Code Institute

I signed up to this course back in 2017 when their entire learning platform was TEXT ONLY.  I was stupidly lured in by the idea of having an 'accredited diploma' by the end of it so thought it was a good idea. It most certainly WAS NOT.

The first iteration of their course was full of spelling and punctuation mistakes, grammatical errors and just poorly worded material. This did not give me much confidence right from the outset.

I struggled with the materials for a long time and almost gave up then they decided they wanted to change the entire platform to videos. The streams and projects changed and it left me confused as to where I should carry on. I called the institute and was told it would probably be best to just start all over again. Right. OK.

When I first started looking into coding I wasn't really aware of many of the resources out there which is why I regrettably ended up going with The Code Institute. But by the time they had switched to this new video platform I was now well aware of the multitude of resources and the high standards that were offered, both paid and for free.

This new learning platform was, quite simply, a complete and utter joke. People are reading from scripts, stumbling their words, coughing and clearing their throats, mumbling and several sections had background noise, as if they had been recorded in someone's bedroom. The tutors are dull, boring, monotone and extremely hard to engage with. 
I would follow lessons through in meticulous detail only to find the code had changed very subtly from one lesson to the next and then the entire project wouldn't work. I would spend hours tearing my hair out trying to figure out what was wrong and over time it became more and more frustrating.

The content of the course, compared to other resources, is quite simply DREADFUL. The new learning platform was released in 2017 and even now in 2019 as I write this it hasn't been updated. Instead there are lazy banners in red at the top of the screen informing of any changes, later versions of tech required or any mistakes that had been identified. Er, I have paid you £5k for this course, how about you record some new material! LAZY!

Mentors. First one was rubbish, then he quit. Second one kept cancelling then he quit. Last one was great so can't fault him but be aware that you only get 3 x 45 min-1hour sessions to 'go over' your projects before you submit them. Not a lot of support for £5k.

Tech support - sometimes ok, most of the time were pretty dismissive and unhelpful. I would have been quicker to just use Google or Stack Overflow. Sorry, why did I pay £5k again?

Its now August 2019 and I have given up on the course and found a face to face one for HALF THE PRICE. Nobody from Code Institute has bothered to even call or email to see how I am getting on or offer any help. Disgusting service, but who cares, they've got my money now.

For anyone wanting to learn to code DO NOT BOTHER with this rubbish institution. Their materials are awful, content outdated and you will be learning a technology stack that has fewer job opportunities than other courses out there. There are far less Python jobs on the market than, say React, just have a look on a job search engine.

My advice if you are going to teach yourself.. Udemy, Free Code Camp, YouTube, then maybe join a local coding group and build your skills from there. You can get WAY better content than this on udemy for around £12 for a full stack bootcamp course. Why would you actually choose to pay £5k for something you can get at a fraction of the cost at a much much higher quality elsewhere. DO NOT MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE AS I DID.

Finally, don't be fooled by a diploma. Nobody gives a sh*t. Can you code? Do you have a portfolio? Can you demonstrate your skills in an interview? Their diploma is accredited in Scotland and several English universities that I contacted said it would not be accepted for any formal entrance requirements to higher education courses, so again, why waste your money?

Oh and one other thing. If you don't complete the course within the given timeframe (12 or 18 months I can't remember) they will charge you £100 per month for every additional month you need the materials to be able to continue your studies! WHAAAAT?! GO ELSEWHERE GUYS! 

I wish I had never come across this awful business called Code Institute!

:-(

I completed Code Institute's 13 week Full Stack developer bootcamp in April 2016. Before applying to Code Institute, I did quite a bit of research on bootcamps in both Ireland and the UK. The three key reasons I believe I made the best choice in going with Code Institute are as follows:

1. The course content is driven by industry/ employer demands: 
Code Institute have an Industry Advisory Council (IAC) made up of a number of industry experts and employers who they meet with regularly to discuss the skills and technologies being sought in industry. The course content is developed to align with industry demands - meaning that the languages and frameworks covered on the course are relevant to current job opportunities. For this reason, a high percentage of past students of the bootcamp and online course have been successful in finding developer jobs upon completion of the course. Furthermore, they constantly review and update their course content so that they can keep up to date with the industry - which is a major plus for jobseekers in a market that is constantly evolving at pace. The Code Institute team organise 'Employers week' - whereby online and bootcamp students can meet and attend presentations from recruiters and employers. Students can also avail of CV workshops and mock interviews (technical and non-technical) which helps get you application, interview and job ready.

2. The course is competitively priced and you can choose a learning path to suit your own schedule: 
I did quite a bit of research on different coding courses (ranging from free to fee-based, part-time online to full-time classroom) and in my opinion Code Institute offers the best value for money. The fees were significantly lower than comparable courses in the UK and the languages and frameworks covered on the curriculum (HTML, CSS, JS, Python, SQL, Mongo, Angular2, Django) are relevant to what employers are looking for in developers. Furthermore, the Code Institute team are supportive of helping you find a learning schedule that is tailored to you - whether that be a full time bootcamp or part time online course. I chose to do the bootcamp as I believed this gave me the best opportunity to up-skill quickly and the best value for money. However, I've talked to online students who complete the course part-time and benefit from support from mentors as well as group chats on slack to help them work through the lessons.

3. The faculty and student support team are excellent: 
Before applying to Code Institute, I spoke with Denise (then Education Advisor) and Brian (Programme Director) to see if the course would be a good fit from me. Both were incredibly helpful - a trait which is prevalent within the Code Institute team. Both myself and the other students availed of great support from the team throughout the course. The teaching staff (Richard, Brian and Neil) were excellent - knowledgeable in their fields and able to challenge the students to learn new technologies at speed. They were able to explain complex topics in layman terms. They also were patient and supportive when you faced a challenging topic - and encouraged you to get to the answer yourself (without giving the answer to you) which I appreciated as this helped me to learn from any mistakes and understand how to resolve them. The Student Advisory team (Tiffany, Will) were also on hand to organise meet and greets/ presentations with employers and to help us resolve any issues.

The three key points above are a summary of my three biggest pros of choosing to study with Code Institute. In terms of cons, a simple suggestion I would make is to advertise the Employer's week more (either on the website or in a conversation at the point of students applying to the course). Week 13 (i.e. Employer's week) was one of the most valuable weeks of the course which I was thankfully able to make - however when signing up to the course I thought the course was 12 weeks only. Technically, the bootcamp does last 12 weeks only (as all course content is covered in that period) - that said I'd argue the 13th week is something you don't want to miss!

I completed the 12 week bootcamp in classroom. The experience was great. I had very basic HTML knowledge before starting the course and now feel comfortable trying out any new technology. More than the languages and frameworks that are actually taught the process of learning and how to solve problems was the biggest takeaway.

The technologies used in the course are very up to date. I attended a careeers fair in Dublin a few weeks after finishing the course. Employers were suprised and impressed by the range of technologies I had covered. The technologies were inline with what start-ups and growing companies were using.

I was able to secure a job one and a half months after finshing the course. My only criticism is the gap between finishing and getting a job. I would have liked more suppourt with the job hunt. 

I would recommend the course to anyone who wants to learn programming. Before the course I was looking at unpaid internships and work experience. After building a portfolio with the Code Institute I was interviewing with exciting companies for full-time permanent roles.

This course is not just about learning how to use some coding languages. It's a step beyond. It shows you what actually involves working as a developer. It is more than a course, it's the closest situation to a real job. It provides you with a rich overall view of front end and back end. Obviously, you need to continue learning and practising-indeed a coder's life, basically, consists in that. You won't be a senior developer after finishing the bootcamp, but you're ready to any junior role. Apart from the languages, it teaches you some of the latest technologies and a lot of necessary tools to work in this industry. It's an intensive experience, but if you actually like coding, you'll enjoy it and the time shared with your classmates. Last but not least, I'd like to say that since the first moment, you feel that the Code Institute team is really committed to offer you the best possible service.  

I completed the fulltime course having decided to change careers into coding. Doing an intensive 12 week course like this was a great way of going from a novice to creating full stack web apps. The first month concentrates on front-end with particular emphasis on UX. The second month is coding, data visualisations and databases. In the last month you create an app with secure payment, user authentication and a fully hosted backend database. 

Being in a classroom bootcamp environment helped me learn as we could work in a team. This way of working tallies with how software is developed commercially. 

You get out of this course what you put in. There is prework to do before the class commences and I found I had to do a couple of hours of work in of an evening to reinforce learning.

I would recommend this bootcamp as a way of getting up to speed on full stack coding even if like me you have no prior experience. Having worked previously in the large tech corporations as an engineer I'd also say it is a good way to learn how to work successfully in a tech organisation.

This is a fantastic bootcamp. I took the 12 week classroom based bootcamp and have never looked back. 

The first month is about everything front-end. Whats front end ? Its the look and feel of the website. Its how everything lines up and how the user feels when using your webpage. The skills taught in this area are HTML,CSS,Javascript,Jquery and more. 

The main thing about this course is there is always more to learn. You are given the tools to continue learning when you've completed the course. That is such a valuable skill in this industry as web technologies continue to change every couple of years and the ability to learn them in a fast and effecient way is the most valuable thing any developer can have.

The classroom is based in Dublin city centre so was easy to commute to the class every day. You need your own laptop to do this course which is much better than having machines in the class as you can take your work with you. 

The price is expensive but nothing out of the ordinary for courses like this. The way I viewed it was an investment in myself and that at the end of the course if I worked hard enough I could land a job with the advertised €30,000 and that number isn't an exageration. 

Overall this course has been the best decision in my whole life. It took me out of a rut and taught me the skills to really change my career. I really want to thank everyone involved at the Code Institute for helping me get where I am today.

I did the fulltime course. Over four or five months (if you include the pre-course materials) I went from knowing absolutely nothing about coding to being able to build a website with a registration, login, and payment facility and deploy it online. I also got loads of experience in finding out the answers to problems I encounter by looking for them online, and a sense that this is a normal part of web development, so that after the course I know how to solve problems when I no longer have teachers at hand. If I'd been trying learn to code from scratch without the support of experienced teachers, and of colleagues going through the same process, I would've given up. There's no substitute for the informal knowledge-sharing that goes on in a classroom, and the network that you develop there is a resource that lasts beyond the end of the course. 

The teachers on the course were extremely conscientious and got us through all the roadblocks in our projects. The next few batches of students will have a much easier time of it because of our difficulties, but you learn as much from fixing the stuff that doesn't work the first time as from the stuff that does. I think the curriculum was basically well designed. We learnt everything the hard way i.e. by first building a webpage using basic html and css, then learning jquery, then learning flexbox and bootstrap, then Angular JS before going on to the backend languages and frameworks, so we got a sense of what underlies the amazing shortcuts that are available before we used them. 

The course is expensive but similarly priced to other bootcamps around the world. If you really want to learn to code, and can afford it, I think it's worth the money. You could do it on your own using free online resources but it would've taken me a few years instead of a few months to get to an equivalent level.

This is a coding bootcamp, not a graphic design course. 

Everythin was excellent. By the end of this course I had the knowlege to build clones of most major websites on the internet today. My final project was a dating website which had practically identical features to Twitter and Facebook. 

The emphasis is mainly on learning to program, which is great because its (in my opinion) the most important aspect of web design. The two star guy is obviously an idiot who doesn't know a thing about software development. 

If you want to learn to paint pretty pictures with crayons and colouring pencils, do an art course. If you want to learn how to program with the big boys, this is the bootcamp for you. 

Introduction

I'm a student now but my experiences with this course are so bad that I feel an urge to warn people before investing their money in this course. I have to also mention that I asked them to give me money back, because of my bad experiences with stream 1 I'm going to write about below. There is also stream 2 and stream 3 I've no taken yet.

Do you want to know how to make a nice responsive mobile navigation with a button to hide it? Do you want to know how to make a tooltip? Tabs? Popovers? Photo-slider with testimonials on it? 

And the answer for 4500 euros? Add class to Bootstrap. Do you want to know how to make it yourself? Too bad.

I asked the director about it and he told me over the phone "I don't want students to worry about the design, that is why we chose Bootstrap". You know what their sell page says? LEARN HOW TO USE CSS3, FROM BEGINNER BASICS TO ADVANCED TECHNIQUES, BUILDING UPON YOUR HTML5 SKILLS, TO DESIGN AND BUILD BEAUTIFUL RESPONSIVE WEB APPLICATIONS FOR ANY TYPE OF DESKTOP OR MOBILE DEVICE. You won't be taught to design anything, just add a class to Bootstrap. Is it an information worth 4500 euros? Don't you want to know how to design page elements yourself? No? Than this course is for you. 

There are tons of free resources where you can learn Bootstrap for free, I expected this course to have something extra considering the amount of money I paid. I got even less than I get from those free resources. Search for DevTips - Travis Neilson, he was recently hired by Google, he is the best teacher I ever had and I've learned a lot on his channel and for free. Btw. he also teaches Bootstrap.

Project for the stream 1

This is what the assignment says: 

• Use bootstrap or flexbox for main navigation and grid layout.

 Allright, I want to know how to design these page elements so I choose flex-box. I don't want to take any shortcuts in case I'm asked about these in a real job. There was nothing besides flexbox tutorial in the course content, that would help me to create these page elements I've mentioned above. I've searched elsewhere. I expected jQuery lessons to teach me how to create these page elements, but nothing besides pointless exercises on how to change background-color was available. Thanks to my book "Javascript and jQuery by John Ducket",  I've managed to create some tabs and accordion. Also this book is "practical examples" based which helps to remember stuff. This course just teaches you the language, it does not teach you to create anything with it. But so does Codecademy and bunch of other free courses. Is wrong from me to expect a little more for 4500 euros?

• Please use AngularJS as your framework.

After I finished designing the layout of the page which took me much longer than expected (course content was almost no help) I started integrating Angular in my project. The code that Code Institute provided on their pages didn't work. I've got an $injector error. Not sure if they fixed it yet but I've spend couple hours figuring this out. Allright, I could have asked them about it, took me bit more time, it isn't all that bad. What was bad was what happened to my tabs made with jQuery. I asked my tutor about it and he told be jQuery and Angular aren't a good match in some cases and that is not recommended to use both in one project. Yet I was asked to include both in my project. It was extremely frustrating. I got a correct code but it does not work. No warning about that in the course. Code Institute tutor told me. I've send them an open letter mentioning a lack of concept even before I encountered this problem. This just proves it. They just glued lessons on different topics together without worrying about the big picture. How is that even possible for the amount of money they ask for?

Tutors

Online tutors don't have a proper chat equipment. My last session was done over mobile phone microphone. I bought myself one of the best available web cameras to get most out of the course. How come that people paid for it didn't? The lack of common sense I have encountered in this course is mind blowing - let me remind you this is a 4500 euros course. I've had three tutors already. The first one was from India. He was more than qualified to be my tutor, very impressive resume. But the reception was so bad I had to ask for replacement - his accent didn't help. I got an Irish tutor who just started doing web development. He helped me to set up the stream 1 project with gulp and npm (not in the course content) but other than that he struck my as inexperienced and even he had heads up, he wasn't prepared for our session. That was a point when I sent Code Institute an open letter mentioning all the problems I had with this course and I respectfully asked them to either give me my money back or hire me to help them improve the course. So I could actually do something about it not just whine about it. 

Won't give me my money back

Neither happened. Brian O'Grady - Code Institute director told me that it's over 30 days, so they won't give me my money back. Because I completed stream 1 I tried to be fair and asked them for 2/3 of the money I paid.  Instead he forced himself on me by saying he wants to help me. I'm basically extorted to stay. If you have any other questions about the course, please, contact me here: daniel.hoksza@gmail.com . 

Look elsewhere. 

A lot of content that is covered in Stream 1 is available for free in the Viking Code School.

Btw. they canceled a course with part-time classroom students, because the students weren't happy about the course. They gave them money back or let them join the online course. My reasons aren't big enough I guess.

The good?

HTML, CSS, D3 lessons and Angular were decent.