Software Development Online Part-Time Accelerated

Don't fall for their scam. I graduated from their software development program in 2023. Their curriculum was grabbed from free online sources, they lied about the graduated rates and the placement rates. They lied about helping you get a job as well. All the career service managers ever did was provide you with an excel sheet listing links of job sites and resources that any one can find by googling it themselves. Also half the links they provided were from websites that do not exist anymore. They also had limited space for helping you in meetings and then blamed you for not seeing them when "time is available". Coding Dojo sells their program as good for you any age, any place in life, as being able to transition into the tech field when in reality they used inflated numbers. Anyone that could not find a job that ended up freelancing on fiverr or volunteering and working for free was counted as "hired" and "successful" in Coding Dojo's eyes. All my instructors were previous students of theirs that hadn't found a job yet. All our TA's were also previous graduates from which only 1/3 of them were actually any good to help with problems that came up, however, none of them were good when it came to you trying something new for a project. All that the instructors did was read off the online material that you had access to and had to also study on. Essentially, if it wasn't in the curriculum then they did not know anything about it or how to help you. Most of the time, you had more help and learned more from other students after the program ended. I have learned more from Udemy courses, Coursera courses, and free coding websites than from Coding Dojo bootcamp. Now I am stuck with a PRIVATE student loan from a servicing company that Coding Dojo pushes for you to use and that loan servicer does not care about lowering payments, postponing payments more than 3 months for a total of 9 months, or any help at all. Most of us are still out of a job or had to go back to our old job now with more debt. Some of us, including myself, have filed for bankruptcy because a $500 private student loan monthly payment is ridiculous when we can barely afford a living in this economy. Coding Dojo and Ascent Funding should be sued for putting so many students through financial hardship and should refund students their money. 

The short version.I believe that this course is good for complete beginners but it is too expensive for the value you get. That's in regards to the knowledge you come out of the program with and your chances of breaking into an engineering role, particularly in this economy. If you are going to go through with the course, I highly recommend taking only 1 stack (i.e., language). They're extremely similar and it's not possible to become proficient in multiple languages during the course's timeframe. Honestly, my biggest regret in this course was taking more than 1 stack. The longer version. Background. A bit background on me for comparison sake if it helps with your decision making. I've worked a bunch of corporate jobs from finance to consulting. I'm good at excel but was a complete beginner at coding. I started learning how to code on my own about 4 months prior to enrolling into the bootcamp. I ultimately decided to enroll because I wanted to accelerate my learning with the thought that the bootcamp would significantly decrease the amount of time it took me to get a job. I came in knowing that bootcamps in general are not a golden ticket into a software development role, and that ultimately, you get out what you put in. Curriculum. I took two stacks, Python and MERN (Javascript). I definitely did learn a few things during the program. However, I was surprised to see a number of lessons in the curriculum were simply links to other sites. In fact, the very most I learned during the program was during the lesson on CSS and the curriculum was basically all links to lessons you could find for free, such as Flexbox Froggy. I do want to make it clear that you do learn the basics of programming from loops, data types and conditionals. You also come out of each stack being able to build a basic app, learning how to build the frontend, backend and connect the two. However, I knew most of the material already even though I had been learning how to code for 4 months prior, using free resources. There's definitely value of having structure and guidance (although Chat-GPT could fill that role) so if that's a reason why you want to join the program then that's a great decision too. Just please don't take more than 1 stack. I think MERN is the best because you learn react and that's a very popular frontend framework. The stacks are basically copies of each other and I didn't gain any additional value, but it was expensive. The bootcamp sells you on the importance of learning multiple languages but once you have the foundational knowledge of a language, it's all syntax from there. You're likely gonna forget the first stack's language nuances by the time you're done with the second stack anyways, and I think it's more important to show that you're proficient at coding through your projects. That becomes a lot easier when you stick to one language. Teachers and Teacher Assistants. The bootcamp has multiple lectures weekly and also provides TA support throughout the afternoon / evening. I found both the teachers and TA's to be very nice and knowledgable about the curriculum. They're former students, which is definitely helping the bootcamps employment numbers. There are moments where it's still clear that the teachers and TA's learned coding fairly recently. As I mentioned in the curriculum section, you get taught the basics and if you need help with that level of knowledge, then the support is great. Step a little outside of that boundary and you don't get much support. I visited the TA's about a number of times during the course with questions that were just a step or two deeper into what was being taught in the curriculum and I genuinely can't remember a time when they answered my question. One TA even explained that it's a skill to be able to find an answer by myself, which is true but I'm also paying over $12K for you to help guide me. Chat-GPT became popular during my time in this course and I can confidently say that it has been so much more helpful than Coding Dojo. Career Support. A big reason why I chose Coding Dojo was the lifetime career support. It sounds amazing and ultimately the reason why many people choose to join a bootcamp is to get a job. The people who you will work with are kind. I had a great experience interacting with them on a personal level, but they provided me with limited help. I didn't use all of their resources to be fair. I did use them for guidance on how to approach the job search, my resume, and review of my portfolio website. For guidance, it was very high level. For example, you should build out a portfolio website highlighting projects, get your resume together, and look at jobs on these sites. When I was talking to the sales rep, it seemed as if Coding Dojo had a lot more relationship or pipelines with companies looking to hire. However, at present there were no relationships like that. Part of that is the economy but it did not seem like there were many to begin with. For my resume and portfolio website, I just got a lot of praise or minor edits. If you come from a career path where you have experience writing a corporate resume then the career services in my opinion will not provide significant value. Especially if you also know where to look for jobs (BuiltIn, Wellfound, Y Combinator's website). These jobs aren't necessarily hard to find. However, if you're coming for less adjacent field then there is definitely value here.  Conclusion. After going through a bootcamp, I understand all the comments about how bootcamp is not a golden ticket into a software development role. Yet, it can still be useful. The question is whether it is worth the cost. I say maybe, but only if it's for one stack. Also, I suggest part time if you can rather than full time because it's not going to be easy to break into engineering after this program. If you can be self-taught I would personally go that route, picking a project and then learning what it takes to build that project. In fact, that's exactly what I did and I've learned 5x more than I learned during the bootcamp. I even learned the most up-to-date popular technologies and frameworks, which the curriculum doesn't teach. Not that the curriculum is outdated, but it's also not completely up-to-date either.

I learned to code while pregnant and with a newborn. The platform flexible and interactive. You can set your own pace, watch lectures live or recorded and the access to live help is always an option. Looking to take more courses so I can further my skills!

A great place to learn to be a programmer

The Coding Dojo experience was one of the hardest things I've ever done. It pushed me to my limit. But I loved it. The Dojo has so much to offer. They have amazing scheduling options, so much learning support - from instructors to TAs, great online community, user-friendly learning platform, reading & video materials, lectures from multiple instructors, and great career services support. There's so much to learn and it's going to require more time than you think but it's so worth it. 

I loved my time at Coding Dojo! My instructors always were quick to communicate and created a lovely environment. The platform was well organized and user-friendly. There are many ways this school creates community, between the Dojo Hall and discord it would be hard not to make friends. Both students and TAs go above and beyond to help you gain a deeper understanding of the material or help through any problems you are struggling with. Shout Out to Zack, Adrian, Cameron, and Justina I worked mostly with these lovely people that I would give a raise if I could. They are all incredibly sweet, enjoyable, informative, and go above and beyond. The curriculum was very challenging just because there was so much to learn in such a small period of time but it was certainly worth it. 

Everyone was so helpful including instructors and TA's. Also, they have a career manager that gives advice to help land a job. I would recommend Coding Dojo to anyone wanting to learn web developing. 

As the title says, if you're willing to put in the time & effort, Coding Dojo is an amazing bootcamp to get you started in a Software Development career.  This probably applies to Software Development in general, but since Coding Dojo offers 3-stacks(not all 3 are required), it definitely is not something you're just going to be doing on the side, or when you have free time.  Having graduating from the 3-stack program, I can tell you that if you actually put time aside to study the material, understand how each line of code works, understand how individual components contribute to creating an application & try to solve problems on your own without looking for someone to hold your hand every step of the way, then you will have a great foundation to build upon from there.  As far as I know, Coding Dojo offers the most value in terms of languages, web technologies, etc, that are taught versus other bootcamps that I've looked at.  BUT, as I said, you have to put in the time & effort to get the most out of it, do not just do the bare-minimum.  You're given the most in-demand tools(the ones most job postings are looking for experience in) to equip yourself with in order to help you get started in a new career in Software Development.  Half-way through my second stack I felt comfortable enough to start applying for jobs, so I ended up landing one before graduation.  If you plan on doing the bare minimum, i.e., just turning in the required assignments & passing the exams, then this is a career that you should reconsider.  I learned a LOT at Coding Dojo, then continued to further my new skill sets on my own after having a solid foundation of each stack which has led me down a never-ending rabbit hole of information(in a good way).  Take the tools that Coding Dojo offers here and put them to work.

I took the part time online bootcamp and loved it! I did the MERN stack option and learned so much. I enjoyed the class structure and the online learning platform was a fantastic resource. They also run a Discord server that gives you access to teachers and TAs! I would totally recommend this program for new high school grads or people making a career change (like myself leaving the legal field after 10 years)!

Coding Dojo offers a variety of courses that cover the currently most sought after coding languages and trends in the developer world, as well as valuable career services for their students and graduates. Students with little previous knowledge of coding languages are able to learn to create full-stack applications in a short period of time through intensive study and practice. At every step, there are instructors, TAs, and classmates willing to help students progress from minimal to comprehensive knowledge. Coding Dojo offers a valuable bootcamp experience for those aspiring to enter the fields of web development, software engineering, data science, cyber security, and other related career areas. 

While making my career change, I needed to find a bootcamp that had a solid PT program but also had support and a good curriculum. I didn't think it was possible til I found Coding Dojo's Accelerated PT bootcamp. Great curriculum, great guidance and support. I knew some html and css before the program but I can confidently say I'm a software dev at this point. 

I really liked this course. I started it in June and finished it in September, they taught me to develop 100% functional applications, the teachers were super functional and I liked the relationships with my friends and the projects that we developed as a team.

It's a great course to learn the foundations of full stack web development in several languages. The instructors are great and it's a great networking opportunity. The curriculum does have some gaps in terms of some language fundamentals (like access local files or directories or using the assert() function for unit testing). I think it would be great if they offered an advanced or part II course for a given language if you wanted to focus on a particular language rather than learn a few.

Where to start... The course overall isn't terrible, but the implementation and teachers are. The TAs barely know enough to teach (one couldn't unzip an exam and failed it, another couldn't explain why port 80 is HTTP).The coursework is severely lacking. They consistently tell students they aren't providing all the information they need to succeed, and that students should find info themselves. Which would be ok if it weren't literally every single class / assignment. You end up wondering why you're paying them $14,000 to get told "use Google" every day. Although, in light of explanation skills of the teaching staff, Google *is* a better education, and you should wonder why you're paying $14,000.They also teach old tech. Such as Python with Django instead of Flask. MEAN/MERN stacks that only work if you're deploying on 1 server, but not if you're using micro services or auto-scaling, etc.Overall, I would say potential applicants are better off grabbing 4-5 courses from Udemy, and find a few projects on Google to complete. Which is somewhat sad because they *almost* hit the mark at Coding Dojo, but missed it just enough to miss it completely.

My time at coding dojo was very challenging and also very rewarding. Getting into a rhythm with the workload took some getting used to, but eventually I found a good pace. The instructors and TA's were a great help every step of the way. Would highly recommend this program to anyone looking to get into coding. 

Even in the part time classes, you can expect to put 30 hours a week some weeks in, especially in your specific stacks. 

I looked, sampled and experimented with a few learn to code avenues during the pandemic. Lot's of starting and getting stuck in the weeds. I am very glad to have entrusted Coding Dojo with my time and money. The bootcamp curriculum moves you through with considerable knowledge quickly backed by talented teachers (MERN hats off to Kevin U. and a solid CSS thank you Platt!). Yes it is a brisk pace but this is what is needed. Software programming is one of those careers where smart guidance can save you much time going down the wrong rabbit hole. After you finish the camp you realize that you have the tools to continue the journey. They don't give you a fish they teach you how to fish. I'm off to hunt the (software opportunity) whales... 

Some others have covered it as well, but I'd more or less recommend avoiding the Dojo if you're looking for a well supported education. If you learn well without support and feel like you don't need help finding a job, then this school might work for you as its cheaper than some other self-paced options. I graduated recently and just feel massively unprepared to even look for work as my CS contact essentially ignored me for 16 weeks and provided none of the promised resources despite me asking several times. I gave up about halfway through and focused on increasing my coding skillset hoping that would get me a job or at least put me in the position to get one. So far, no luck- but it is early yet.

This program has great teachers and TA's. It can be a lot of work per week (up to 40 hours). If you can't commit to the time you should probably go with a different program.

Shallow Python but decent deep dive into Django. Clunky transitions from seemingly established platforms. Should have waited until the end of a "class" maybe(?)