Deep Dive Coding

Fantastic crew. Considering they all work for the college (CNM) and that this bootcamp is held to a collegiate standard, there is a certain level of vetting that takes place that you may not find at other bootcamps. For those taking a bootcamp towards an end-goal, here are my suggestions (please note that I have not taken the Java course)

I suggest the PHP/Fullstack for CS Majors or Wordpress oriented peeps,

the .Net for entrepreneurs/startups who want to "spin up" apps with a framework,

and the Java for code-competent professionals that want to up their game, or CS students.

Out of the gates each one will offer jobs at a different availability. Some have a huge gap between the Jr level and the Senior level, and some have a very strong mid-level range but few Jr level. Based on my observation, the PHP or Java course will compliment a CS degree very well; however, PHP offers more jobs than Java, but at a much lower pay bracket (Mostly Wordpress stuff). The irony is that PHP is easy to get into, but has lower paying mid-level availability when compared to Java. If you are code savvy, taking the Java may result in finally being worth decent money, but if you over estimate yourself you may come out of it not quite good enough. As I said, a CS degree would greatly compliment either of these. If you already know wordpress, the PHP course may be a solid bet because you will gain value in the wordpress sector by being able to create plugins, etc. The PHP course also seems to have the most "front-end", design oriented lessons as well.

The .Net is a different story all together. It is part time and is far more "startup" oriented than the other two. It has some CS material, but the gist of the course is how to spin up a project quickly, easily, and it be able to scale. You don't even really need to know how EVERYTHING works (like in a CS degree), but rather how to IMPLEMENT something that works. I would compare this to "Ruby on Rails" but .Net being a much better framework than Rails in the long run. There are also tons of jobs as this is a Microsoft stack and every company and their mother needs more of these devs.

At the end of the day, this is nothing more than my own observation and interpretation, and should not be the deciding factor. Contact the staff, talk to the professors, and you will quickly figure out which one suites you best. Point being, there is a course for anyone.

In regards to my results. I doubled my income after this bootcamp and I was already paid decently well as a Software Tester. My current role is a Software Engineer with the US Govn't. I graduated PHP mid 2017, landed the job Dec, 2017, and took the .Net course after landing the job as my PHP experience wasn't as relevant as C#/.Net, but the transferable CS and fullstack knowledge from the PHP course helped me extensively with landing the role.

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First, technically I'm a student at the moment but I only have 6 days left so I noted as Graduate (I'll update if some crazy unforeseen event changes the outcome). 

Next, I am an avid learner and have previously obtained (literally) six 'normal' academic degrees and two professional certificates prior to this experience as well as worked in the IT field as a Network Admin for the last year and a half. With that said this was the hardest educational experience I've ever had. It was like trying to drink from a fire hose. You will not be able to absorb all the information fast enough unless you have a photographic memory.....and maybe still not then. So go into it with a completely open mindset and focus on the "what information you'll need" and the "how to find the information". This will get you no less than on par with most juniors out there. If you actually make an effort to learn (ie. study after class/on weekends) you'll come out ahead of most. This is an extreme case of YOU GET OUT WHAT YOU PUT IN with only slight biased towards saturation through osmosis.

Lastly, while it is very difficult, the instructors are dedicated and will not let you fail if you do you're part. They will answer every question you ask with patience and in detail. It was a great experience and has set me up for success in my coming career, I have no doubt.

I almost forgot to add this. The instructor's, Marty and George, are always looking for a balance of bleeding edge vs currently used tech/lang's (based on the industry and industry partners) and do a great job of teaching that tech/lang. In fact, they push small changes every session, and moderate every two or three.

Lastly, the local alumni group is close and has regular meetups for venting, support, and potential leads. Read less

This class was so bad. the instructors were unorganized and had only a rough outline of what they were teaching with some random links. There was no structure to the course. Its basically a free-for-all, with a lead instructor being a former student and the assistant being a petulant, know-it-all, irritable drama-queen. It was so tiring listening to lecture everyday which was just that: a lecture. There was nothing interactive, no way to work on exercises about the content discussed. Just a boring lecture and then an assignment due in two weeks, which the lecture in no way prepared one for. The people in charge of this program clearly have no knowledge  of coding and just let these two guys do whatever they want. They don't know how to teach and aren't teachers. They are simply coders (and not very good ones). They follow no principles of educators. If you know how to code already, maybe this would be useful, but i would not spend the money. I would check out a more reputable educational institution. There are many that branch with universities to offer a full stack course. This one is really BAD. you may come out of the program thinking this isn't for you, because they make you feel so bad and lost! Read less

If I hadn't taken another bootcamp in addition to this one I would never know how bad it was. I might have thought I wasn't capable of learning this material. This course was so unorganized... Where to even start?
For the prework you are made to code-along to a video, for which the code doesn't even work in the end. You have no idea why you are doing what you are doing and its just an exercise in typing really.
The lead instructor is tired, late, rambling and unable to convey key concepts.
The co-instructor is annoyed, triggered,prickly, frustrated, difficult to ask questions, did I mention constantly annoyed?
They have no lesson plan. The just lecture with a list of topics. No powerpoint. Nothing interactive. You never stop and absorb. They never show a practical instance of what they are talking about. The co-instructor like to go off on tangents to show how knowledgeable he is about trivia in this bragging tone. But then he has no time to properly explain or make an actual presentation of the subject. Everything is stupid to him: youtube videos, we3 schools, etc... Its like we students wouldn't be going there if you could actually teach us the subject. We all felt lost and couldn't even concentrate on what they were talking about.
The assignments were hard because we weren't given the slightest clue how to approach them.  They assignments were very limited too. For our final projects, the instructors just did all the coding for everyone who had no clue how anything was working or tying together. So they were like "here you did this!" but everyone felt like they didnt even know how their app worked.
I'm sure some advanced amateurs got something from this but 90% of the class felt lost, inadequate and criticized by the co-instructor whose attitude was like "this is how I had to learn, just figuring it out!". It defeats the purpose of paying for this education. 
Now I know... There are bootcamps that are structured. Where the instructor has a preplanned curriculum, where students do quizzes every hour on what was just shown. This leads to FORMATION. There are bootcamps where the exercises are easy to do because you actually learned the material, you're not just supposed to go google it and suffer. There are bootcamps where the instructor is enthusiastic, positive, and cheerful.. Not miserable, sighing constantly, annoyed and arrogant.

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I moved from Tulsa to Albuquerque to go to this boot camp. The instructors and staff at the boot camp are amazing they all go above and beyond what you'd expect even giving up there free time to help you work through a coding problem. I went to the boot camp that started in July 2016 and I've been so busy working since I graduated that it's taken me 5 months to find time to give them a review. I worked as a welder before this boot camp. I didn't have much experience using a computer and in 10 weeks I went from sweating in a weld shop all year to sitting in an office with a beautiful mountain view and building websites for a marketing company. Read less

Very complete boot camp. They teach you several languages, instructors provide great support and create a great working atmosphere, ancillary staff did great work at providing student with everything we need to finish the course. During the course they update you about job opportunities and internships to take advantage of and being in a classroom full of proper with different skills makes the experience very holistic. As couple of us ended up in an internship before the boot camp was finished. I couldn't ask for more. Read less

I was lucky enough to receive a scholarship to Deep Dive Coding. I spent 10 fairly grueling weeks not being able to make my car payment while I attended this program. In the end it was worth it. The program does have its flaws but, hey, welcome to the real world. 

Some advice to future students is to get familiar with Github, basic HTML/CSS/BootStrap, PHPStorm, API's, ERD's and what a Framework is. You will use past capstones to help you with your capstone. I am not sure what the future cohorts will offer training wise but here is my github and it may still prove useful.

https://github.com/agraham14

Try not to get frustrated. There are many guest speakers and a mock interview process. I rebelled against them initially but in the end took a lot from the experience as a whole.

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I was lucky enough to recieve a scholarship to Deep Dive Coding. I spent 10 fairly grueling weeks not being able to make my car payment while I attended this program. In the end it was worth it. It does have it's flaws but, hey, welcome to the real world. 

Some advice I would give to future students is to get familiar with Github, basic HTML/CSS/BootStrap, PHPStorm, API's, ERD's and what a Framwork is. You will use past capstones to help you with your capstone. I am not sure what the future cohorts will offer training wise but here is my github and it my still prove useful.

https://github.com/agraham14

Try not to get frustrated. There are many guest speakers and a mock interview process. I rebelled against them initially but in the end took a lot from the experience as a whole.

 

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Like most things in life - you will get a lot out of it if you put a lot of yourself into it.  The difference between this bootcamp and learning to code online is this:  You are paying for the opportunity to have experienced professionals guiding you who can answer your questions and give you feedback in person.  It is truly a bootcamp that starts off relatively easy and then quickly ramps up in intensity.  The course is prepared to give a student the elements necessary to be a well rounded web developer.  The languages taught are sought after and relevant right now.  In addition to learning to code - students are introduced into the tech buiness community and coached on networking, given job search guidance, and regular check-ins to make sure you aren't getting overwhelmed in the process.  After bootcamp students come out with a beginning portfolio, and an arsenal of knowledge and tools to continue growing their web development skills.

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Overall, I had a great experience at Deep Dive - the instructors were prepared and helpful, the curriculum was challenging but not impossible, and the environment was conducive to learning. My only complaint is that the professional development portion of the bootcamp lacked preparation for freelancing, which is a likely outcome for a student new to programming.

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The best things about this bootcamp: The instructors created a very challenging but very supportive learning environment. All three instructors put a lot of themselves into the course, care a great deal about the students, and are expert coders. The instructors are wonderful people, and really good teachers.

The coding assignments, the work-along demos, and the team-based capstone projects were extremely good. The instructors were very good at constructing and leading those sorts of hands-on coding experiences.

The worst things about this bootcamp: In the first three weeks, there were way too many lectures, and students spent way too little time coding. On several days, lectures took the entire 8 hours! All-day lectures are not an effective way to teach, because most students can't stay focussed on difficult technical material for that long while being passive. I was surprised that the curriculum was designed with so many lectures, since the instructors are not very good at lecturing, but they are great at leading hands-on, active-learning sorts of exercises.

The course is very intense, as it should be, and there is a lot of material to cover in 10 weeks. However, the time taken for passive lectures could have been greatly reduced by simply organizing each lecture (and by spending less lecture time on jokes and trivial asides).  Also, the instructors could have used a "flipped classroom" approach, where students watch online lectures (e.g. from Lynda) at home, and nearly all of the class time is used for active, skill-based exercises.

TL;DR  I learned a great deal by attending this bootcamp. The course has serious flaws, but the instructors have the skills they need to improve the course.

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I enjoyed the DDCB experience, however, for someone will very little programming experience going in it was difficult. I was lucky to be on a team that had some programming knowledge before coming to the class, otherwise I would have been lost. The instructors were great, there were times though where the main instructor went off on stories that took up more time than they should of. The curriculum was truly extensive, but we are given so little time on some subjects that it almost didn't feel like learning, we were exposed to a language then we were expected to go do it. Yes, they do expect you to learn on your own using documentation but it was hard to get help when it was needed. You will be doing a lot of the work on the weekends and I do highly recommend it, but good luck getting any of the instructors to respond to questions. Our group all met together on Saturdays which was extremely helpful. If you can, encourage your cohort to do the same, I think I had one of the best cohorts out there. The job assistance was extremely helpful and even now that I have graduated I am still getting notifications of jobs and internships. Can I say that I feel ready to go get a job after this program? No. What I can say is that they have opened the doors to a whole new world of possibilities and have given me a foundation which to continue learning from. I appreciate all the insight the instructors have given me, and I loved how great the staff was in my time at the camp. On a scale of 1 to 10, I would have to give this course a 7/10. Great people, just not great for those barely starting their programming journey.

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DDCB is a valuable, challenging program that can get you started in the tech industry. Like other bootcamps, it requires full commitment in order to reap the highest benefits. The career assistance is excellent - I was employeed in a month after I started looking for a job. There are also alternative options, paid internships and similar portofolio building opportunities that DDCB provides in order to help students bridge the gap in experience so they can be employable. 

The course work is solid and you'll be exposed to fundamental principles of programming. Your best bet is to learn how to learn. You can't expect to be spoon-fed, but if you're willing to put in the time and effort you can graduate with enough knowledge and a polished portfolio piece to get you started. 

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The Deep Dive coding bootcamp does a good job of exposing you to a lot of technical information. The problem is there's ALOT of behind the scenes magic that you aren't exposed to or that isn't even hinted at during the course so when you graduate you're left scratching you're head on things like database connections and other issues that are extremely relevant. 

Also, Javascript is the number one programming language on github and most highly sought by employers, but we spent less than half of a day learning Javascript and learned some Angular as we went along but with little to no formal instruction. PHP was the extreme focus of the course but is harder and harder to find jobs in, especially in the Albuquerque area.

The lead instructor is great, except he goes on lectures and rants that no where near deserve the time spent on them in relation to the importance of hands on learning needed to leave as a competent web developer. The assistant instructor was almost worthless as a technical assistant, as she was proficient in only front end languages and even then seemed lost or had an inability to explain some concepts with any understanding. 

The time spent on "guest speakers" and non technical related things amounts to ALOT more of the course than you would think, and keeps you from learning more technical issues later in the course when you are in deeper technical water. 

Another big issue I had with the camp, especially in retrospect was that everytime you had a technical problem to overcome the instructor(s) would basically just fix the problem with little to no explaining overall. Also, the camp makes ALOT of assumptions about your technical background where it comes to programming. The problem is, many come into the camp with little to no background and don't get a thorough understanding of some pretty basic programming concepts. 

Job placement or assistance seems almost non-existent unless you're friends or close to the people passing on the assitance emails and opportunities. I think the opportunites should be much less discrimantory and have heard from other graduates that they feel the same. 

After meeting and speaking with many graduates and following their quest for employment in a casual manner, I'm sure that Deep Dive mispresents the employment numbers and opportunities that graduates have. 

 

 

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