The Best Bristol Coding Bootcamps Of 2022

I would definitely recommend iO academy as a way to transition into a career in development. The small class sizes means you get lots of personalised support and the curriculum exposes you to a good range of front-end and back-end development. Doing projects as part of the course allows you to build up a portfolio that you can then show to potential employers. The job support at iO is really good. I got a lot of individual advise on my CV, cover letters and applying in general which helped me to feel more confident when going for jobs. I got my first junior developer role within the first month of graduating. 

The course involves a lot of team work, so it's good to have that as an expectation going in. iO teaches you to code, and it also teaches you about Agile methodologies, which is how many software development projects in the real world are structured. It's a hard course, because you learn a lot very quickly, but for me it was 100% worth it. The teacher's really care about your progress and building projects with the other students was also a lot of fun. 

The course was brilliant. I never thought I could learn so much in such a short time. The course balances learning with real-life style projects and working environments. The coaches were great and there is always a large amount of support should you need it. I had 0 tech experience prior, now i feel ready to get stuck into a role after just completing the course. Would recommend. 

I have just finished Makers' 12 weeks full-time immersive coding bootcamp and I really enjoyed it.

My aim was to change career and become a software developer. I already had some coding experience before the course, but a few people on the course also didn't have any experience. 

The best thing about the Makers course was the community of students with whom you go through the course together. You work in pairs or teams most days to solve coding problems and work through a very well designed curriculum. The focus of the learning is on understanding bigger coding concepts like Object Oriented Programming, Test-Driving and writing high quality code. And a huge focus is on becoming an independent learner and getting good at solving problems independently by looking things up or finding different ways of approaching a problem. All students start learning the language Ruby to understand basic concepts and become fluent in a language. Later, you switch to JavaScript and from then on I started really getting how to learn new languages quickly. 

Towards the end of the course you create two big engineering projects in teams of 3-6 students, which is very intensive but very fun and helps you put everything learned into practice or use your learning skills to pick up a new coding language and develop an app with that. You learn how to learn effectively as a team - just like in a coding job, to plan together, support each other, divide up work and merge it later. There is a number of great workshops during the course where coaches give you live examples of how a concept works, you can ask questions and see how an experienced coder approaches a problem. The coaches are all very friendly. If you are stuck - especially in the first weeks - there is always plenty of time to ask a coach for help. The coaches then often guide you towards how you could test your code to find the problem and look up a solution independently - this is really great, because you learn how to become independent.

I completed the course as part of a remote cohort - that means I interacted with all the other students and the coaches mostly via zoom and the fantastic chat platform Slack. This worked really well and I don't think I would have learned more if I had been doing the course in person in the office in London. However, there was the opportunity on most days for people from the remote cohort also to go into the office an work from there, which I didn't use, as I don't live in London. Being in connection with the students and the coaches online everyday helped hold me accountable for my learning, so I coded about 7-10 hours every day and made really quick progress.
Now, at the end of the course I feel I really understand how to write high-quality code and can call myself a software developer, although I haven't got a job yet.

After the bootcamp is finished there is a dedicated careers team that will support you with the job hunt, help you learn how to write applications, CVs covering letters and prepare you for interviews with regular workshops. It seems they support you until you find a job - but I have only just graduated, so I can't say this from my own experience. Most other alumni I spoke to seem to have found a job as a junior developer within the first 3-4 months after graduating.

After 5 years working in Civil Engineering I decided it was time for a career change. I did some research on Software Engineering bootcamps in the North West area and ultimately landed on Manchester Codes. The course was structured very intuitively from start to finish and their online learning platform made it a very enjoyable experience. The sessions run by the Manchester Codes tutors were very informative and allowed an opportunity to raise any problems you were facing with your progress. 

I got out of the course exactly what I wanted and was offered and accepted a Junior Engineer role before the course had finished!