DigitalCrafts

First off let me say that bootcamp experience mostly depends on who your instructor is. I came based on several of the reviews of teachers that are in Atlanta and I didn't meet one of them, so keep that in mind when you are reading reviews. The other pieces of the company are important, but if your instructor is awesome or terrible, the other stuff won't change it.

Instructor:
Mine was a decent guy, I think he cared about the class. He tried to meet our requests and was clearly knowledgeable, but most of the class was just letting us loose on a bunch of code exercises. I get that exercises are important, but I was already doing this before I came. Why would I spend thousands of dollars to do code academy? Many of the students were way behind and he didn't manage it well at all.

Company:
My main problem with the company was with the founders because there is only one support person in Houston. Jason was a good guy, but didn't seem to have any power to help us. The founders came to Houston a few times (they're in Atlanta 99% of the time) and made some big promises and told us how important we were, but in the end only seemed to care about keeping us from complaining. 

The Houston classes are like the red-headed step-child; we didn't get any attention, we didn't have any community, and we were in a complaint ridden facility. I'm sure Atlanta is great, but Houston DigitalCrafts isn't focused on teaching, it's focused on keeping anyone from complaining. Everything circled around making the students think we were in the right place even though we were just doing exercises most of the time. The routine went like this:
1. No sign of the founders for 2 weeks while we do exercises all day
2. Complaint (about class being slow, or whatever) and Jason can't do anything
3. Founder shows up and promises everything will be awesome tomorrow. They are on it!
4. He leaves and we have half a day of better class.
5. Everything goes back to normal. 
6. Repeat. For 16 weeks.

I don't think either of them have taken the class or know anything about development so they're not in a position to do anything anyway. Atlanta classes interact with each other but didn't know we existed. The whole thing was pretty obvious. I felt this way for a long time but never said anything. Re-reading some of the reviews made me think it needed to be said. I'd blame them over the instructor because they didn't manage him. Just interested in a big, profitible business.

Facility
It seemed like a hip place but there were constant complaints about something. If you whisper, people two offices over freak out for instance. Not in a very nice area of Houston.

Final Thought:
DigitalCrafts as a company is not that great. In my experience, it was a major let down. It might be awesome if you get an epic teacher or are in Atlanta where all the support is. If not, just do Code Academy 6 hours/day and save a ton of money and disapointment.
 

Material is good and relevant, the teacher is knowledgable and does a decent job, but the class size is WAY to big. I get very little personal time with the instructor because the class is too big and the time to short. The TA’s are good but I didn’t pay for them to teach me. I talked to an alumni and his class was HALF the size of mine. I did a ton of research on course report and went based off the reviews, but the bottom line is that the greed for money is taking another quality small business product down.

Unless you are already pretty advanced and don’t need much help (also way too many exercises), go somewhere else.

DigitalCrafts was a great choice for me.  Because I was making a career change, I did a bunch of research.  I found DigitalCrafts to be the best bootcamp for me.  It is located in a fantastic tech hub in Atlanta and surrounded with both exciting startups as well as mature tech companies.  Even the location of the bootcamp is a great asset because it provides access to so many other developers and companies to build relationships with, talk code with, and network with.

My instructor, Rob, made it clear that his greatest desire was for all of his students to be successful.  Both in the class as well as in our software careers.  His breadth and depth of subject matter knowledge was impressive, to say the lease, and his ability to communicate technical subject matter on many different levels was excellent.  I was consistently impressed at his ability to make challenging information digestible and easily understandable.

The rest of the staff at DigitalCrafts displayed the same care for the success of their students.  It was quite clear that they were working hard for us.  Always keeping a feel for ways to improve the learning, networking, and ongoing job support that they offer.  You are not just a student at DigitalCrafts, but a valuable member of a family of developers.  And their goal is to help build you into the best developer that you can be.

The course is 16 weeks of working your butt off to learn both the LAMP and MEAN stacks and build some really cool projects.  I'm totally thrilled I did it and would do it again.  I now have a great job as a developer and love the endless opportunities that I have in this new career field.  DigitalCrafts gave me the education and experience to make it happen.

I highly recommend DigitalCrafts for so many reasons but will focus on these four:  1) Curriculum 2) Location, 3) Instructor and 4) Administration.

But first, my situation.  I spent 28 years in Software Engineering prior to my DigitalCrafts experience but really wanted to get back to coding.  A bit of an anomaly (based on comments from peers, family and friends!).  Nevertheless, I needed a place to re-tool, to re-boot and learn the prevalent and upcoming web technologies.  Researching and comparing bootcamps, I landed on DigitalCrafts.

The curriculum/program at DigitalCrafts was perfect.  Since I worked in software engineering for a long time and already had exposure to C++, Java, .Net and the top 3 relational databases, I really wanted to learn something new and exciting.  The MEAN stack fit the bill.  Only DigitalCrafts offered training in the MEAN stack. 

The program is truly immersive.  Although advertised as 40 hours a week / 5 days a week at 16 weeks, for me it turned into 50+ hours a weeks / 7 days a week at 16 weeks. It became addictive!  The program has a “Hacker” component (if you’re brave enough) that challenges you to go above and beyond!  The immersive nature of the program also gives you the ability to really feel like a developer day-in and day-out.  Something I really looked forward to because the last 15 years in IT I was a manager/leader with no coding responsibilities.  With DigitalCrafts you have the opportunity to learn and practice pair programming, Agile methodology (Scrum) and develop a business/product sense via writing MVP statements.

In terms of location, being in the Atlanta Tech Village (ATV) felt surreal.  There was a level of excitement in the air I had never experienced.  I encountered people talking about raising capital, making their pitches, understanding the ins and outs of their business and desire to out-grow the ATV;  amazing.  It felt like I was watching Shark Tank every day!  Because of the experience of being part of ATV, I am targeting startups for future employment.

My instructor, however, was a force to recon with.  I’m still trying to figure out where he gets so much energy and patience.  He did a great job of taking people with very different backgrounds and presenting the subject matter in consumable chunks so that people can feel accomplished; feel they are learning and consequently, stay engaged; feel like developers (each morning he would say “good morning developers!”.  In addition, I found him easy to talk with and transparent.  He’s a well-rounded technologist and a published author with tremendous insight who’s open and ready for the students to tap into.

Lastly, the DigitalCrafts administrators truly care about the students and student success.  When the Director of student services interviewed me for admission, I initially that it was overkill.  My impression was “all you should care about is my money”.  Not so with these guys.  The Director challenged me to carefully consider my decision.  He clearly articulated expectations of students, shared success factors and provided insight on market statistics.  I’m not naive to think all of this doesn’t benefit DigitalCrafts as well.  However, there is something special about these guys beyond business as usual that’s difficult for me to quantify … but it’s real. 

The DigitalCrafts team invests their time and money into their current and former students through many avenues.  Some involve active career assistance, networking events, continued education and even employing graduates (eat their own dog food).

In summary, DigitalCrafts was an awesome experience! 

My mind had been spinning about if I should leave my job and go back to traditional school or try a coding bootcamp. However in early Jan 2016 I was laid off from my job and was finding trouble find a new gig. I did a lot of research on coding school, this was going to be a big risk that I was about to take. This would be my last option before joining the military. I joined DigitalCrafts and I believe that it was a great decision for me. I have a background in Comp. Sci and wanted to get more involved in the actual coding. For me the leap paid off. I received am apprenticeship from a top tier company and learned a ton and am continuing to learn more each day.

• You will learn two stacks. You will probably not attain mastery of any particular technology, but no one who starts from zero can expect to master HTML, CSS, JavaScript, git, the MEAN stack, Linux, Apache, SQL, and Python within 16 weeks. After the bootcamp is over, you should be in a good position to continue learning about any programming languages or technologies of your choosing.
• Given the multitude of web technologies out there, attending a bootcamp can potentially save you a lot of time and frustration by introducing you to the most relevant technologies at the appropriate time.
• While learning the trade of programming and web development, you are bound to encounter bugs in your code and issues with your development environment. This is one area in which DigitalCrafts excels: the instructors (to date) have 10+ years of development experience, and the Developers-in-Residence have gone through the same program that you are going through. You will be in the perfect place to get your issues resolved in a timely manner so you can get back to learning.
• Changing careers is not easy. Expect to apply to anywhere from 100 to 200 jobs before getting an offer. If you are one of the top students in your cohort, DigitalCrafts may connect you directly with prospective employers. The career services at DigitalCrafts may well be worth the price of the tuition alone.
• DigitalCrafts holds regular Meetup events where you can meet the instructors, current and prospective students, and the founders of the company. Prior to enrolling, I would recommend getting to know your instructor and any prospective students of your cohort.
• The landscape of web technology continues to change rapidly. The 16 Week Immersive curriculum is currently a good match for the Atlanta job market, but it will have to continue evolving to stay relevant.

I came into this program with very little programming experience (one Java class in my college curriculum), and I can honestly say that I have come out on the other side as a developer, albeit a very junior level developer. I can't say that I am an expert at anything programming related, but I can say that I am an expert at picking out my strengths and weaknesses very quickly, and that was my biggest takeaway from this program. I learned a TON about the MEAN stack, and a reasonable amount of Python and PostgreSQL, but the most important thing I learned was how I learn. Because of the pace of the program, and the volume of information, you are forced to adapt and learn how to learn, which was an amazing experience for me. I know that I can pickup a book or watch a YouTube tutorial series on a new programming language or framework, and I am going to learn it in my own personal way, at my pace. I do feel that the curriculum could be tightened up a bit more (stricter schedule, more uniformity between cohorts, etc.), but I think that will get progressively better as DigitalCrafts grows. All in all, I am very happy with my experience at DigitalCrafts and would recommend aspiring web developers and software engineers to attend.