Craft Academy

This is a ‘bootcamp’ in every sense. It is intense. You are really immersed for 12 weeks. You have to be focused and determined. Do not expect to have a social life outside of your cohort. Do not expect to spend much time on other hobbies. Do not think you will have time over - specifically don't think it’s a perfect time to get a puppy (unless the whole family can support when you are bashing away at the computer). I did get a puppy, I don't regret it because the puppy is turning out to be an awesome dog -- but I would not do it again at the same time as the bootcamp.

This is not a course you can pass by cutting and pasting your way through assignments. This is a course where you will and have to really learn how to get things done, and get them done the right way - follow the best practices taught by the coaches. You’ll be creating real apps that do real things. You’ll do it with test-driven development and learn why Agile is important.

I was not a complete noob - I joined Craft Academy with some familiarity in development. I work with customer support and with social media, and have done websites from scratch as well as used a various amount of CMS systems. Also I was pretty good at front-end design (not test driven, though).

At work I liaise with developers who has created some of the systems we use at work (translate what the company wants to developer-language and vice versa). I wanted to learn how to do more than just frontend. I wanted to understand why our developers' estimates for implementing some things seemed to be unreasonably many hours. Now, after the bootcamp, I get it. I also now understand how you could make changes rather quickly while still keeping your standards high and best practices intact.

Now I really know why test-driven development (TDD) is so important, and I can also explain it to other people. I also understand how Agile can keep you on track, and can help make sure the quality of what you develop is high. I went from being able to basically read some types of code, to being able to make changes to existing code, to being able to write my own code from scratch (TDD).

The Craft Academy bootcamp is, like mentioned above, tough and intense. But it’s with a purpose: they are focused on making sure you know how to do things well and do things right. They cover a lot of ground so that you have a lot of knowledge and tools. And they’re focused on getting you up to the level where you really can get a job (including having some real projects to show when you interview). If I missed anything in regards to content it was the 'devops' parts. But the bootcamp is aimed at getting you a job so you can work as a hired developer, where others take care of the devops.

I’m now (thanks to Craft Academy) working with a small agile team on a live Ruby on Rails project. The team is distributed around the world, for example Ashley in Seattle (west USA) and Patrick in or outside Boston (east USA). I use what I learned in the bootcamp every day doing code-reviews or writing my own code.

To summarize: It's an experience that makes you grow as a person and teaches you coding with good standards and best practies. I am thankful that I went through it and for all the support given, before and after.

Life changing experience! 

I've been wanting to do this education for about 2 years prior to actually doing it. I have now graduated and made it out the other side. It's quite a journey that requires all your focus and time. I had some challenges, and this is my story. 

I have always been interested in coding but have no experience whatsoever. I'm older than the average people in this course I would imagine, and my highest education is high school. All that does not matter much if you're willing to put in the work. The hardest issues I had during the course was to find balance between my family life and the education. I have a young kid and a wife that works long hours. It was quite exhausting and there was not enough hours in the day I felt. 

One unexpected perk I found, was the friendships created along the way. You grow close to your teammates and gain support and a feeling of belonging. I also want to mention the enormous support you get from the coaches. They give you tough love and curse a lot, but they do care. And their methods work, you have to trust in it. Today I feel accomplished, confident and an overall sense of joy thinking about the future. Even though I'm still in the process of finding a job, I can be creative and build things to add to portfolio in the meantime. I highly recommend this course, for it was life changing. I hope the same for you!    

I just finished the fullstack web developer program with Craft Academy,

Before joining the Bootcamp I had no previous experience with coding, I was a sales consultant in a travel operator and before that working with property management in London. 

I was tired of working for limited companies and not having enough money to open my own company. I am also a traveller and I was seeking for a carrer where I can work anywhere around the globe. Craft Academy Bootcamp was exactly what I was looking for, the program is completely hands on and coaches are very supportive trying to explain in the most simple way. I am very confident to enter the market as a developer after this 12 weeks bootcamp.

I firmly reccomend any course Craft Academy provides. It was a unique experience. Very tense, required maximum focus, but in the end I was able to comprehend and work with things I never touched upon before.

The teachers were always there, ready to answer any question we had (or steer us in the right direction).

If you are ready to put your life on pause for 3 months and dedicate yourself to coding, then this is the bootcamp you should attend. Thus gaining valuable experience on how the actual work is being done (pair-programming, test driven development, agile methodologies, sprint reviews, etc.).

After researching a couple of bootcamps and visiting a few bootcamp graduation events specifically in London, I in fact decided to instead move all the way from London to Stockholm to enrol in the one bootcamp that for me stood out from the crowd, the Craft Academy bootcamp.  The best decision for many reasons:

• The cohorts/classes are smaller, meaning a higher coach-to-student ratio and more hands-on teaching. And boy are the Craft Academy coaches ah-mazing! They'll push you hard but are simultaneously there to support you along the way. I cannot credit & thank them enough for how dedicated they are and the work they put in to help us students progress. A great example, on the night of our graduation, the head coach and another coach were up until 4am(!!), on their own, resolving some issues my team were having with our final project. If that's not dedication to their students, I don't know what is. I couldn't thank them enough for that.
• Contrary to many other bootcamps, this one introduces you to a broader spectrum of technologies & frameworks, meaning you will be qualified for many more opportunities upon graduation. 
• They have a teaching philosophy of learning by doing, so you'll be building things from day one! 
• Beyond the coding though, the bootcamp follows some very strong processes that are arguably the most valuable skills you can obtain as a developer -- you code in a test- & behaviour-driven manner (a skillset that many developers lack but most employers want), you have daily scrum meetings, you version control all of your code, and so on. Basically the same way the best development teams work. In addition, you have regular retrospective sessions, meaning that you are an integral part of the feedback loop that keeps the curriculum relevant. All in all, these processes among many more will make you stand out from most other junior developers when you graduate. 

In summary, out of all the courses I've taken throughout my life, this one was arguably the most impactful and valuable. I cannot recommend it highly enough to anyone looking to become a junior developer. It is of course a bootcamp, meaning that you will have to work very hard and dedicate every minute of your day to the work. However, the impact of the learning is so tangible and with something built so frequently that you are constantly looking forward to what you will be doing the next day!

I’ve always been drawn to the tech industry but felt intimidated by the barrier of how do i get in without any relevant education? Would I have had to apply for another bachelors and take three extra years out of my life? I read up on bootcamps and many Reddit forums trying to weigh the pros and cons of self study and bootcamps. I can confidently say this bootcamp was one of the best decisions I made. The curriculum alone is fantastic and the coaches with their dedication is the icing on the cake. I had an incredible journey getting to know everyone through pair programming. Word of caution to anyone thinking about joining, be prepared to commit all you have because this course provides only as much as youre willing to sacrifice, in other words spend rvery hour coding. 

This bootcam will teach you way more than just how to code. It's all about the people, how to pair programme, how to work in a team, how to take on a project from scratch and work all the way through it. It's shows you and prepares you for what it is like to be a developer.

The coaches are passionate and commited and will follow you along this journey and help you and cheer for you. The programme is well thought through, it covers many different frameworks, but most importantly helps you get the problem solving attitude needed to then succeed in the tech industry.

Highly recommened to anyone interested in a career change or simply wants to learn more about coding. 

The time that I spent at Craft Academy Bootcamp came with one of the most challenging yet rewarding experiences of my life. If you are looking to develop a great foundational base for web development and coding in general, then I would highly recommend this course.

Craft Academy aims teach the 5 essentials that are necessary for every full stack web developer to succeed in todays job market, and most importantly, how to think like a programmer.

I believe that the coaches at craft academy successfully achieved that target between their well structured curriculum to their tireless approach to education. 

If you are willing to learn a new set of skills or develop on a set of existing skills , and are willing to put hard work and energy into the "Skill Framework" that Craft Academy and its coaches have prepared for you to learn. Then I can guarentee you won't be disappointed with this course.

Aiden J

To begin, I absolutely loved the bootcamp and here are my reasons why. The teachers are super helpful, always willing to help, even on the weekends and they do a great job of helping the students click and feeling comfortable with one another from the very beginning. The curriculum is really well layed out, steadily week by week increasing the difficulity, but nothing too crazy. Prep course is great as well, it does the perfect job at getting you confidence and even more excitement going into the camp. Thomas the man who runs the show is a super awesome guy too, really chill and easy to get along with, he truly helped me evolve from a little caterpillar into a beutiful butterfly. You also have his partner in crime, Raoul also known as Gandalf, he is an absolute genius at coding, chill and super cool dude. All in all, have nothing bad to say and would highly reccomened Craft Academy to everyone!

I'm very happy that I decided to take part of this course. During these 12 crazy weeks, I have grown more then I could imagine. Both on a professional and personal level. 

From the Prep Course to the end of the Final Project, this has been a tough, stressful and exciting journey. If you are thinking about taking this course, you need to be 100% committed to it and trust the learning process.

During the Prep Course, I was looking over the material that our coaches presented to us and thinking "WTF have I got myself into now?". Being introduced to so many different languages, technologies (Ruby, CSS, HTML, jQuery, and javascript) and practices, was a bit of a shock. "One thing at a time" the coaches told us, and they were right. 

The coaches told us at the start of the Bootcamp, that the magic would come during the last weeks of the camp. You go through 10 weeks of different projects. Building with Ruby on Rails, AngularJS, Ionic, Middleman and Sinatra. While developing these applications using Test Driven development with Rspec, Jasmin and Cucumber. Using Continuous Integration and Deployment with services like Semaphore, Netlify and Heroku. Tracking the test coverage with Coveralls. Using Github for every project and working in an agile way with scrums every day. 

So at the time the Final Project weeks finally arrives, you have been working on so many different projects and producing so many lines of code, and it all comes together. Working on an idea that you and your team have decided upon, you notice that it isn't that scary because you basically have done it before. You see why the coaches have been teaching you the conventions, technoligies and best practices.

Trust the process and keep it simple. I'm glad I did!

I'm a designer who was looking to broaden my skillset. Having graduated from the bootcamp, I've discovered that back-end web development also is a creative endeavour. I can now take on other types of projects, both professionally and personally. As a student, you will be challenged on a daily basis. Try to train yourself to talk about your understanding of your code and implementations as you go through the prep course. A word of advice, try to stay at the same pace as the coaches, even when you aren't getting everything. They are there for you if you need help or clarification. Be at the top of your game when it comes to communication. You'll go thru 12 demanding and exhaustive weeks, try to keep an open mind and give the course your all, the 'penny drops' during the last weeks of the camp. 

I am 31 one years old and I needed a change after seven years in the television buisness. Programming runs in my family so my brothers got to pick the course for me. I was scared. I was excited. My self esteem went up and down. 

But I am proud to say that I now see myself as a junior developer, after just 12 weeks! And I had never written a line of code in my life! 

The coaches relentless work to make their students into the best developer they can be is, in my opinion, what absoulutely defines this bootcamp. 
 

If you decide to go through this camp you will laugh, you will cry, you will evolve as a person, you will get friends for life and you will get a new skillset setting you up to be a programmer. 

Trust me. I weighed back and forth before deciding to do this. And it was the best decision I ever made! 


/ Sophie - October 2017 cohort
 

Bootcamp indeed. If you are looking to develop as a person not only personally but educationally and professional too this is the course for you. This is intensive 12 weeks that will definetely change your whole lifestyle. 

You will push yourself to the limit and learn stuff you never thought was able to understand. A great course, with super helpful coaches and a good approach. You will learn all basics and even more in Ruby on Rails, JavScript and a bunch of other frameworks, front-end languages such as HTML and CSS as well as GitHub, databases and text editors. 

Basically you will be a ready developed full-stack junior developer by the end of these 12 weeks. However, depending on how much time and energy you put into the course, the further you will get. So get ready!

12 weeks of high-paced, overwhelming challenges and I loved every second of it!

A coding bootcamp is not for everyone, it takes a certain kind of dedication to endure the constant feeling of "crap, I don't know anything" or "how is it even possible to do ALL this in 12 weeks???". But, guess what, it is doable and managable, and no matter how hard it feels it is worth it.

As for Craft Academy, amazing coaches!!! They are dedicated and available almost 24h a day to help, or to yell at you, whichever the case may be... They are supportive but they do not spoon-feed you, you are expected to take responsibility for your own learning. The simple truth of any bootcamp is that you have to put in the work to reap the reward, but if you do it than the CA coaches will do everything in their power to help you succeed.

The 12 weeks I invested in the bootcamp was the best investment I have ever made into my own personal development and thanks to Craft Academy I can now fulfill my dream of coding for a living.