I took the Foundations 2: Ruby course, then the Ruby on Rails Development Accelerator. I'm very good at self-directed learning, and have been a hobby-level programmer for several years, but I felt like I needed an extra boost to get an actual job.

In hindsight, I think I would skip the F2 course, becuase you can learn the basics of Ruby elsewhere for much cheaper (Codecademy, Code School, or Treehouse). The instructor was great, but I found I spent most of my time helping other classmates because I already knew the concepts. However, doing the F2 course "got my foot in the door" at Code Fellows, and made my enrollment process for the DA a bit easier.

The DA was very intense. Thankfully, our class was very small, so we got lots of one-on-one time with the instructor and the TA, which helped a lot. Just like other reviewers have said, what you get out of it depends on how much you put in. We were all very dedicated, and spent well over 60 hours a week working...but even still, some of us fell behind by the end of the course.

Their philosophy of teaching is called stacked learning, which takes some getting used to. It takes a week or two to "click" into that mode, but it's much easier once you do! Lectures are 3 hours a day Monday thru Thursday, with lab time the other part of the day. Friday mornings are for the "Professional Development Curriculum", and the rest of the day is more lab time.

Honestly, I don't feel like I got much out of the Professional Development Curriculum. I came from another part of the IT industry, so most of my resume still applies, but I can see how it would be more helpful for people coming out of completely unrelated industries. But a word of caution: they don't provide much in the way of "job placement", it's more along the lines of "job-search assistance". I was assuming that since they've got the job guarantee, they would be actively trying to get us in the door with their business partners, but all they do is give their partners access to our resumes before we graduate. I was not contacted by any of their partners. However, when I had questions specific to my application process with other companies, they were very happy to answer questions, and were very excited for me when I finally got a job.

If I had to do it all over again, I would go to one of their quarterly info sessions and talk with some of their instructors then. I would also try to stop by during one of their weekly "Open Houses" to get a better feel for what it feels like during the day, and talk with more instructors and staff then. Since I had previous programming experience, I would skip the F1 and F2 classes, and apply directly for the DA.

I think Code Fellows has done a really good job of getting us prepared for skills that we will need to be contributing members in the job market today. Each class is constantly being updated to reflect the frameworks and libraries currently being used and making sure best practices are taught.

This bootcamp had a lot of potential and came with the right goals but the implementation and day to day classes were poorly planned. I believe having had better instructors that have a broader perspective, longer backgrounds, and overall understanding of all aspects of programming is necessary to have a conducive learning environement and that was, unfortunately, not present in this bootcamp.

The class format has changed since I attended, but when I went it was 8 weeks of intense instruction with lots of hands-on practice, talks by successful developers and entrepreneurs, and opportunities to network with local startups. I already had some dev experience so I think I had an easier time than some, but everyone got enough instruction to make a career change. It definitely felt like Code Fellows was located at the epicenter of the local startup scene.

The one area I wish had been stronger was individual help on getting a job. My mentor was pretty hands-off and offered generalities and the job development position at the school was in flux while I was there. From what I hear, it has improved since then. I successfully transitioned to a full-time ruby on rails software engineer from a previous career as a project manager and credit Code Fellows with making that happen.

I really enjoyed my time at Code Fellows! This is a great course for any one who wants to learn how to build a website and learn JavaScript. It does not go in too much detail but it gives you the foundations to keep learning on your own or take one of the Development Accelerators. The curriculum is good and you learn a lot and get the foundations for things you might have trouble learning on you own. The two books for the class are about 50$ total. Which is a lot less than most universities. The instructor I had was very fun and helpful. He had a passionate drive which was obvious. You also get as much help as you need the whole day which is great. The class is rather expensive for one month of learning so be cautious if you are coming in with little money. I would take the foundations 1 course for 500$ and you learn a decent amount and then try to self study until you have enough for the development accelerator.  I am planning on taking one! Be weary if you live outside downtown seattle and don't have a good bussing option to SLU because parking is expensive and traffic is horrible. You can always bus to westlake and walk faster than taking a second bus or trolley. 

I attented Code Fellows near it's infancy. While the Job Gaurantee initially attracted me to the camp, it does provide a great incentive for the school to invest in all the students success. The camp not only provided a good basis in technical skills but also intensive career advice. The instructors and speakers were every bit as supportive as they were informative. The amount of speakers provided a great variety of insight and the time spent with the mentors and instructors provided the deeper more personal advice. 

This course sets you up to be a full stack python developer. We covered everything form data structures and algorithms to deployment and web development. Assignments included building a pyramid blog app that acted as a daily learning journal, a django app that was build for image sharing. Other small assignments covered building everything from a linked list to graph traversal and dijkstras algorithm to find the shortest path along with sorting algorithms. The instructure and TA's were all very knowledgible and were willing and able to drop anything at any time to help you when you got stuck. 

The JavaScript dev accelerator was a great experience, it changed my life and was the best educational experience I've ever had.

I attended Foundations I in June 2014, Foundations II in July, and the Full Stack JavaScript Development Accelerator from August-September 2014. I am now employed full time as a software engineer at Expedia in Bellevue, WA.

I'm normally a do it yourself-er when it comes to learning new stuff, and I had been learning on my own for years before I attended the accelerator. What the accelerator gave me was a lot of things I couldn't get on my own:

• access to knowledgable teachers and TAs
• an instant network of peers
• exposure to technologies I wouldn't have discovered on my own
• team project experience as a developer
• my resume in the hands of CF's 40+ employer partners

This program is for students who have already been self-teaching for some time and already understand the fundamentals. You will continue self-teaching in the accelerator, just at a much faster pace and greater intensity.

To prospective students I recommend the JavaScript Road Trip on codeschool.com and setting up a website and/or Wordpress blog on some $5-month shared hosting (and you can re-use that same hosting later for your professional portfolio site). Build as much "real stuff" as you can - codeschool is only good for an introduction to the concept. Actually getting something working and available online is much, much more challenging. If you enjoy these things, though, you will probably enjoy the accelerator. 

The accelerator is INTENSE and HARD (which is good, considering what it costs). Plan on being there every single day. People who missed a day missed a lot and fell behind. You will get a fresh dump of homework daily. It will be difficult to keep your head above water. You will have to fight through frustrating problems, work on the bus ride home and all the way until bedtime just to keep up, and stop socializing and playing video games and whatever else you do for fun for the 8 weeks you are in it. If this sounds horrible to you, you will probably not enjoy the accelerator.

If you're still eager to start, don't worry about which language to go with - there's no "one right choice", and you'll learn new languages on the job. Start coding now, in anything. It's a long journey (for me, it was about 8 months from the first day of Foundations I to the first day of my new job) but it is absolutely worth it if you have the drive and the discipline. (And the money.)

Bootcamp brings me from a piece of white paper to a real web developer, and to a foreign student like me, the instructors are clear and loud speakers without any accent. I think we should cut off some of the afternoon self-study time and try to learn more even though instructors answered all the questions. 

My overall experience with the Code Fellows web development bootcamp was very positive. I gave the curriculum three stars because for the amount of pre-work they have you do before you get there, I felt like the curriculum should have been harder and perhaps taught at a faster pace.

I was in the first cohort offered in Portland, so things were a bit rough around the edges at the start. Week one was fairly disorganized and slow going, and I questioned whether I'd made the right decision. But the wonderful staff at Code Fellows are very concerned about making your experience as great as possible, and things really started to take off after that. We completed several projects during the course which were good enough to include in a portfolio.

Like most things in life however, you will get results from this course which correspond directly to the level of commitment and effort you are willing to put into it. You don't actually need Code Fellows to learn the topics covered in the curriculum. The value that Code Fellows provides is the structure and interaction that comes with being in a classroom, working with other students, and being guided by industry veterans whose knowledge and experience far exceeds yours.

Throughout the course, Jordana (our campus manager) regularly presented us with info on meetups and other tech industry gatherings in the local area. If you decide to take one of these courses, I highly recommend attending as many of these as you can. You'll soon discover that developing soft skills and making connections is just as valuable (if not more so) than the actual coding skills you are learning.

I recently wrapped up the iOS dev accelerator and felt like the overall experience was pretty weak give the high cost. In hindsight, I likely would have gone to another program and simply done a web dev accelerator, but I wanted to do iOS. If you are really looking to get into iOS then this is really the only option for newbies in the area, which is unfortunate. The team at CF is great, but you really don't get much instruction - you basically sit in a room with other people and work on the homework. 

Code Fellows is ok, but the evening courses are definitely not worth the cost.  The material for the Python class is available through codecademy.  

I attended the 8 weeks iOS accerelator bootcamp. The beginning weeks were fabulous and challenging, but the excitement soon fizzled out towards the end. Although they claimed it was a 8 weeks course but the actual lesson time were much much lesser. Among these 8 weeks, 2 weeks were used on team app development (2 different apps), the final week was mostly interview mock test, and there was NO lesson on every Friday too, so all in all it was only 5-week lessons. The instructors were very good, the lesson was given in the morning at 9 o'clock till noon time, the afternoon was merely self/group practising. It would be so much better if it was a FULL 8 weeks course and they offered lessons in the afternoon. 

Summary

After attending Code Fellows to learn front-end web development, numerous friends have asked me questions like "How was it?" and "Would you recommend it?" My response differs depending on the person's prior experience and interests, but here's a high-level review to help with these inquiries.

The world of web development is one giant rabbit hole that requires continual learning, admitting you're wrong, and progress as the industry continues to evolve and shift. That aside:

The Decision to Attend

I would absolutely recommend Code Fellows, but it comes with a variety of variables/caveats that are different for everyone. Mainly: cost, ability to sacrifice the time, potential unemployment after completion, etc.

For me, I wanted a career change, so I knew it would be an up-front investment that would be repaid upon finding a job. The job guarantee, as well as local press and quality of leadership, made my decision to jump into Code Fellows feel safer to me.

Curriculum & Classwork

Coming into the program only having tought myself basic HTML and CSS, almost everything at Code Fellows was new knowledge. That said, Dale Sande pushed us to learn in-depth, production-level code, and it was a crash course on best practices in the industry. Our class focused on the interaction of design and development with a heavy emphasis on modular reusable CSS using Sass, semantic HTML, and web standards. Out of everything today's "front end developers" are expected to know, I do think the class fell slightly short on JavaScript and its many modern frameworks, but you can only do so much in two months.

I put in a lot of hours during that time to absorb as much as I could, but the learning still has only just begun—after graduating, it's time to really apply everything, put it to practice, and gain repetition.

Learning

What I will say is I never could have learned so much so fast on my own, and there's also a great support network of classmates and instructors both in class and after graduating. The small class sizes and tight-knit group made it easy to get help and share learning experiences very quickly, and nobody felt alone. After Code Fellows, people continue to work on projects, share job search experiences, and more. It was awesome to have this while we were all looking for something new and entering a new industry.  

Job Placement

I did start a contract at a small startup after only one month and solidified a position at a larger firm two months later—both of these came through personal referrals, which helps immensely. All this said, there are still students in my class that don't have a full-time job yet (after four or five months as of this writing). Regardless of the quality of our training, it's not easy to convince companies hiring that we are suddenly "experts" that can solve their problems right away. A lot of people still want proof like projects and work we've done.

TL;DR

If you have the desire, the money, the drive to learn (and keep learning), and you can afford a few months of life without making any money to fully jump into something, Code Fellows is a high quality school offering a lot of potential growth. It was quite literally a life- and career-altering decision for me, and I'm thankful I got the opportunity to attend.

I took the iOS Boot Camp (now called the iOS Development Accelerator) in January/February 2014 and I can say without a doubt Code Fellows is the best educational experience I have ever had. I started learning how to code on my own 6 months prior to Code Fellows and landed an iOS dev position a month after the program ended. The best thing about Code Fellows is the pace and environment. Being surrounded by a class full of students on the same interests as you to bounce ideas off is invaluable. You will leave the development accelerator as an employable dev and make a great group of friends in the process.

I had tried my hands at traditional schools a few times and always found myself rather bored with the slow progress that was made. A friend had suggested trying out one of the day long 101 courses offered by Code Fellows so I did it. After that course and talking with some of the past graduates that were there helping, I decided to give it a try. I took 201 and 301 back to back and then decided to take the C#/ASP.Net 401 that was in a few months. While the amount of information thrown at you can be a bit overwhelming at times, the instructional staff does their best to work with you on reinforcing what you were taught in lecture as long as you ask. My classmates were all pretty amazing and we all worked together as much as possible to get through some of the more challenging assignments together. For me having the "lab" time at the school with support from my peers, TA's and Instructor really made the difference. The instructor for my 401 was almost always willing to answer questions or help out with a problem on the weekends as well which I thought was pretty amazing. I definately recomend trying out at least a 101.

Overall Experience rating is a 3. I rated a 3 because of the lack of meaningful job assistance after graduation, as well as questionable statistics of graduates. From my class, I know only about half actually ended up with coding jobs. I question the "student success stats" because there has been no communciation on if I landed a job, and if so, what my salary was since about two months after I graduated (at the time, I did not have a job). I question where they got the numbers that helped swayed me into entering the bootcamp in the first place, or if they were more of a pick and choose kind of statistic. I do think the curriculum for days is far superior and if I were giving anyone advice I would caution them from taking the nights and weekends courses. Those students are basically on their own half the time because the Teaching Assistants aren't required to be there half the time. I know some of the instructors are amazing, but some, including "assistant instructors" aren't ready for teaching. Would rate higher if there were a better job assistance program, and would advise students to look for a bootcamp in Seattle with a money back guarantee (those weren't offered in the area when I was in school). 

When I decided to make a career change and after being on the self-taught coding route for a while, Code Fellows came highly recommended by a friend who had gone through the program and had landed herself a new career as a software engineer.  I thought about it for a bit, as it's a big decision and commitment, but ultimately I decided it was a good decision for myself and my family.  Turns out it paid off.  I went through the 201, 301, and 401 (Advanced Full-Stack JavaScript) level courses.  My instructors and TAs were all incredibly helpful and thoughtful in each course.  It was stressful for me to learn a skill this complex in such a short amount of time, so it was important to me that I feel supported and care about through the process.

Code Fellows proved to be an incredible place to learn not only software development skills, but also other skills needed to be successful in the industry; from career coaching to learning how to work collaboratively in groups/one-on-one.  As an added bonus, I had some amazing classmates in my cohort and friendships developed while there have lasted outside of school. 

Pros:  
- Knowledgeable and dedicated staff (both instructional and support). 
- Thoughtful and evolving curriculum. 
-  Supportive and inclusive environment.
- School staff is open to, and encourages, feedback.
- Great location.
- Networking opportunities available weekly.

Cons:
- Expense, but it's worth it.  Plus, scholarships are available to those who qualify.
- Time commitment.  Again, it's worth it.  The curriculum is fast-paced, so you'll need to be committed if you want to be successful.  

Code Fellows was an amazing experience for me. You really get out of it what you are willing to put into it. Through my time, 201, 301 and 401 ASP.NET, I made a lot of great friends and learned more than I ever would have at the slower pace of a College program. These courses are not for everyone and I think they are aware of that and that is probably the reason there are also slower paced nights and weekends courses. Pretty much everyone that I started with at the 201 level all have full time jobs as software developers, I highly recommend at least going to a 101/102 class just to get a feel for the learning enviroment.

I guess Code Fellows might be good if you are a bro but otherwise I would not recommend. The culture of the bootcamp is not inclusive to women and is very male dominated. Women are better off studying independently - save your money!

I started at Codefellows with the desire to learn how to code and see if I would enjoy the work more than my previous career. Codefellows has a really great approach to teaching, they are less interested in telling you the answers and more focused on directing you to find them yourself. They put a big emphasis to always learn new things which, let's face it, in this industry is crucial to staying relevant. Not only did my time at code fellows teach me how to code a high industry standard it also taught me how to collaborate with others, how to plan and organize your work (how else do you get all those assignments done!) and how I should go about my job search.

For the Python track, which I was taking. I was definitely geared more to web development (which worked out fine by me) but if you are looking for the number crunching data science that is all the rage nowadays, I'd suggest looking elsewhere. Having said that, my knowledge of Python when I finished up was good enough to self-teach many of those topics.

I highly recommend Code Fellows. I decided to enroll at Code Fellows because fo the diversity scholarship they offer. I was able to get 70% of my tuition discounted. The culture on campus is inviting and safe. They preach against a "brogrammer culture" and cliques are highly discouraged. Everyone at the school is there for the same goal, and are willing to help each other out. It is a difficult goal to achieve, and I think that the faculty and TA's make it easier with the support that they provide. There is always someone there that can help. The courses are not easy by any means, but defintely concurable with hard work and dedication to success. There is a lot of information thrown at you and its difficult to fully comprehend concepts the first time.

I think Cofe Fellows does a great job of finding opportunities for their graduates post graduation. It is up to you to go out and get the job, but they are there for you. The thing I like most about Code Fellows is once you become part of the Code Fellows family you are always welcome to return. They hold events for alumni, and last but not least. The Family is growing. graduates are getting placed all over the city of Seattle and its exciting to see.

My experience at Code Fellows was nothing short of amazing. I went through the Full-Stack Javascript sequence and learned more than I thought was possible in such a short amount of time. Every teacher and mentor that I had was not only knowledgable, but was truly invested in my education. They wanted me to succeed as much as I wanted to succeed.

The curriuculum is challenging and fast-paced, (to be expected with a "bootcamp" style education), but if you focus and are willing to put in the work, good things will come of this experience. I started with next-to-nothing knowledge of code- I had taken one semester-long course on Java basics- and I landed a paid internship three months after completing the program (which I am very hopeful will turn into a job when it's over).

If you're at all considering Code Fellows... I highly suggest giving at least the first class or two (101, 102) a try. I'd be willing to bet that those two will be enough to get you "hooked".

--A former Nanny turned JS Dev