Code Institute

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.

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 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 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 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.

The short answer is the course is a full stack program, but it's absolutely not worth the money.

I completed approx 70% of the learning material and submitted 3 projects before deciding that the Code Institute boot camp was a waste of time. 

Online boot camps have a lot of cheaper alternatives to contend with and that can present a problem for boot camps, who must have something special to bring them beyond someone seeking cheaper alternatives.

Right from the get go, the Code Institute has issues, it's HTML course is weak, doesn't cover some basic aspects of website design and has a challenge system that is too restrictively coded at times, so that correct code submissions come back with errors. Hints are generally not helpful, and time can be wasted trying to find errors in your code where it turns out they were looking for an rgba input even thought the instructions were to put in an rgb. Often here the issue is less with the coding but more with understanding what they want you do. It doesn't help that the course is often reams of text with a challenge on another page, meaning if you want to check something, you need to either dance between webpages or have multiple tabs open, which can throw off their progress system. Sure these are minor issues, but also they're generally unique to Code Institute. My overall experience of going through the HTML section was it was beyond lackluster, I opted to supplement my learning with another course. I found this second non Code Institute course to be vastly superior in all metrics, more complete content, better presentation, more coding challenges, better coding challenges, clearer instruction. 

These issues just pile up the more you go through the course. One of the more egregious issues runs with parts of the course that are out of date. More often than not there's just a quick note attached to the top of a video to ignore a chunk of it and do something else, or the video starts with setting up a legacy coding environment Code Institute no longer uses. Some of these videos are pushing 2 years, so this patchwork of fixes becomes the norm. Again generally looking at other coding courses I've conducted, and no other course is so out of date.

The coding projects aren't particularly inspiring either, rather than provide any real instruction, it's a more free from 'do something'. Issues with really stem from a lack of clear understanding of what is required for submission. Code Institute don't present examples of pass/merit/distinction of projects and the mark scheme is vague and uninformative. It didn't help that my mentor wasn't available for 2 of the 3 projects I submitted, and was only available for the last night of the other one. The overall feeling I got was to not be adventurous or push yourself, just do a simple and safe project, which I feel is a terrible way of assessing potential. 

Feedback from the project submissions is similarly vague and often questionable, but ultimately unhelpful. As someone who has teaching and mentoring experience as a postdoc, the feedback is just lazy. This should be a real strength of a bootcamp but with the Code Institute, it's just another missed opportunity turned into a weakness. 

I really wanted to use the Code Institute as the core for my learning experience and entry into coding, I was drawn into the rather nicely setup and laid out 5 day coding challenge, which is a good experience. However I came away from every module with a deep dissatisfaction in the learning outcomes. More and more I found myself going to other courses to learn material that should be covered in sufficient depth in the Code Institute subject matter.

Outside the learning objectives, there is a friendly Slack environment, but this is mainly students, and I am a member of a number of similar communities. Still it's not bad. I didn't find the career crunches helpful, this may be because I've come from a professional background and have been involved in recruitment before, but they were very basic, and ultimately not helpful. They're not at a great time for people doing the course with a standard day job either. 

I can't see any justification to using the Code Institute in its current form. There are far superior examples of learning objectives online, and I don't think any of the strengths of a boot camp really come up here. The fundamental issue is that the curriculum is muddled, out of date, and presented in a unique, but unhelpful fashion. Not enough care has been put into the construction and the over-reliance on proprietary systems frustrates more than supports. 

There are many better systems out there to learn how to code, Code Institute could get there, but it would need a large overhaul, most of the course videos need to be updated/reshot, the learning objectives need to be thrashed out, and the courses need to be bulked. More complex coding challenges, and more implementation to real world situations. As it stands there is a long way to go before the course could be recommended, even if it was free. 

Code Institute's Diploma in Software Development is a full-stack web development bootcamp, which you can take full-time (4 months) or part-time (up to 14 months). Although I was unemployed at the time, I eventually chose the part-time option as I didn't want to commit to a full 8-hour-a-day obligation. It eventually took me just over 7 months to complete the course, precisely the time I set myself in the beginning.

TL;DR: my experience with the course, the topics covered, the support offered, the student community, and with Code Institute in general, has been overwhelmingly positive. I would recommend this course to anyone interested in web development, with only one caveat: if you're a complete novice to the computer world, don't quite know the difference between Windows, Word and Explorer yet, or have never used the word "variable", then you might find yourself struggling with certain course topics.

Intro

Code Institute (CI) has a nice "demo course" for aspiring applicants, called the 5-Day Coding Challenge. It is designed to give the prospective applicant a taste of the coding world, of the teaching approach the full course takes, and an opportunity for the person to ascertain whether their aptitude and interests are really aligned with what the course has to offer. I ran into the challenge by fortune (or by search engine wizardry? :)) and completed it just to see what it was all about. I enjoyed it, it was fun and interesting, but as I hadn't made a serious decision to change careers at that particular time yet (I had worked in the aviation industry for 18 years prior), I didn't give it much thought when I finished it.

Pre-course

A couple of months later - and by then I was already seriously contemplating leaving my then-current job and changing careers - I was contacted by CI's Educational Advisor and asked if I'd be interested in taking the course. Our first conversation (over the phone) lasted for over half an hour, during which he explained to me the types of support offered during the course, the financing options, and addressed all questions I had. It was not one of those generic phone sales calls where the person just reads a written advertisement in robot-like voice spouting their perfect product - it was an open and honest personal conversation involving many questions from my part, and at no time did I have the feeling that he was just trying to sell me his product.

 What really “sold” me for the course – even in comparison with other similar courses I had looked at – were these promises:
- a university-credited diploma upon successful completion of the course,
- a curriculum built upon technologies in high demand by the industry,
- four-pillar in-course support (Student Care, Tutors, personal Mentor, Slack community)
- career support upon course completion.

Price

The price of EUR 5500 (I think it's slightly higher now) was not negligible by any stretch, but once I had made the final decision to change careers, and comparing the above promises to other courses of similar content/scope and their prices, it was more than reasonable. So I quit my job, and decided to jump in head-first. And I never looked back.

Start

On the first day of the official course start (new part-time students officially start on Tuesday) I received a personalised welcome call from Student Care, followed by an email containing a bundle of useful student brochures (welcome pack, Student Charter, support guide), and a personalised course schedule based on the time I had said I'd like to complete the course in. The schedule is very useful for tracking one's progress as it tells you exactly what lesson you should be at on which date, thus helping you plan your studying and preventing you from falling behind on the schedule. Really helpful.

Contents

The courses Learning Management System is an online application enabling access to all the course materials, plus links to Tutor Support and Slack (although Slack definitely works better when downloaded as a standalone desktop app).

The course contents are divided into modules of two general types:
- "Fundamentals" modules - teaching the syntax of the particular language covered (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python),
- "Practical" modules - providing practical application of the theoretical concepts learned in the Fundamentals.

Thus the HTML and CSS modules are followed by a User-Centric Frontend module (introducing Bootstrap), JS is followed by an Interactive Frontend module (introducing jQuery), and Python is followed by Practical Python (introducing Flask), Data-Centric Development (introducing SQL and MongoDB), and Full-Stack Frameworks (introducing Django).

As a general rule, the Fundamentals modules are a mix of text lessons, runnable examples and auto-graded challenges or quizzes, while the Practical modules are video/tutorial-based (with occasional challenges) and involve theory (e.g. UI/UX design concepts or database design) and code-along mini projects.
 
I found most of these lessons very intuitive and easy to follow; some challenges were really challenging and there are some individual points that perhaps could be explained more clearly (although that is really completely subjective), but I can honestly say that I never encountered any issue that I wasn't eventually able to resolve with some own research or, when that failed, using one of the available support options.

What bears pointing out is that at the end of every module (be it Fundamentals or Practical) there is a Student Feedback Form which enables every student to leave feedback on the module they just completed. Student feedback is clearly important to CI, and the course is undergoing constant improvements -  just as an example, around the time I started, they changed the “official” course IDE to replace an outdated one, and around the time I was finishing, the Django module was fully remade to use Django 3, and is IMHO currently the best module in the course. Minor bugs or problems (which can also be reported through Slack) are usually resolved (or at least worked around) within hours or days at most.

A single weak point  (but again, this is a completely personal opinion) I was able to identify in the course, is the transition from JavaScript fundamentals to practice. While the JS Fundamentals module is really solid, and the Practical part covers some essential topics like API handling quite well, what I felt was lacking was a code-along project that would build a working JS app from scratch, a demonstration how to apply all the little pieces of the puzzle that are JS syntax and put them together into a working app. The feeling I had was that of a person holding a large set of Lego bricks and knowing exactly what each one does separately, but having no idea how to put them together. By its very nature, JS is a significant difficulty increase from HTML/CSS, and I found myself really struggling to put my theoretical JS knowledge to practice, as did a significant number of other students I conversed with. This is the single point I think really should be improved in the course, and I wrote that in my Feedback Form.

Projects

Every major Practical module ends with a Milestone Project, which has clear official requirements and is graded by an external expert. Thus at the end of the course the graduate has a portfolio of four major apps (HTML/CSS, HTML/CSS/JS, Flask/MongoDB, Django/SQL) that they can demonstrate their knowledge and skills with. The value of the Milestone Project work is immense - one learns to use a real IDE (Gitpod is the official one for the course, but the student is free to choose any alternative IDE if they want to, albeit with limited support), to use Git and GitHub, to search for solutions online (one learns that "Google is your best friend" is so much more than just a catchphrase), to use online tools (validators etc.) and resources (Stack Overflow and beyond) and, most important of all, one sees the result of their theoretical knowledge being materialised into something working and usable. Priceless.

Support

The "four pillars" of support, as advertised, are:

Student Care
A service for general student matters (LMS access, mentor assignment, progress tracking etc.).  But the level of care they demonstrated (at least to me) far exceeded my expectations. Every six weeks or so I would receive a phone call asking me how I was, acknowledging my progress, my good use of Tutor Support and Slack activity, asking if I was ready for my Milestone Project and/or if I had any difficulties. When my hometown was struck by an earthquake in March 2020, they even called me to ask if there was anything they could help me with - may seem like just a nice gesture, but to me, that's more student care than what I received during my polytechnic studies.   

Tutor Support
A chat-based instant support for day-to-day course-related issues. Primarily intended for lesson clarifications or help with challenges, they will also never refuse to answer even project-related or debugging issues. I only contacted them five or six times during the entire course, three of those times in relation to my Milestone Project, and only when I was really really stuck, but every single time they came through incredibly and helped me resolve my issue or at least pointed me in the right direction. One time the lady Tutor even set up a one-to-one screen-sharing live call to help me debug my code using Dev Tools.
The best part? Tutor Support is available 24h on weekdays and 9-17h on weekends. It doesn't really get much better than that.

Mentor
Each student is assigned a personal mentor, a professional programmer whose primary purpose is to guide the student through their milestone projects. Three half-hour sessions per project are foreseen, and the mentor is there not so much to help with coding issues, but to provide ideas on code improvements, suggestions on best practices, advice on app features etc. Apparently some mentors get more involved, some less, but I'd say that how much you get from your mentor is mostly up to you - I for example have a feeling now that perhaps I could have gotten much more had I asked, but at the time I was too busy just getting my apps to work and submitting my projects on time.

Slack
Current students, alumni, some of the mentors, and some of the CI staff (mostly Tutors and the Community Manager) are what makes up the CI Slack Community. 
Each course module has a dedicated channel where students can ask questions about specific course-related issues they encounter, and what is so invaluable is that they will often get not only peer-level answers (e.g. from a "senior" student who had struggled with the same challenge before them) but also expert-level clarifications from alumni and/or mentors who already work as professional programmers. Some mentors and alumni go so far to occasionally host live educational calls they see students struggle with, and these calls are an immense additional learning opportunity.

I can say without a shred of doubt that the Slack community is the most valuable non-coding part of the course. The amount of support, friendliness and positivity in the channels is incredible, and I have made some really good friends there even though I have never met any of those people before.

Career support

I must say I was the most skeptical about this part. Yes, there is a Careers module at the very end of the course, with some really useful contents (what a CV should look like, why a LinkedIn profile is important, how to write a good cover letter). Also, many third-party vacancies are regularly posted in Slack, and also CI cooperates with several renowned companies who look for developers. But as a career-changer I really felt I would need more "personalised" assistance as I had never attempted a job hunt before, much less in the programming market. I was afraid the module and the job posts alone would be woefully insufficient.
All my fears were alleviated in my first Google Meet call with the Career Support lady. Not only did she help me remake my CV and advised me what to change in my LinkedIn profile on the spot, she also gave me "homework" (with instructions how to do it) to look for prospective employers/vacancies and make a list.
In the next call, we reviewed the list and she told me to start applying from the bottom of the list while she would start contacting the HR/recruiting departments in the companies, with the aim of introducing me so I would not be just another anonymous application. We continued through email correspondence, where she provided me with more very valuable advice e.g. on how to respond to application rejections. In the first three weeks of a serious job hunt, I managed to land three interviews. And while I haven't received any job offers yet (it's been only four weeks now, and it's vacation season), I feel that the career support I have received so far has been nothing short of stellar.

Course difficulty

You will hear some people complain that there is too much self-study and outside research required, that for the attached price tag you shouldn’t need to do that. I disagree. Yes, some individual research is needed. But I say with full confidence that there is no obstacle that the course puts in front of the student that couldn’t be overcome using own efforts, Google + outside resources, , Tutor Support, and Slack – at least I haven’t encountered one. And I really appreciate the moments when I was forced to do some own “digging”, as these have taught me the invaluable skill of looking for solutions, asking questions and Googling properly – I know that all this sounds like a joke, but if you’ve ever talked to a programmer, you’ll know it isn’t. I’m glad I wasn’t handed all the answers on a silver platter – I truly believe it has made me a better future programmer. It has also helped me overcome some personal insecurities, which is also a point not to be thrown away.

There will also be people who feel that they are struggling too much, that the lessons are too difficult or too unclear and that the amount of support available is insufficient. While I can appreciate the sentiment - I had my struggles during the course, especially with JavaScript as mentioned above, and there will be the odd lesson that could have been worded better - I have to disagree again. As a former Air Traffic Controller,  I can provide this parallel: while probably almost anyone could be taught to eventually work as an Air Traffic Controller, the time required to achieve that, and the quality of one's work afterwards, would vary wildly from person to person. But the bar has to be set somewhere. We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and I don't think it's fair to expect the bar to be set at the level of our weakness. Personally, I have zero talent for visual arts. Could I then blame a painting course for failing to make a Picasso out of me?

Conclusion

What I feel I have received from the course:
- solid grasp of HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Python, Flask, Django, MongoDB and SQL, and the corresponding documentation,
- familiarity with Bootstrap, Materialize and jQuery,
- ability to plan, design and execute a web project from start to finish,
- ability to troubleshoot, debug and fix my code,
- solid knowledge of code versioning,
- ability to use a professional-level IDE, and the ability to grasp any alternate one in the future,
- ability to ask good troubleshooting questions, 
- ability to search online resources quickly for solutions and/or clarifications,
- ability to help others resolve their code issues.
- immense support on all levels, from coding assistance to career to community/friendship.

All said and done: worth every cent and every minute invested. 

I have only done a few intro coding courses with free online resources before this course. The online course started off well with the HTML, CSS modules but then JavaScript and Python modules were intensely complicated, covering a lot of concepts and the majority of the time I was left to research and google on my own to understand what was being taught, tutor support is available but i would have to wait on average 45 - 120 mins for each question and that is not a guarantee they could help as some of them are also recent graduates of the course. I've had many times the tutor's shift ended and they abruptly tell me that and I would have to wait for another tutor to help, they often made me feel stupid and had an arrogant and obnoxious attitude, although there were a few good humble tutors too.
Mentor support is for when you do the milestone projects you get 30 - 60 mins each time and you are given technical advice and how to proceed with the project. I didn't really resonate with my mentor but was discouraged to change as I had already started with him. He was telling me that coding was basically fixing coding problems, so you would spend most of your time googling and researching on the internet finding the answers and even when you've been working as a developer for so many years you still don't know that much.
Project assessments are a bit random as the feedback tells you to test or code another way that was not taught on the course, which is really strange and puts you up to fail.
My overall experience is that they just want your money and the support is sorely lacking for something so complicated. This course is adequate if you already know a lot or have developer friends to help you out and you have lots and lots of time to research. Also if you don't mind getting frustrated frequently because you don't know what you're doing and you have to figure it out yourself. 

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. 

 

 

Personally, I think that a lot of negative reviews here are a bit unfair.

Before you enroll in this course you really need to acknowledge that you're about to commit to a studying grind and you need to be prepared for that. Codeinstitute presents itself really well i.e. they have all this support in place (slack, tutors, mentors, syllabus etc) but ultimately you will still be struggling a lot, and often you will be required to suss out a solution by yourself as this is how you really solidify and learn things to progress in the real world. All these promises of support will be no good to you if you're overestimating your own ability to absorb knowledge and underestimating required adaptation to the independent learning style of the course/industry. Re-skilling is really tough and I get the feeling that a lot of people get upset when they realize just how much effort they have to put into it and that the support alone is not enough to succeed.

To be fair, technical support was always good in my experience, not a long time to wait for a replies, great mentors etc (I'm based in the UK and was studying normal working hours)

However, there was a massive difference in complexity between the first few modules and JS / Python onwards. The spike was so significant that it really knocked the wind out of my sales! The motivation was gone quite quickly. They do warn their students that it is normal, and that is to be expected - after all JavaScript / Python are actual programming languages while HTML / CSS are not. That's just the nature of the beast, however, I do feel that the way they presented the information was a bit too brief and shallow based on the fact that after a few programming modules you were expected to create your second milestone project (for your portfolio) using the complex technologies you've just (briefly) covered. The jump from doing simple programming exercises to suddenly having to go out there and create your own project, using your own ideas, was very harsh. Mentors will then approve your idea or provide helpful feedback but ultimately will require you to just go out there and do loads of googling / research to create proper programming code that you've barely scratched the surface of whilst learning the modules. This disparity between having to just go along with the syllabus doing simple tasks and reading relatively digestible information to creating a full-blown project utilizing proper programming language/s, reading documentation etc was so big and extremely frustrating that I almost completely gave up. However, if you manage to get through this phase, I'm certain that you will finish the course as it would imply that you can adapt and overcome the biggest challenge this course can throw at you.

I did not manage. I've scored almost 100% on my first milestone project (HTML/CSS) but never managed to submit my second one. I got stuck because of the issue which I've described above. I've spent a lot of time trying to understand the requirements for the second project, and decide how I can tick those boxes and create something that has real-life application. It was too much for me. I've been shown examples of similar projects, I've had mentors tell me which functionality I need but there was just too big of a leap between what they expected from my code and what I've learned in previous modules, so I struggled.

I've had 2 extensions, which obviously cost a lot of extra money on top of 5k+ that I was already paying for the course. Even though I found it extremely difficult, I've never given up and always thought that there is a decent chance that I will finish the program. It came to a point when I realized that I will have to drop my full-time work (took a month off) to put all of my efforts into the course. After making the necessary arrangements with my work I reached out to Code Institute asking for a third (and in my mind - final) extension. What a surprise it was to hear that my request was being rejected and that my access to the course was going to be revoked shortly as I was approaching the end of my 2nd extension. Now, I take full responsibility for my actions and acknowledge that, at the end of the day, it's not CodeInstitute's job to babysit me, and in all fairness in their eyes I probably was never going to make it, but by then I've already spent 7k on the whole thing and I honestly believe I deserved knowing that my 2nd extension was going to be my last. But alas, nobody told me anything; which was quite a bad customer service. No previous correspondence, nor any warnings that I'm approaching my deadline for the course with no possibility to further extend. For this reason, I will never recommend CodeInstitute to anyone unless they are prepared to throw their life at this course.

Just be very careful, as this might be a goldmine that will open a lot of doors for the right people, but don't be lured and charmed by promises of support alone, high salaries etc this is a proper grind and you will have to graft to succeed if you're not IT literate (or if you don't have the right mindset - don't bother). 

I did end up getting an apprenticeship with a different company, using the skills that I've learned at the start of the course with CodeInstitute. So it wasn't a total waste! But that extension rejection was painful and cost me all of my savings. 

Be careful.

P.S. Just to clarify - I have been informed about course access coming to an end, but at no point has anyone ever told me that this extension will be my last.

P.P.S The actual course material felt like a work in progress - it had typos, broken links and sometimes did not follow logically. I've reported a lot of these issues which were fixed quite quickly to be fair.