Craft Academy

I'm a designer who was looking to broaden my skillset. Having graduated from the bootcamp, I've discovered that back-end web development also is a creative endeavour. I can now take on other types of projects, both professionally and personally. As a student, you will be challenged on a daily basis. Try to train yourself to talk about your understanding of your code and implementations as you go through the prep course. A word of advice, try to stay at the same pace as the coaches, even when you aren't getting everything. They are there for you if you need help or clarification. Be at the top of your game when it comes to communication. You'll go thru 12 demanding and exhaustive weeks, try to keep an open mind and give the course your all, the 'penny drops' during the last weeks of the camp. 

I am 31 one years old and I needed a change after seven years in the television buisness. Programming runs in my family so my brothers got to pick the course for me. I was scared. I was excited. My self esteem went up and down. 

But I am proud to say that I now see myself as a junior developer, after just 12 weeks! And I had never written a line of code in my life! 

The coaches relentless work to make their students into the best developer they can be is, in my opinion, what absoulutely defines this bootcamp. 
 

If you decide to go through this camp you will laugh, you will cry, you will evolve as a person, you will get friends for life and you will get a new skillset setting you up to be a programmer. 

Trust me. I weighed back and forth before deciding to do this. And it was the best decision I ever made! 


/ Sophie - October 2017 cohort
 

Bootcamp indeed. If you are looking to develop as a person not only personally but educationally and professional too this is the course for you. This is intensive 12 weeks that will definetely change your whole lifestyle. 

You will push yourself to the limit and learn stuff you never thought was able to understand. A great course, with super helpful coaches and a good approach. You will learn all basics and even more in Ruby on Rails, JavScript and a bunch of other frameworks, front-end languages such as HTML and CSS as well as GitHub, databases and text editors. 

Basically you will be a ready developed full-stack junior developer by the end of these 12 weeks. However, depending on how much time and energy you put into the course, the further you will get. So get ready!

12 weeks of high-paced, overwhelming challenges and I loved every second of it!

A coding bootcamp is not for everyone, it takes a certain kind of dedication to endure the constant feeling of "crap, I don't know anything" or "how is it even possible to do ALL this in 12 weeks???". But, guess what, it is doable and managable, and no matter how hard it feels it is worth it.

As for Craft Academy, amazing coaches!!! They are dedicated and available almost 24h a day to help, or to yell at you, whichever the case may be... They are supportive but they do not spoon-feed you, you are expected to take responsibility for your own learning. The simple truth of any bootcamp is that you have to put in the work to reap the reward, but if you do it than the CA coaches will do everything in their power to help you succeed.

The 12 weeks I invested in the bootcamp was the best investment I have ever made into my own personal development and thanks to Craft Academy I can now fulfill my dream of coding for a living.

If you want to learn to code in just 12 weeks this is the course for you. This course has change my life and give me a whole new carrier path to focus on. 

The 12 week coding boot camp will test every emotional part of your being but let me promise you this, you will come out a junior coder with the best skills to take you forward in your carrier, but you have to stay focused, committed and keep pushing through no matter what.

The highly skilled instructors will take you through every step to getting you on track to become a junior full stack developer including preparing you for future job applications and interviews.

I would highly recommend this course, you won't regret it, I don't!

Craft Academy's twelve-week program was arguably the most stressful and challenging three months of my entire life. The coding was great fun and it's always exciting and rewarding to grow a skillset. My major challenges were with the "soft skills" taught in the course - collaboration, working with remote colleagues / teachers, implementing planning tools and techniques. But the fact of the matter is no one can build anything of worth sitting alone in their basement with their laptop. I'm very grateful to the coaches at Craft Academy for forcing us to learn to work like "real world" developers - the kind who have to work in teams and who have to pair program and who are required to submit their code for review.

My background is pretty diverse - from entrepreneurship to non-profit management to the arts - but coding had always been something I'd thought about doing. I had spent a few years trying to teach myself to code in Java / Android, without a great deal of success. I know for myself that three months of 100% dedication and someone to hold me accountable is worth years of self-study and the best online, free resources in the world. Not everyone feels this way and if you are great at self-study and have the wherewithal to find communities to connect with online, that would surely be a cheaper option. For me, the investment is well worth the reward.

The first six weeks of the camp are about building basic skillsets - working with Ruby, Javascript, HTML/CSS and the Sinatra and Rails frameworks. The second half of the course is all about building projects - one after the other, increasing in complexity. I very much enjoyed this approach, though I felt there was a bit too much hand-holding during most of the first half. Some people appreciated that. I often found myself working on side projects during these weeks (and highly recommend that anyone doing a bootcamp do so with whatever free time you can scrape together).

In the last half of the camp, we built some applications that impressed the crap out of our friends: a simple social network, an online marketplace for placing food orders, an interactive "pub quiz" app that pushes out questions in real time to players, and receives their answers back. I'm really proud of what we built during those last six weeks.

I also want to note that some of my colleagues struggled quite a bit with the materials. The goal of the bootcamp is to struggle - to be pushed up to and perhaps beyond your limits, and certainly out of your comfort zone. Still, many of my colleagues didn't take the prep course seriously and they suffered throughout the bootcamp because of this, and because of an attitude that prevented them from acknowledging their faults and working to fix them. If you decide to take this or any bootcamp, it is very important to bring *humility* to the table. Acknowledge how little you know, and work as hard as you can to change that. Try to be a sponge soaking up knowledge. If a coach does something that puzzles you, ask her why she's doing it! If you just follow the instructions, you'll never get there. And if you fail to follow the instructions, you'll never develop good habits.

So all of that said, I did, in fact, love this bootcamp. I felt the coaches were actually invested in my education - really wanted me to succeed - and were fighting for me the whole way. I feel like a developer and can make all kinds of things - much more complex than I would have thought going in. While job hunting, it seemed there were *lots* of opportunities for me and having attended a handful of networking events, I can say without question that there is a strong demand for junior developers here in Sweden, and likely throughout the world.

I know it's a hard decision to spend the money, but if you thrive in this kind of environment, Craft Academy is a great place to become a web developer.

Full disclosure: Since graduating, I have begun work at Craft Academy. I tried to be as honest as possible and write a review that would actually help people decide whether or not this bootcamp is right for them.

I have been a CraftAcademy student from June to September 2016, followed their PrepCourse from April and enjoyed every minute of it.

It is a very intense course that takes all your time, energy and attention, but it is well worth all of it.

I came in as a Molecular Biologist and after only 12 weeks I could scaffold and deploy my own web applications, search for solutions indipendently and succesfully but I have also learned how to work in group, pair and ask for help in effective ways.

After the bootcamp I have dedicated my time to following some open source projects while searching for a job, and after only 2 months I got 2 job offers as QA Engineer (test automation) and Front End Developer (using mainly JavaScript), but I am sure I could have managed to find a position as a Full Stack or Back End Developer if I only were interested.

The possibility to actually become an interesting candidate for these kinds of jobs was my biggest concern when I began the bootcamp, but even if there are no job guarantees, the knowledge acquired during those weeks is enough to be conidered valuable assets in the IT world and I am a living proof of it.

During the course I've worked with people coming from very different bakgrounds and some of them proved to be able to outsmart me in many ways, others were slower than me, others were just simply naturals at coding, but that never put me down. It gave me more motivation to keep going because I knew the bootcamp was a place for everybody, the only thing that is required is your absolute commitment and a full load of passion for what you re doing.

You are never left alone, the teachers and your classmates are always online and available for you, to get you unblocked on your challenges and give support, but you can choose the level of indipendency you want to get. No one pushes help on you if you don't want it but you are constantly followed by the teachers and your progresses are shown in a well furnished GitHub account you will have at the end of the course.

I have searched for a good job in Gothenburg for a couple of years without ever being satisfied, now I can finally start something I really love in a rich, full of stimuli and always changing environment.

I would do it over and over again.

I'm surprised about the high ratings for this course. I paid $10,000 to work with very little help or guidance. I would suggest if you are interested in this course to save money and check out an udemy course first. You can find many with the same curriculum that craft academy offers and also have a community connected with them so you aren't alone while completing the online course.
It's nice how wide the curriculum is. You do learn about other areas in a developers career but it's not enough to justify taking the course in my opinion. 
They say the have a money back guarantee but it is near impossible to qualify for it, so be weary.
The instructors seemed to have favorite students and didn't want to help the struggling students which is the opposite of how a class should run.
Now I'm out a ton of money and it feels like I paid to just get yelled out and be confused and lost for 12 weeks. 
There is also no help in finding a job. The "help" they give is a meeting on job interviews and the questions you may be asked in said interviews. 
I'm bummed I had such a bad experience with this course but I feel they gave up on me halfway through.It
 made me never want to code ever again and I don't think I will ever try to get back into coding.