyderabad, and we gave a great display of an idea for a VR app that we had for the market of Real Estate and office spaces.

However, there were a few hiccups for our Mobile Development Class and we weren't able to go through it with the same fervour we had done so with the web development.

Other than this, there are a few other places that I think The Hacking school can improve upon.

One big factor was infrastructure. For most of the duration we were here, the lift on the building wasn't working. It quickly stopped even after it was fixed more than once.
Secondly, there were occasional problems with the internet connection ( not really a problem with the The Hacking School, but more with the service provider, but still it proved to be a nuisance a couple of times ).
I thought there should have been much more time management and a little better review and weekly planning with instructors. At the end of every week, there should be a short and compulsory one-on-one session with the program director, to track progress and make sure that every one was on the same page about what is happening in the cohort.
In addition, building small and weekly projects ( probably beginning from the third week or so ) should be a compulsory part of the curriculum.

The overall experience of the bootcamp was amazing, the atmosphere here really motivates you to push your limits and do more, here you are taught to enhance your skill as a problem solver, you learn all the latest technologies and upcoming trends in the... Read More software industry.

In just 3 months of my Web Development course, I learned a lot of theory and practical skills. The instructions for the daily tasks were quite detailed and high quality. Help is always available. The curriculum covers diverse aspects of software development... Read More and is always taught with a practical focus.

The curriculum at The Hacking School is particularly rigorous. Getting behind is quite easy to do. Many times, there isn't enough time to revise previously learnt material , but said it is a 13 weeks program you have to be fast and adapt to whatever comes in your way.

Overall though, a very important summer for my self-development.

As to my relation with The Hacking School - After completing this bootcamp (April to June 2018 cohort), I got my first Developer job as an Associate Software Engineer in full-stack web-development ( MERN stack / Mongo, Express, React, Node) coming from... Read More a completely different educationl (MBA) and career background (Banking).

One can absolutely launch a career in Software Engineering with what you learn at here, if you’re dedicated to the program from start to finish. The Hacking School creates engineers by focusing students time on projects and coding challenges - with conceptual lectures to complement. Curriculum include teaching some of the basic computer science (data structures and algorithms) fundamentals and focusing on a single language - JavaScript - for both backend and frontend.

Daily Routine at the bootcamp - It was super intense. Mornings were spent learning a new concept along with an instructor and afternoons left us mostly on our own to apply the new concepts in daily challenges. I rarely left the classroom before 10pm and indeed have on many occasion stayed back overnight. Weekdays were basically wake up at 6-30 am, work in class all day and night, then go home, go to bed. Even weekends, though there was normally no classes, rarely offered a reprieve, as we will have weekend showdown or weekend hackathon project to show off for the next week, or tech-talk to be prepared for. By the end of the 13 weeks I couldn’t imagine going any longer, I was so exhausted. But I loved every moment of the entire 13 weeks.

Overall Environment - Good mix of healthy competition and mutual support among the students to continue the intensive learning environment.

Industry contact and support in getting you the interview - Meraj’s contact in the startup indsustry in Hyderabad is probaly the most important asset to leverage for anybody coming to this bootcamp. There’s hardly any CTO’s or CEO’s or Tech-Founders in the city’s startup and tech-scene that Meraj does not know :) . In the last couple of weeks of the program itself, he arranged for two or three interviews and company vistis and the placement season was on full swing.

Meraj’s (Hacking School’s founder and CEO ) personal leadership in moving the students toward their goal - He takes a genuine and sincere interest in moving people and their projects forward to the next stage. Personally I am hugely lucky and privileged and honoured to have the opportunity to get to know him and getting to hear his inspirational talks. He also gave us this hugely valuable opportunity that if anybody of us can build a really intersting project during the bootcamp, he will arrange a tech-talk and invite some of the founders and captains from city’s tech-scape and we can show-off my projects to them.

Fantastically knowldgeable and genuinely involved instructor. For my batch the instructor was Prshant, who is always super energetic and full of enthusiasm to teach new concepts to the batch. He also runs his own startup in Hyderabad, and thats why could give us the first-hand knowdeldge from the industry best-practices (which a full-time trainer probably would have missed). Personally for me, he took a mock interview over the phone to simulate the exact environment of an actual interview.

Great support for outstation and international students - The school has very involved and super-helpful Program Member (Ashar) who will very patiently explain all your questions and doubts before joining the bootcamp. He also arranged the accomodation before I reached this city. And then after reaching here, he helped me all the way, to get settled down in the city and gave me all the relevant local informaton important for the next three months of journey. He also greatly supported in scheduling the interviews and co-ordinating between companies and students.

Some areas, in my personal opinion, I think The Hacking School can probaly do better ( or future students should take take more initiatve in these aspects themselves, because learning for a web-developer is after-all a self-propelled journey ) - And assuming the end goal for most boot camp attendees is to go in and 12/13 weeks later emerge with the coding chops and confidence to not just get a job as a full-time software engineer, but build a career out of it.

A) More planned mock interviews during the last four weeks of the program to make the bootcampers Interview-Ready for each of the seperate topics, so we can survive a two, three or four hours of a solid technicjal interviews.

B) More frequent online timed-tests in platforms like HackerRank ( we only had one during the whole program) - this will make us perform substantially better on actual interviews.

C) More stringent time-mangement and sticking to course-schedule (both on a daily basis and for the whole of 13 weeks ), becuase for our cohort and also my immediately junior cohort, the the ReactJS sessions were a wee bit messy and hurried. Similarly I thought, more time-mangement and planning needs to be applied in completing the final comprehensive project.

The Hacking School Coding bootcamp is a place where anyone can learn how to code.you can learn how to work with a team and how to work on big projects.and if you are new to coding no need to wory because the instructors are very excellent, they will teach... Read More you from every basic thing and will make you a professional. The atmosphere is very awesome. The placement assistance is very good.if anyone want to be a full stack web developer then this is the place for them. And if you want a good placement you should join this BootCamp.

I attended the full stack web development bootcamp here from Apr 2018 to Jun 2018. It was about three months long. Here's my review of it.

There are two things two look for when you're looking for a coding bootcamp to attend. First is how well they teach... Read More and second is job assistance (that is if you're looking to get hired after the bootcamp).

The Hacking School scores highly on both counts. It is sort of a learning fast-track. What would normally take a year or two to learn takes you about 3 months.

This is the result of great mentoring, motivation and peers.

The organization tries makes sure you will get the best possible job after the bootcamp. So, in this count also it does a great job. Most of the companies that come here for interview are local companies in Hyderabad, if you're looking to get hired in some other city then it will be a bit tougher. Although, this is changing as in the future there will probably be more companies hiring from the bootcamp.