Epicodus

TL;DR: It was cheap, I had a lot of fun, learned a ton, made friends, am now making more money than I ever have, and my career prospects are good. But I'm still salty about some stuff!

The best parts:

In comparison to most of the bootcamps, Epicodus is dead cheap. I paid ~$8000 for four months of full-time coursework, career support, and an internship. 

Yes, the curriculum is available for free, and despite having instructors it is more or less self-directed, but the pair-programming model means that you will actually be forced to engage every day, all day long, with other people. This will keep you focused, reinforce your learning, and let you enter the field with a bunch of cool contacts and/or friends. 

Pair programming is really fun if you are the person for it. If you do not want to pair program, please don't go to Epicodus. Most of my bad experiences in the first half of the course were with people who didn't actually want to pair program. Guess what? All those people ended up dropping out, so it was a waste of their money as well as my patience. 

Once you are done with the coursework, you will be matched with an internship company. Some of these internships are paid, and many people were hired once the internship was done. Being able to move right into an internship with only a couple months experience is worth $8000 by itself (seriously, if you're not in a Computer Science college program, internships are almost as hard to find as actual dev jobs). 

The focus on getting a job - which includes stuff that can feel patronizing, like setting up LinkedIn - is actually super helpful. Throughout the program, you will be expected to work on your job search. By the time you are done, you've set up a portfolio, curated your Professional Internet Presence, and developed good job search hygiene. After the program ends, career services will send you actually helpful job listings with companies who want to work with new devs, and will meet with you as much as you want to help you stay focused and keep your morale up.

The downsides of the program for me were:

The quality of instructors. All were very nice but some were good coders and some had no idea what they were doing because they were fresh Epicodus grads who couldn't find dev jobs (no shade, it's just true; I could easily have been one of them).

The curriculum is not quite as good as other freely-available coding resources. I think they actually do a great job giving an overview of coding, but some of the material is repetitive and some of it is just not as up to date or clear as it could be. You will have to supplement a lot with FreeCodeCamp and Youtube tutorials (good prep for being a dev, honestly).

My internship. I got royally frenched in this regard, because I was matched with a company that barely existed, did not have access to mentor devs, and which was known to Epicodus to be a bad internship with poor outcomes. I chose to be positive and stay and attempted to make the best of a bad situation, but considering that other people ended up with jobs out of their internships, I feel that my career was negatively impacted in a way that could have been mitigated by Epicodus being transparent about past interns' experiences.

Anyways, if you read this far you're probably a conscientious student, ruggedly beautiful, and will make a good programmer. If you want to know more, you can message me on LinkedIn and I will try to answer your questions.

I came into this bootcamp with a passion for coding and several years of self-taught basic front end experience, and was getting into PHP which is why I chose the PHP and Drupal track. The fast-paced environment of the course really helped accelerate my skills quickly and while some of the homework and exercises were definitely challenging, it really helped me to progress and learn so much. The biggest and most useful tool of the entire experience however ended up actually being my peers. My classmates had varied backgrounds but everyone was very motivated and worked really hard to figure out problems, and on top of that everyone worked well together and shared knowledge so we all grew as a group.

Our instructor did not have much knowledge unfortunately and was not present most of the time so the learning was VERY self-directed, when there were issues or errors in the curriculum he did not have the answers, but luckily our class as a group would come together to figure things out and help each other. The pair programming was very rewarding and while I didn't love every framework that we worked on, I was very glad to try so many different ones and to really deepen my knowledge of both Javascript and PHP. Coming out of this program, I got an internship at a great company and was lucky enough to be hired by that same company after the internship was over. I am very grateful for my time at this school and the learning opportunity it provided, as well as the lifelong colleagues, friends, and contacts I acquired through the classmates in my program.

The only downside I would say is that this is definitely not for you if you are the sort of person who expects a class format where you are lectured at, where your teacher guides you, and you get a lot of outside instruction. This course and the pace of it best rewards those who are ready and willing to go out on their own, troubleshoot, and figure things out independently (which is really the best skill for an actual full-time job as a coder).

I attended  Epicodus' Intro to Programming course, as well as, the first five weeks of their full time program. On both occasions I was impressed by their community, curriculum, and staff. Epicodus has a strong sense of community that is fostered in all that they do. They strive to promote diversity and inclusion in their own curriculum and classroom, as well as in the tech community at large. 

The curriculum is rigorous, engaging, and well supported. The staff at Epicodus were there to support and assist me at every step in my coding journey, including when I decided that I didn't want to pursue programming after all. Not only did they honor their refund policy without hassle, they respected and supported my decision. 

Epicodus takes a unique approach to learning and it really works. They promote a growth mindset, focus on teaching you 'to think like a programmer', and they utilize pair programming. While pair programming is weird at first, the benefits of it become quickly apparent. If it is holding you back from enrolling, don't let it! It is immensely helpful and rewarding once you get the hang of it. 

Ultimately, I learned much more than coding at Epicodus. In just five weeks I came away with a solid understanding of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript; but I also learned how to be a professional in the tech industry and how to overcome obstacles. These skills are invaluable in tech. If Epicodus offered a web design course I would have joined it without question. If you are considering Epicodus, know that it really is a well rounded school that exceeds expectations. 

I took the C# / React track without having prior experience programming. Who would have known that within a year of signing up I would have a full time job in the field using the skills I developed at Epicodus. 

The course content flies by, and it can be a little discouraging when you don't understand a concept. That being said the support of my classmates and teachers was invaluable. Epicodus encourages students to learn how to solve problems collaboratively and ideally without the help of a teacher because it tries to mimic what working world of a developer will be like. Personally I found this a pain point, but it pushed me to grow and step outside my comfort zone. Looking back I realize how much more I learned by working with a pair and solving problems with my classmates. I learned much more much faster following this paradigm.

Perhaps the most valuable experience Epicodus will give you is an internship with a local company. While you only work with the company for a few short weeks, it really opens your eyes to what professional developers do on a day to day basis - and you make good connections. I'm honestly not sure I would have attended Epicodus if I wasn't given an internship. In this field simply knowing how to do something isn't enough - you have to have a bit of experience you can talk about to prove yourself.

Epicodus gives you the tools and confidence to develop full stack applications - and this is very important after you graduate. You'll hear people say to never stop coding (until you get a job - at least that's what I did), and they are right. It took me roughly six months to find a job. During that time I relied on the skills I had developed at Epicodus to recognize more advanced development patterns, and start building apps that were more advanced than what the Epicodus curriculum taught. If you want to be successful it is imperative to remain curious, and to continue to play. A job will come, but you will need to work for it. 

All in all this was a great program that enabled me to change my life. It will be fun and challenging, but the dividends pay off immensely if you stick through. You will struggle, but you will also have made a network of fellow developers that will be more than happy to help you when you are stuck (and vice versa). At the end of the program it's hard to not feel a sense of accomplishment for both yourself and your classmates. I would 100% recommend Epicodus.

Before joining Epicodus, I made a market research about coding bootcamps in Seattle area, and Epicodus was one of the best options on the market with affordable pricing for 27-week intensive program, curriculum including front-end and back-end technologies as well as the opportunity to have internship experience after the course.

In Epicodus, I went from basic knowledge in programming to being able to write code in such widely used languages as C# and JavaScript. And by the end of the course I learned how to build complex web applications from the ground up using different programming tools. But most important, having 5 weeks of real world work experiences was worth the value of the course.

I would say that Epicodus is great start for prospective developers and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants a career in tech industry.

I started Epicodus with a goal of learning enough about coding to create opportunities to change my career. Naturally, changing a career means that I need to know enough to get a job doing this. I can say upfront that Epicodus helped me accomplish that goal. I graduated from Epicodus in June of 2019 after having completed an internship and the company with which I did the internship offered me a position within the next few months.

I was brand new to coding when I started at Epicodus. I had never worked in the IT industry. The majority of my career I spent in the medical industry. Like other students with no coding experience, I found the subject of programming to be extremely challenging with plenty of days full of confusion. In fact, I had thoughts at multiple points that I wasn’t going to be able to do this. However, I am proof that having the right educational opportunity and support system as Epicodus provided makes it possible.

I really enjoyed the learning environment and especially that it was onsite. It’s very helpful to have the support of others around you who are going through the same learning curve and the same challenges. Epicodus structured our program by having us work directly with others in a project-based learning environment and this naturally encouraged the formation of relationships that were important for me to make it through this program. The pair programming was often very helpful because there are people with varying degrees of experience and this enabled those of us with less experience to learn from them. Additionally, I thought it was helpful learning to work in real-life scenarios where we as people sometimes agree and sometimes don’t. It definitely helped me learn how to get the work done regardless of the difference in perspectives and to deliver on time. I also really enjoyed the support of the instructors. They were very friendly and encouraging at all times. This goes a long way when you are having a rough day learning to code. They had enough experience to help get me on the right track when I got lost.

Throughout the week there were other real-world skills that we were learning including how to work with source control (Git), how to conduct a scrum stand-up and practice solving algorithms on a whiteboard. I needed to know something about all of these aspects in the various interviews I had. There are times when I would have liked a little more one-on-one coaching but there was a silver lining to that. I was increasingly getting used to the idea of relying on myself to find the answers. Each day as I go to work now, I find that the ability to seek out and find the answers yourself is a crucial skill to do this for a living.

After I graduated, I had no shortage of interview opportunities around the Seattle area. I applied to just about everything even when I wasn’t sure I was qualified for it. Epicodus helped me polish my resume and my LinkedIn as part of their career support. This was especially helpful since I was new to IT.

All said and done, Epicodus was a great value especially for the price and I would recommend this school to others who are looking to get their foot in the door. Key things that you need to know before you start this is that determination and grit are the most important things. There will be days when you are sure that this is too hard for you. It will be much easier to quit. The important thing to understand is that you only need to survive. You will learn enough to open doors if you don’t quit. If you’ve never done coding before, expect it will likely be the most challenging educational curriculum of your life. When you get your first job, it will feel worth it. And I want to say it’s very nice to make the most money I’ve ever made while having a career that allows me to be creative on a daily basis. I really appreciate the opportunity that Epicodus created for me.

I was in the cohort above Sam Stoia, and his review is accurate and very well written so I won't repeat everything he said, but suffice to say I agree with him at least 90%. I'll just point out where I differ or have additional thoughts:

-the cost is low because the overhead is low. It's pretty bare bones and the teachers may not be paid as well as other places, or (especially) compared to a programming job, which would help explain turnover. This would also go some way toward explaining some of the curriculum being outdated. Developing new curriuculum constantly takes time and money.

-I think the cost being low is partially an ethical choice-- I think the owner is trying to make a bootcamp that is as accessible as possible. The first 5 weeks being free speaks to that as well. There are pros and cons to this. The obvious pro is that it's cheaper... and the cohort was more diverse than I expected, which was awesome. People from many different walks of life trying to make the same transition. But the curriculum and support were occasionally spotty. There isn't much handholding from staff. You have to support eachother. 

-To really succeed at this, I think you need to have enough money in the bank or support from family / partner etc. or loans to live on for roughly 8-9 months, without working a ton. The coursework is very taxing and if you're working 5 nights a week, it's going to be that much harder. Additionally, it often takes 1-3 months to land a job after the course. Some people get jobs right away, most don't. If I didn't have some savings and the support of my wife, I probably would have gone back to my old job before I landed a programming job. Being rejected over and over is hard! But you have to keep trying. It's a normal part of the process, even for experienced programmers.

-The lack of data structure and algorithm study is probably intentional. Those concepts are not very likely to be directly useful to you in your first programming job. Some interviewers ask you those questions, others don't. Really depends on the culture and background of the company and interviewer. I biffed an interview super hard where the main question was traversing a red-black tree. I'd never heard of that! I was mortified. All the people at this company were CS grads who'd worked at Microsoft since the 90's. Then I got an interview at a company where the programmers I'd be working with were almost all self taught, and zero algorithm questions, just programming questions. I aced it, which felt incredibly redeeming.

-There's so, so, so much to learn. While it would be great to have a bootcamp where you learn exactly what you need to do a job, then you get that job, I don't think that's the reality. You're learning a bunch of languages and concepts you may or may not use directly, but in the process you're learning HOW TO LEARN. The job I ended up getting uses mostly PHP, which I knew nothing about going into it, but the skills I was able to demonstrate in other languages convinced my employer that I would be able to quickly get up to speed. And I have. I was making PRs by my second day of work. 

-It's frustrating, it's difficult, you'll want to pull your hair out on an almost daily basis. As soon as you grasp one difficult concept you'll be on to something else just as baffling. Sometimes you never understand something, and you just move on. I've never felt so mentally lost as during this bootcamp. You have to have the confidence that you're learning anyway, and it's normal to feel this way. There will be a few people in the class for whom everything is "easy" and they find ridiculously simple and they build crazy apps while you're still debugging step one or two. Don't compare yourself with those people. It will drive you mad. You can still succeed and you can still get a job. You probably have other strengths that those people lack, which will come in useful in a programming job. (That's what I tell myself ;))

-If the coursework moves past you and you feel like you're totally f*cked (happened to me during Angular and parts of React) just keep your cool. Keep applying yourself. Even if you have to bypass the coursework. Look up supplemental stuff on YouTube or Udemy. Find different ways to continue moving forward. Be flexible. Don't give up. 

-Exercise, get 7-8 hours of sleep. Eat well. Cancel Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, everything! Seriously! Don't allow yourself to check out. Your brain gets so tired it wants to do anything other than keep trying learning this stuff. So you have to put distractions out of sight. Go for a walk instead, talk to your classmates, watch video tutorials online... do something different, but not something vapid and addictive.

As Sam mentioned, the internship is KEY. I stayed in my (unpaid) internship for 2 months, and although it was frustrating to being doing real work for free, I think it paid off. Every week I would add whatever I'd done that week to my linked-in resume. Even if it was something I'd only done once and didn't totally understand. I would even ask my supervisor at the internship to help me phrase it correctly. My previous career started shrinking on my resume, until 80% of the resume was 2 months of the internship and the other 20% was the past 12 years of construction. The job I ended up getting, I was only noticed for that position because of some tasks/skills I had listed on my resume that I had learned at my internship. Work experience is critical.  

All in all, I found this course extremely difficult. I was not in the top of my class. But after MANY job applications and a lot of work, I got an entry level job as a programmer that pays $15k more a year than the job I left as a construction superintendent, and it took me 12 years to get up to that role! That's what I wanted out of this course, and I got it. 

Whatever you do, don't give up! 

 

 

 

This review is for the Seattle campus where I was enrolled.  I hear Portland is very different and a bit more established, but I can’t speak to that.  I was enrolled in the C#/JavaScript/React track.

If I could, I would probably give Epicodus a 3.5 star rating.  Generally positive, but with a few sore spots. I’ll round up to 4 stars.  A little about me, I had absolutely ZERO coding experience and exposure before starting the course.  Of course, having some coding background could have helped me, but the course does truly assume no knowledge from the beginning.  I think all coding bootcamps are probably tough, and Epicodus is no exception. While the first 5 week unit (Intro to Programming) is no walk in the park, it only gets harder from there. The C# and JavaScript units move at a really fast pace, and pretty much everyone in my cohort, and the cohorts above and below me had their fair share of struggles.  Some of those struggles are based on the difficulties of learning new technologies from scratch. Others, were because of problems with Epicodus’ curriculum. I’ll try to review the entire experience as best as I can.

The good:

• Structure.  If you’re like me, you need a structured learning environment to keep you motivated and accountable.  While many people may have been able to teach themselves how to become developers through books and online tutorials, that doesn’t work for everyone.  Epicodus provides teachers who offer assistance when you get stuck, as well as a whole class of peers who can help you troubleshoot problems. The curriculum, while lacking (more on that later), does generally build throughout each week before you are given an independent project to complete on Friday.  The mix of teachers, course work, and independent projects does provide a structured learning environment that makes it easier to learn compared to if you tried to learn from scratch on your own.

• Internships.  I think this is where Epicodus stands out.  The fact that an internship, albeit short(5 weeks), is built into the program, means you get some on the job experience as well as some familiarity with going through the job interview process.

• Support. I imagine every new wave of students is different, but my cohort developed into a really close and supportive group of people.  Having them go through the exact same struggles as me helped build a sense of camaraderie and made the tough times a little bit better.

• Price.  I don’t think there’s a much better deal out there for an in-person, full-time bootcamp.  $6,900 (if you pay up front) is generally about half of what other schools charge.

The bad:

• Curriculum.  It’s not necessarily that the coursework is always bad.  It’s that some of it is wrong or out of date and Epicodus is slow to fix problems.  There were weeks during the C# unit where the course work would flat out not build properly based on the lessons.  The cohort ahead of me experienced it, our cohort experienced it, the cohort below me experienced it. An instructor was in the process of rewriting some of the C# material, though, so maybe it will improve for later cohorts.  In the JavaScript section, the lessons teach you to build projects with old versions of certain technologies because they know those versions don’t conflict with each other. That would be fine, except many of those versions are no longer supported and have glaring security issues.  It would not be OK to build with these versions in the real world, so I’m not sure why Epicodus does not update their lessons to include newer versions that are not deprecated.

• Professionalism.  I don’t say this lightly, but Epicodus has an issue with how it handles itself internally.  I was at the school during a time of particularly high turnover, but it seems like the instructors are in a constant state of flux.  My cohort’s first teacher had just graduated from Epicodus about 6 months prior. While this teacher was competent, I do think people should know that you’re not necessarily going to be getting a seasoned developer as an instructor at Epicodus. We were meant to get a more established teacher for the last ten weeks of the class, but that teacher was suddenly pulled away to work on rewriting some of the outdated lessons.  Epicodus then hired one of the students who had been in the cohort just ahead of us to be our instructor, and this person literally only had 10 more weeks of experience with coding than our cohort. When my class finished, all three of the Seattle instructors i just mentioned left for other jobs, so I have no clue what the future of the program looks like now. Just know, your teacher is likely to themselves be a recent Epicodus graduate.

• Data Structures and Algorithms.  The course does not really go into these crucial aspects of becoming a developer.  This is mostly because there just isn’t enough time, and it’s not really on Epicodus to teach these. However, In order to get a job, you will need to learn some basic computer science concepts because they are pretty much all you will get asked in an interview.  I suggest buying a copy of Cracking the Coding Interview, and either buying a Udemy data structures course or taking the Harvard CS50 course on edX to supplement the Epicodus curriculum.

 

Conclusion:

Coding is hard. Even in the perfect environment, there would have been huge hurdles for me to jump over in order to learn this stuff. There is going to be frustration. There is going to be imposter syndrome.  You will get mentally and physically exhausted. But, if you’re eager to learn, this is a good place. Just know, you will likely run into issues with the curriculum at times, and your teachers might be limited in how much expertise they can offer.  That all being said, I would rate my experience as generally positive. I learned a ton, and hope to continue that learning process now that I’m done with the class.

I would say that my overall experience there was pretty great. Pair programming can be a struggle, and sometimes it felt like I was banging my head against a wall, but overall I learned a lot from the instruction given. 

I think the key to success was making sure you take the homework seriously. I found a huge difference between simply reading it, and really digging in and trying to understand things on an almost intuitive level if I could achieve it. It seems like this would be a no-brainer, but I felt like I saw several classmates do the bare minimum and it really reflected on their performance in class, and sometimes making pair programming frustrating because having not done the work, it would be teaching them all of the concepts again. Though that was really good too because then it further solidified the concepts in my head. 

The cirriculum was dated, and sometimes help wasn't available very quickly from instructors, but the lack of help was rare, all things considered. I did feel like the staff was stretched thin, but that was my perceptions, perhaps on the other side of the table it's a different story. 

The dated cirriculum was a bit frustration, but I can imagine with little staff to update the cirriculum, it wasn't easy to stay on the cutting edge. The other thing though... having gone through it, I realized that the cutting edge isn't necessarily the best place to be because it's often not vetted properly, so I became less frustrated with the dated cirriculum as I realized that, yes it's dated... but also it just works without unanticipated bugs. Most of the bugs we'd run into from our stacks would have solutions if we dug for them. Had it been the newest stuff, we'd be debugging javascript based issues without pre-existing solutions, which could drastically slow things down potentially. 

Overall I'd say it was a great experience, and nothing beats the value of the internship that they placed me in. Having even 5 weeks of real world work experiences was worth the value of the program without a doubt. 

I recently finished the intro to programming course and plan on taking the full-time course at a later time. Epicodus provides you with all the resource that you will need to enter the career field of programming and software development. Of course, you need to put in the hours but epicodus will be there to teach you the proper way of doing things. I think epicodus is very welcoming of anyone who wants to learn programming, there are people that are just starting and people with a bit more experience but everybody gets the attention they need. I will continue to master and have fun with what I learned at the intro course.

I graduated from Epicodus in September 2018 and got hired by my internship host company right away. Actually, one of the main reasons why I chose Epicodus was an internship, included in the course. But overall experience turned out to be great. The school learning curriculum was well structured, lessons were clear and easy to follow, still leaving a room for curiosity, and encouraging further exploration. Our instructor, John Franti, was impressively knowledgable and ethical.

After the course, I felt quite well prepared for the interviews with the companies hosting Epicodus interns (yes, you have to go through the real interview process to get the internship placement, which is an especially valuable experience on its own).

I would recommend Epicodus to anyone who has a desire to start a new career path in software development (and who is ready to put an effort to get there). 

 

 

I attended the night-time Intro to Programming course this last fall, and I was definitely not disappointed. I had tried doing some online free courses and, although I had learned a lot through those free courses, I knew I needed something more structured and with face time in order to really grasp some of the concepts. This class was perfect for that. Not only was Kyle a great instructor and there for any questions we had, but the whole setup of the class itself made for a great learning environment. I was a little nervous about pair programming, as I’ve always thought that I learned better by myself when I can just sit with something and go at my own pace, but I was pleasantly surprised. Working with someone allowed me to ask questions, explore, and learn with them in ways I know I wouldn’t have done on my own. The course material was pretty great as well, just because we covered a wide variety of topics and there was enough there to do in class to understand the basics, but also because there was plenty to do at home if we wanted to.

 

I haven’t had the chance to join a full-time class, but I fully intend to once I have the budget and time to do so. Taking the part-time class was totally worth it. I actually took the skills I learned in that class and made a brand new website for my company. Like I said before, there are plenty of incredible online resources, but if you find yourself needing more structure and a great learning environment — choose Epicodus.

I personally had a really good experience at Epicodus. After trying my hand at using free online resources to teach myself coding, I found that I really needed the structure of a classroom with schedules and deadlines to keep me motivated and on task as well as teachers and peers to help answer questions and improve my understanding. To this end, Epicodus was totally worth it. The course work was mostly very good. There were occasional issues since curriculum is often being updated, but the staff were responsive to feedback. I also found the response to questions was usually prompt and helpful, but even more important was my amazing cohort. Pair programming with other students every day was sometimes intimidating, but really helped me learn. From answering questions to helping interpret lessons to giving feedback on code, working in pairs (and groups for projects) was one of the most valuable features of the program.

 

The internship was a big selling point for Epicodus as well, and I was very fortunate to get a great internship. I know that the internship experience of my cohort varied, with a few students having major issues, but hopefully Epicodus will continue to increase their consistency with respect to quality internships. Regardless of internship, I feel that the career support for graduates is pretty strong and another benefit that makes the program well worth it.