As I find myself about to enter the final week of Flatiron School Denver’s 15-week software engineering program, I have the urge to make a post helping others who are in the same position I was in months ago.
Indecision, doubt, fear, and stress were just a few of the many feelings cycling around in my head as I sat at my desk, making pro and con lists to various different coding bootcamps. Without taking sides on schools (Flatiron Denver was pretty amazing though! Ok, I’m done), I’m going to attempt to help prospective bootcamp students zero-in on what to look for in a program, and what to expect once they start.
The Most Important Thing: The Schedule
Everyone has different life circumstances, so the most important thing to consider when joining a program, is where that program is going to fit into your life. I was in the fortunate position where I could quit my job and dedicate myself to a full-time program, leaving my wife as our household’s sole income until I can land my dev job. I would recommend this to anyone who can do it. The daily immersion of a full-time program will guarantee a few things:
- You’ll actually “feel” like a programmer. If you can code and read docs for 6–8 hours a day, that’s as a good a sign as any that you may have found a profession that’s a fit for you.
- You’ll learn faster. Immersion has a way of really re-mapping your neural patterns in a profound way. It also helps you cope with the likelihood of imposter syndrome much easier.
- You will automatically be networking while you learn. You’ll find that you bond with your fellow students much faster, and having learned to code together, these people will be a valuable support network for you as you finish the program and go off into the world of professional development and job searching.
While this is an ideal scenario, not everyone can afford to take months off of work to further their education. If you need to maintain a job, find a program that allows for that.
Don’t harm your ability to learn by trying to fit a full-time program into a life that can’t find room for it!
There are programs offering various types of courses ranging from full-time (35–40hrs+/week), part-time (15–25 hrs) or a go-at-your-own-pace program, that allows for a flexible timeline, but may also provide less instructor-support. Choose the program that will allow you to learn best and that can fit your daily schedule.
Hardware:
Most bootcamps require students to be running on a recent version of Mac OS. This helps keep everyone on the same page and makes for a great development environment. Macs are kind of expensive though, so I ended up getting a refurbished Macbook Pro from macofalltrades.com. Their selection can be somewhat limited, but there are a number of reputable refurbished resellers out there. If you’re not already a Mac owner, this route can save you some cash.
Peaks and Valleys:
Learning to program isn’t easy. There’s a lot of new concepts to take in and even experienced programmers scratch their heads for a period of time when learning new material in a language or framework unfamiliar to them. The first day of class our lead instructor warned us of peaks and valleys. There’s going to be peaks — times where the material just clicks and you feel like the god of programming. There’s also going to be valleys — moments where you regret ever making the switch to coding because you feel stupid and can’t figure out a simple concept that everyone else seems to get but you.
This is all normal, and knowing and expecting these moments is half the battle in combatting them. At the end of the day, most people don’t learn to code by being super brilliant, or naturally gifted, or just having an amazing teacher. Those things all help, but persistence is the name of the game. Persistence will get you through the valleys and allow you to celebrate the peaks. Taking breaks, watching videos, googling errors, refactoring code — all of these things will sharpen your tools on your way to those lightbulb moments. When trouble comes, don’t beat yourself up about it. Learning literally can’t happen while you’re stressed.
Build. And. Burn.
My favorite way to learn new languages and framework is the build-n-burn. Spend a few hours building something with the language or framework you just learned, then shut it down, forget about it, and do it again. This cycle of building things, experimenting, and then trying it from scratch again — that’s where true learning and understanding starts to take place.
Learning Javascript? Find and API and make a website. Get some stuff to render on a page. Play with a CSS style or animation. Toss it aside and do it again, experimenting with something different — maybe this time import a script that does something cool.
These strides turn into giant leaps fast and it’s amazing how much you can learn in a 15-week program just by following this sort of workflow. I entered Flatiron School Denver with almost zero coding knowledge, and 8 weeks later I surprised myself when I learned how to integrate augmented reality into a vanilla Javascript project. Fellow students branched off into equally ambitious territory, some using similar technologies, creating games, others incorporating web-sockets, and even making chrome extensions. I sit here now, 1 week left in my program, staring at my first React Native app, still amazed that 14 weeks ago, building such a thing would have seemed impossible.
In conclusion, find a bootcamp with a schedule that you can fit into your life. Immerse yourself in the material and accept that there will be highs and lows, Network, meet people, and always be practicing some aspect of what you’ve learned. Good luck, and enjoy the process of learning new technologies. Cutting edge stuff isn’t far out of reach.
