Flatiron School vs General Assembly

I took the part-time 10-week UX Design course, and it was a good foundation to get the basics around UX research and design. The fast-paced course was challenging, especially if you're working or are a student full-time, but it was worth it because it... Read More accelerated your progress in learning and completing assignments. I think the course material and class engagement may depend on the instructor who's teaching, but as long as you stay passionate about your interest in UX and have a self-starter mentality, you can get a lot out of the course. What you get out of the course is what you put into it, and the more effort you put into it, the better you'll be prepared to have some sample work for your portfolio, especially if you're trying to pivot your career into the UX field. The course equipped me with what I needed to create my own UX projects, which I used to bolster up my portfolio, and I eventually got my first UX design job within under 6 months.

*** What background in coding did you have prior to the course? *** I came into my course having already coded a decent amount in my life. It was all hobby-based, but I felt pretty comfortable with HTML and CSS, as well as the basics of JavaScript. At... Read More the behest of some friends who were already software engineers, I also followed the advice I mentioned above, and tried to take advantage of AS MUCH free learning as I absolutely could. So for probably 2-3 months before I even enrolled in my Bootcamp, I took advantage of some sales on Udemy and bought some Stephen Grider React courses and learned as much as I could about the MERN Stack (MERN meaning MongoDB (your document database), Express.js (your Node.js web framework), React.js (your client-side JavaScript framework), and Node.js (essentially your JavaScript server). If I had time, I would have loved to have learned even more beforehand. Two main reasons for all of this: 1.) you get to test the waters and see if you even enjoy being neck-deep in a text-editor writing code! It’s not for everyone and that’s okay! 2.) and just-as-importantly… Most modern coding languages are just off-shoots of other languages. Many, many, many front-end languages are built on top of JavaScript/HTML/CSS. So, having a really solid fundamental understanding of these languages will do nothing but make learning the more difficult languages/concepts/frameworks THAT much easier. I personally don’t feel that it is possible to over-prepare for something like a bootcamp for these specific reasons. ***Has the instruction been thorough or are you googling a lot?*** Slightly loaded-question. I have LOVED my instructors. Incredibly knowledgable, empathetic, caring people who have bent-over-backwards to make sure that as many of the students in my cohort are equipped to succeed in a professional SE role post-bootcamp. The class moved kinda slowly at first, but picked up speed VERY quickly. The communicated goal was to teach us the 20% we would need to know in order to accomplish 80% of the work we would be doing. All of that to say that they, inherently, can only teach us so much in ~13 weeks. Thus, a huge focus quickly became teaching us how 1.) ask the RIGHT questions and 2.) how to scour Google or StackOverflow or wherever for answers. So… Both? The two core instructors for our cohort are very thorough, but a skill of being an effective software engineer is ultimately just problem solving, so you’ll definitely have plenty of situations where Googling a particular error or what-have-you is a must. Again, just part and parcel of being a developer. ***What material haven't you get that you wish you had (not sure if you have a sense of that yet)?*** Not sure I have a great answer for this one, but there are definitely things that I had to put time toward myself because we just patently did not cover them in class. Immediate things that come to mind are the core computer science pillars of data structures, algorithms, design patterns, and code-testing. We touch on each of the above in class, but I was not prepared for any of these appearing in technical interviews based on class. GA could definitely do a better job here, but 1.) there admittedly just isn’t enough time in 13 weeks of class and 2.) they did point me at resources, I just had to tackle them in my own time. ***Why'd you choose this program over other programs?*** Languages. I spoke to a lot of friends who were Software Engineers already, before I ever even really truly considered enrolling. They pretty much all told me the same thing: focus on what languages they’re teaching and how they support you on the job-front. GA is pretty solid on both fronts I’d say. Their tech stack is ultimately what pulled me in (we started with HTML/CSS/JavaScript to learn front-end development; then moved to full-stack and learned MongoDB, Express, Node.js, and others; then focused on drilling-down into front-end frameworks such as React; then finally learned API-driven development and kinda tying it all together, learning Ruby, Ruby on Rails, SQL, and how to make those work nicely with our frontends). Their Get You Hired Team (GA calls this “Outcomes”, which I’d say has been a little lackluster… but most of my issues with it could be tied to the fact that the entire team for my cohort is based out of DC. So they’re all crazy knowledgable, but I don’t know. There’s only so much they can do from a distance and during a global pandemic). For reference, I also seriously considered HackReactor, Flatiron School, and Turing School. ***What have been the best and the worst things about the experience?*** The best has been discovering a new love and passion, honestly. I absolutely adore what I do at this point, but BOY was it tough. Like, anyone considering a bootcamp just needs to be really, really honest with themselves and set realistic expectations. You are trying to learn an entirely new career field in 13 weeks – IT IS NOT EASY. There is an OBSCENE amount of information — and often incredibly dense, convoluted information at that. Once again, it IS NOT EASY. I drive that point only because we 100% lost multiple people from our cohort because it was just a lot more than they were expecting. A totally normal day for me was to be in class from 8am to 4pm (with breaks here and there + a longer break for lunch), take a power nap immediately after, and then grind on homework for 4 or more hours. That time is important too, because your homework is really your only chance to practice, and if you’re not practicing every day to some degree, you’re just making it harder on yourself. Then there was probably longer homework for the weekend, or a project, or whatever. Just wanting to be totally clear: I ate, slept, and breathed code because that’s kinda what it takes to make it through a bootcamp like this (again, just my opinion). ***What kind of time are you putting in outside of class?*** Not to be a broken record, but this will require a huge amount of time. I spent 500+ hours just IN-CLASS over my 3-ish months. With homework, there was generally the expectation that you would put at LEAST 4 hours toward it. If you got it done, awesome; if not, you should probably get sleep rather than throwing more than 4 hours at homework. We also had 5-ish “projects” over the course of the class. I couldn’t even begin to estimate the time I sunk into those, but we generally had 1 week of self-led work-time to finish each of those. So, ideally, you really want to have a deep interest in coding and the technologies at play with whatever you’re building. Otherwise, it just becomes difficult to stay motivated. Again, just my .02. ***Are things working out with the fully remote covid plan? Are teachers accessible and approachable?*** • Best as can be expected, I think? I would have preferred to be in-person, but remote learning hasn’t been nearly as drastically different as I kind of expected. You meet in your Zoom classroom everyday, anyone/everyone is only a Slack message away, my instructors were both always really good about hosting regular office hours + responding to random requests for help or insight. I also was still able to make a bunch of friends which I would 1000% recommend. The people in your cohort are quite literally the only one’s who will understand the depth of what you’re going through. It’s an experience that really brings people together, in my opinion. There are people I will most definitely keep in contact with after the Bootcamp. Hopefully the above wasn’t too much or too overwhelming. I am 1000% a proponent of a bootcamp like GA offers, I just think everyone should know that it is, unavoidably, a massive undertaking. But you will get out what you put in.