A little under 4 months ago, I was living in Birmingham, AL, working at a bank building boring reports for management and playing with Excel spreadsheets all day knowing I had no future here. I had always had an interest in software development and convinced my wife to move across country to pursue this career. I had spent the previous year or so getting myself familiar with basic web technologies such as HTML, CSS, Sass, JavaScript, and a little bit of Node JS (backend), but never truly had an understanding of it all and how it all worked together. But I knew that I had the drive and the passion to be in this industry if I could only completely immerse myself in the development enviroment surrounded by like minded individuals. 

I applied to DPL for the winter cohort 2018, and got accepted a few weeks later after a few interviews and prep-work. That was it, getting accepted was my ticket out of Birmingham and my confirmation that it was my time to do something I truly believe I should be doing. I packed up, left Alabama with no regrets and headed for Salt Lake City with my wife and my doofus golden retreiver. The same week I arrived, living in Airbnb's until I found an apartment for my small family, I met with Nhi Doan (co-founder of DPL) for the opportunity in tech scholarship interview. A week later I got the email saying that I have been awarded the scholarship for the program, after showing Nhi my passion to be in this industry, and a few portfolio projects I had built prior to attending DPL. I have been asked several times why I attended DPL, if I had already had experience prior to attending, but the real answer is that I didn't have "true" experience. Sure, I had a few small projects that I had built with JavaScript, and even some React projects, but none of them were solid enough evidence I knew what the heck I was doing, or if I could even work with a team.

I had been applying and interviewing with companies all across the country prior to attending DPL, even for basic front end development positions, but every time a question came up such as, "Do you have any experience on the backend?", or "Have you ever had any experience on a dev team?" my answer was always "No". Each and every one of this interviews were followed by a rejection letter with the words, "sorry, we are looking for someone with a little more experience". I was always strong to enough to land an interview based on some of the projects that I built because my design/art background always made things look decent, but when I got in the weeds with an interviewer and they asked me to solve a simple algorithm counting vowels in a string, I would clam up and it would be over.  

Prior to the start of class, I did my homework. When I say I did my homework, I mean I truly DID my homework. I spent several days if not weeks reviewing every single algorithm on free code camp. Dev Point doesn't directly focus on algorithms, but teaching your brain how to solve algorithms, by breaking them up piece by piece and learning to solve them programmatically will put you leaps and bounds ahead of your peers looking for jobs. Plus, knowing how to solve them in general, will make every programming language so much easier to learn, because you will start to learn patterns that appear in every single language. I'm not saying you can't make it through DPL, without being a professional at solving algorithms, I for one am still learning and I am still actually terrible at them, but I am 300% more confident in job interviews now, knowing what I know.  

Attending Dev Point was the absolute best decision I have ever made in my professional and personal life. The instructors are fairly new but are absolutely capable of getting you where you need to be if you take the program seriously. You will hear this a million times, but the result you get out of the program will be a direct representation of the work that you put into this program. I didn't enter DPL expecting them to spoon feed me every single ounce of information or get upset when my instructor didn't know how to solve a problem I had. You learn to eventually talk yourself out of your own problems, sometimes I solved a problem just sitting next to an instructor like they had some kind of answer aura around them even though they didn't even have to say anything. Dev Point was an excellent fit for what I wanted out of a bootcamp. I knew coming in they were going to cover some topics, that I had already been exposed to, but that's ok. I knew it would just solidify what I already knew, plus maybe even touch on something I didn't even know was possible!

Dev Point did an excellent job structuring it's curriculum in such a way where everything compounds on what you learned the previous day. There were projects almost every single day, projects that not only reinforced topics covered in the lecture, but were amaing projects to showcase in interviews upon graduation to potential employers. We had two hackathons in our cohort, which if you haven't ever attended one, I highly recommend it. Plus, if you are in the Salt Lake City area, message Marc Price(admissions counselor) and tell him you want to sit in on a hackathon to see some of the amazing things students are able to put together in a few hours, after only learning how to program for a few weeks! Prior to attending (once I arrived in SLC from AL), I attended launch day, which is the program's graduation day, and the final hackathon from the prior cohort. It was an awesome experience and I got to meet some really awesome people who are still friends / contacts to this day, so I highly recommend it. 

There are a few helpful tips to consider if you are planning on attending DPL that I would like to share:

1. Take this program seriously, and employers will take you seriously. The one thing I cannot stress enough to people is take this program seriously, SERIOUSLY. Dev Point will provide the structure for you to learn, and will even provide the tools to help you learn, but it is on you and YOU alone to actually learn what you are doing. They will provide projects every night to reinforce the lecture for the day, or even some additional resources online to continue to learn. Our cohort was over the Christmas break, and our instructor even provided a "12 days of coding" curriculum to keep us busy and coding during the break. There will be plenty of opportunities to learn and be pushed if you give yourself the opportunity. 

2. Show your passion through every project that you build in class. Dev Point will assign a new project almost daily to help you build your skills through programming. You will never get where you need to be if you just worry about the lecture and the lecture alone. If you only focus on learning how to code and not on actually coding throughout the program it will show later on in the course when you are building projects with your peers, or even in an actual interview. Every project that is assigned to you take it seriously and treat it like you have been given a coding challenge from an employer, that has to be turned in the next day. Once you feel like you are "finished" with it, (it's never actually finished), think to yourself whether you would be proud to show this to an employer, if not keep at it. If you keep this mindset throughout the entirety of the program, you will have a plethora of amazing projects to stack your resume and your portfolio site. 

3. Code, code ALOT. I have spoken at a few QA sessions for Dev Point Labs while I was a student and students always chuckle when I tell them I went to bed before 1 or 2 a.m. maybe a handful of times when I was in the cohort, but I am dead serious. I coded so much during my cohort I was waking up in the 5 hours of sleep that I got writing lines of code in my sleep and solving bugs while I was asleep. There were several times I woke up in the middle of night, went to my office, and solved an issue I had a previous day. You have to be living, breathing and eating code to fully understand everything that you are learning. You have to be applying the previous days lecture in some form or fashion, whether it be helping others learn by teaching, or contuniuing to build your own personal projects. 

4. Put life on hold. During your time at DPL, you have to put your life on hold and just hold out for a few months on doing extracurricular activities while you focus 100% on the program. Besides, you are paying $10k for the program, so why would you waste any time you have on something, atleat until you graduate. I am married, and just moved to Salt Lake City during winter months, so you can believe me when I tell you it was hard to not go snowboard every weekend with friends or just explore the surroundings! I am also a huge gamer, so telling my friends, "hey man, I know winning the FIFA world championships would be cool and all, but I gotta do this homework", was a huge challenge for me, but in the end, we still won the championship after I finished school, so it was a WIN WIN. 

5. NETWORK. One of the main downfalls, of becoming a developer is that alot of us are introverts and get night sweats thinking about meeting someone new or having a normal conversation with someone, that you have never met. In the end, networking is what is going to get you your first job as a developer. Not saying it isn't possible, maybe you are just a resume wizard, who got paid in college to write resumes for other people, but it is an extremely competitive market, so show casing your abilities to people on one sheet of paper, is the equivalent to the browns winning the super bowl, possible, but highly unlikely. 

    a. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the obvious first way to meet people with similiar interests in the same industry. Connect with people, bug them, ask them to meet with coffee. I once met up with a guy from LinkedIn when I first moved to Salt Lake City, who I had never met (it's actually possible), at a coffee shop he requested. I didn't ever mention to him that I despise coffee, not the smell, but the taste. I showed up and he had a coffee pre-ordered for me. I held my nose and chugged the thing and tried my hardest to keep a smile on my face. It will be awkward, but the more times you do this, the easier it will be.

    b. Slack. If you haven't been exposed to the development world yet and have never heard of Slack, you should go ahead and google that one. Download it, find some communities that mean something to you, whether it be UtahJS (if you live in Utah), DenverDevs, several others loaded full of developers ready to answer any questions you may have. It is actually surprisingly a tremendously effective networking tool, without being the suited up, title heavy, word explosion that LinkedIn can be sometimes. Just get involved in the communities on Slack, and eventually people will get to know you and you can meet up with some of the other Devs or work on projects with them. Alot of these channels have a job postings channel, where recruiters post daily job postings for you to apply to. And the best part, you can send them a message DIRECTLY and express your interest. 

   c. Meetups. Meetups, if you are new to the community are mostly organized through the Meet Up app, or through slack channels. But they are usually like minded groups of people who meet once a month, or week, to discuss a certain topic in the tech community. GO TO THESE. Attending Dev Point, there is little time to really be doing anything other than sleeping, but if you can make it to one or two of these during the three months I highly suggest it.

6. Show your passion. Last tip I have to end this review for Dev Point is just to show your passion that you have. If you truly want to be in this industry and are excited about your future in development this will come natural to you. If you are in this industry solely for the money, then it will eventually show and you will get weeded out by employers fairly simple. You will notice during interviews, they will ask you questions like "What side projects are you working on, or what open source project is your favorite. They ask these questions because they want to gauge your interest level, and see if you are passionate about the things that you build, or whether you are contributing to the community. 

I say all these things to tell you that if you choose Dev Point Labs to jump start your career in development, you won't be dissapointed as long as you follow the tips that I suggested and work HARDer than you ever have before. Their curriculum is perfect, and they are always doing their best to keep it current with up to date technology. After graduation I was able to land a software engineering position a few weeks after I graduated, only because I took every project seriously and it in turn, grew my skills light years ahead of where I was when I first came into the program. DPL provides all the necessary support to get you where you need to be, but in the end, it is up to you to determine where you land. 

If you have any questions about the program or anything at all please feel free to reach out to me. 

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Good Luck!

Daniel B.

DevPoint Labs was such an amazing experience. I've learned much more than I ever thought possible over the past 11 weeks. Coming from practically no coding experience, this was one of the hardest things I've done, but it was also one of the most rewarding and DEFINITELY WORTH IT. The staff here is amazing and they make sure you get the most out of this experience. Dave, whom was my instructor, is so great at what he does! All while making class fun and exciting. 

A regular day at DPL has 3 hours of lecture, then lunch, then project time. 3 hours of lecture everyday might seem like a lot, which it is, but Dave makes it extremely enjoyable and interesting. He truly cares about each and every student and their future. Even off the clock, he's always on Slack answering questions. There are also TA's available to answer your questions during project time which was extremely helpful since it was more of a one on one situation.

10/10 would recommend. No doubt!

tl;dr <ahem> DPL is well worth it, tough, it does feel like being thrown in the deep end but they won't let you drown.  DPL & UofU top-notch with providing ASL interpreters and other accessibility needs. Career/job assistance services could use some beefing up.  And would I do it again? See the bottom for that answer.

Details:

My background:

BA degree in Education, worked in social service field, switched careers completely- graduated from a 7 month business school type program in COBOL, DB2, Visual Basic etc. Many jobs as a QA Tester in the mainframe environment.  I decided to jump into Web Development (possibly connect to automated testing)- which lead me to researching bootcamps and ultimately DevPoint Labs.

The program itself

This is truly an intensive 11 week course. BUT it is, as so many has already mentioned, well worth the time.  The 'classroom model' is set up so that lectures are in the morning and "lab" time- work on projects and homework of the day solo or with teams in the afternoon.  I think most people learned best with the lecture part; I felt like I learned best with the afternoon 'free' time- though I tended to stay by myself as I learn best that way with a helping hand often from the instructor, the TAs and other classmates (and a huge Thank you to all).  The assignments were great and varied, the Portfolio project I enjoyed as it was something you'd see out there in the world and something people would use (all 5 offered were in that vein). Oh and the two hackathons were great in utilizing what we learned while making it fun.  Mornings were spent in the classroom but we could go anywhere in the building for our afternoon "sessions"- quite often I found myself in the basement- quieter than the Chapel and classroom were. The lectures covered a different topic every day with a few refreshers in there as well.  You could ‘code along’ or take notes or just follow along. With the live coding we got to see how the code worked- and even when there were errors- we learned how to deal with it and why it happened.

Housing  

The housing offered to out of state or out of town students was certainly a big perk and a plus in my decision to go with DevPoint - part of it at least.  15 minute walk to class- longer if you had to deal with snow/ice *cough*.  Best part of my day to be honest- decompress and rest my poor brain/eyes.  I can't say anything to parking/driving as I didn't have a car there (I flew in) but the public transportation system in SLC is GREAT.  DPL did offer a discounted "Hive Card" but I stayed with the "FarePay Card" as I didn't use the system as much as I thought I would.  Only spent 25ish bucks the entire 3 months (I didn't venture out much....).

Accessibility

• I don't think I've ever read any reviews from former students of ANY bootcamp talking about accessibility and how the bootcamp dealt with it.  Full disclosure- I am Deaf and also have 'low vision'(in other words I still need some extra "support" mostly with font size, distance and color). 
• I enrolled 1.5 months prior to the start; in that time there was a lot of discussion.  It helped a ton that University of Utah had their own disability services department.  Between DPL and UofU they went the extra mile and were able to provide ASL interpreters for the entire 11 weeks (4 regular and over the course of 11 weeks 6 subs as needed on such short notice- it was less than 2 weeks before my arrival before I got confirmation on that.
• vision wise, I didn't need a ton of support  but they did make sure I  had the same access as everyone else.  The instructors bumped up the text size and changed to dark themes or high contrast colors (99% of the time they made sure to remember lol) for the projected code we followed along with.  I am betting it was a side benefit to many of the hearing/sighted students as well. :).  The classroom seemed like it was in 'reno mode'...I don't know.. but the lighting wasn't the best.  One of the DPL staff swapped the bulbs in the front of the class AND in the projector for brighter ones- MUCH better. (We won't mention the high ceilings-- not the best acoustics lol - did not help for the case of the "mumblers" ;) ).
• DPL made every effort to make sure the classroom, environment, events and material accessible to every single person in the class and I'm grateful to them and UofU for going the extra mile.  I have no doubt they'd do so again.  I hope it did raise better awareness for both the DPL staff and the folks in my cohort.

Final thoughts

For me another reason why I went with DevPoint is that it was out of my comfort zone...and I discovered that I did better discipline/routine wise away from my usual home- less distractions!  That method may not work for everyone but it happened at the right time for me. That and my original plan fell through with the closure of my choice in my home state.

Yes I was anxious in going - and learning at a breakneck pace.  Turns out I worried for nothing- my interpreters were great (they even kept  a 'cheat sheet notebook' FULL of how to sign all the "techy" terms- there aren't many signs in ASL for all the stuff we learned), I did pretty well with the set up and pace though many times I had trouble keeping up in the AM - look at my laptop, watch interpreter(s), look at projector- something had to give LOL so I tended to just "listen"  but afternoons/nights I was able to catch up.  The instructor and all the TAs at times were hard to catch but they were always there when you did need them. And even though I, along with many, dealt with Imposter Syndrome- heck went through that when I started in mainframe QA- it was a wonderful and challenging experience.

Would I do it again?  Hell yes.

</SEND>

The full time web development course at DevPoint Labs was one of the most rewarding 11-weeks of my life! The instructor, staff, and students made this experience totally worthwhile. It did take me a couple weeks to come out of my shell, but interacting with my fellow developers was something I couldn't have imagined! It was pretty tough, but it was so satisfying to learn. If I did have any issues, the instructor and the TA's were always available to help me clear up any confusion and help me become a proficient developer. I was at the end of my rope with my previous career choices and wasn't making progress/feeling unpassionate about my degree program at the University of Utah, and DevPoint Labs helped me find something I'm truly passionate about. Be prepared to pour all you've got into the course, but the reward is there for those who do!

This program was awesome! I'm so happy with my decision to leave my old career and join the dev world. I had no previous experience with coding before this bootcamp and I am impressed with how much I learned in just a short amount of time. Dave was an amazing instructor and the TA's were awesome too. Even after my class has ended Dave continues to help with questions and he genuinely cares about your success. 

I was apprehensive when trying to decide if I should make the leap into Web Development. I am so thankful I found DevPoint.

The DevPoint Labs team has gone above and beyond to create an inclusive experience that challenges and prepares you to confidently make the step into a career in technology. I was fortunate to have been granted the "Opportunity in Tech" scholarship, which allowed me to attend.

One of the biggest perk was that they also offered free housing during my time in the cohort.

While I know that I still have a lot to learn, I feel confident in my ability to join the Dev community thanks to the instruction and network that DevPoint has provided. 

This course is diffiult but rewarding if your willing to put in the effort and time. Instructor and the staff is awesome but if you dont give it your all that all means nothing. It was an awesome experience for me overall. I highly recommend this course !

DPL was the best choice i could have made for a bootcamp. The teachers and assistants know more than enough to help you become a junior developer right after the 11 weeks are up! Yes it's a very challenging 11 weeks but with all the resources DPL gives you, they fly by! I highly recommend DPL to anyone looking to make a career change or just learn valuable skills. The teacher Dave really cares about each of his students and it shows!! 

I came into the course with no background and no experience, and at the end felt I felt like I could accomplish anything. They do such an amazing job creating an actual learning environment where you know that help will be found wherever you look. It’s rough, because it should be, but they will guide you all along the way and as long as you are willing to put in the effort, you can finish it. 

I just finished the 11 week full-stack bootcamp at DevPoint Labs and it was a remarkable experience. Dave is an incredibily patient and adept instructor and he is constantly trying to keep the curriculum as up to date as possible. He and the TA's were willing to cater to many different types of learning styles. 

I came to this course with zero background in tech and development, so I was ready for the worst and was pleasently surprised at the outcome and my understanding. Although it was VERY challenging, I felt like Dave always made a point to give everyone the attenteion they required to understand certain topics and he made sure each student knew he belived in their abilities to succeed in the class. 

Do not expect to be spoonfed in these 11 weeks. It is hard work, and the design of the course is to help each person become self-sufficient in learning topics and finding answers on their own while guiding only when absolutely necessary. It can feel like you're plopped in the deep-end while youre just learning how to swim at times, but this is the quickest and most efficient way to get you on your feet as a developer. If you show up, work hard, ask questions, and dont give up, you will succeed. 

I would do this again in a heartbeat. 

    DevPoint is a place where you feel as though your learning and your understanding are the things that are truly valued. I never felt as though they were just trying to make themsleves look good, but rather I felt like the instructors and everyone at DevPoint cared about my education and the knowledge I was gaining. I had awesome TA's who were willing to answer ANY  questions that I may have had. They were extremely helpful and kind. DevPoint offeres many wonderful things aside from education. One of the most amazing things I recieved was connections and friendships. I strongly believe that I was able to succeed because of the care that the staff put in. Not only were my instructors and TA's skilled and knowledgeable in what they were doing, but they were also my friends. That made all the difference. I highly reccomend this course to anyone looking to advance their skills in this ever growing field. You will not be disappointed by the education you recieve, nor by the friendships you gain.