Altcademy

I have been learning to code for a while before I joined Altcademy, my criteria for selecting a program is online, flexible schedule, mentorship, affordability. If you tried to learn to code before, you know there isn't a lack of free or extremely cheap material. But what you get for free, will usually lack structure, quality, and mentorship. Altcademy hits all the right spots, at a reasonable price point. The curriculum is text based, easy to follow, and code along. There are hundreds of exercises to practice on their platform. Projects are marked by experienced mentors and useful feedbacks is given. There is a slack channel and a q&a platform to get help from. Other students are friendly, and conversations, though sparse, are usually about coding and course content. This has been a wonderful experience, and I would like to specifically thank my mentors David and Harry for their patience and guidance.

My path : Full stack Web Development option Immersive Path ( without career guidance and portfolio building)
My Background: Used C++ at uni, Python(Flask). Math major uni. Love tech and things related to the web. 

My Experience : 

- Price : Affordable, while working i could've go for a more expensive bootcamp I decided that since you can learn everything that bootcamp offer for free a cheaper price would be better. it's either cheap or free, except for the alumni network  expensive bootcamp aren't worth your money in terms of curriculum. You can pay monthly and have 2 different option a cheaper one without the career guidance. If you're not sure about how to land the job and build your portfolio I recommend you to take the personalized path. Altcademy mix a good pricing and an overall very good program so why spending more when you can have it for cheaper. 

- Curriculum: 
Full stack Web Development is composed of different modules from html,CSS, Vanilla JS, JQuery, React, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Full stack Rails + React.

Plenty of exercises and assignments to do. Nothing fancy but it's solid and well written with clear explanations. The curriculum is overall well updated but Hooks are missing for the React part. You'll learn to build stuff from scratch and it's very rewarding. The big advantages of a curriculum is that you simply have to follow it without thinking what to learn next. 

Each topics are brought in a very gentle manners till you have enough knowledge to understand what you are doing. I found great that you spent some time with vanilla JS and JQuery before to jump directly to React. 
The assignments are all very cool to do and bring you definitely some knowledge and new skills.
Even I'm not a fan of Ruby the advantage to learn Rails is that you'll grasp how the MVC pattern works so you can jump to another framework without much difficulties. 

- Mentors/Social: 
Since I picked the option without the mentoring face to face I had less interactions with the mentors. Both are knowledgeable, kind and will help you during your studies and assignments. Altcademy use Slack with different channels depending the topic. It's not very active and there isn't many exchange between students but it's mostly due to the students who aren't talkative. 
Mentors are reactive and will always reply in a short amount of time. Since it's online you'll be alone at home but they can motivate you. The hardest part for some peoples is the feeling to feel lonely when doing remote programs but you'll always get their help very fast and with good explanations.  

- Job Support:  Since I don't have the option for that I can't review it but you'll be in good hands for sure ! 

- Interface/UI: Simple, clean. Very easy to navigate in your program. That's the job of an UI, I like it a lot!

Overview: An affordable bootcamp with flexible learning(remote), a solid curriculum, good mentors. If you decide to go through a bootcamp you won't be mistaken. Before to choose Altcademy I was in another bootcamp which I left, so I can confidently say that Altcademy is a good investment.
 

The best thing about this program is how committed and helpful the mentors are! Students are given personal attention and contsantly provided with critical personal feedback on their work. The 1 to 1 mentor and student set up also allows for the curriculum to be wondefully flexible under the recommendation of the mentors and needs of the student. I've struggled to learn programming myself through other online courses and this mentorship really makes a world of a difference.

The curriculum itself is also well structured and makes use of the best freely available online resources. It also is more relevant and applicable than other courses I have taken before on programming.