Flatiron School

The bootcamp prep course is perhaps the most complete and wellrounded free online curriculum I've found in terms of the learning environment they've created. That being said, there are some gaps in their content and overall, the whole experience could be polished more for it to really shine. It is mainly self-led reading and labs. This means you can do it all on your own time, but it also means that there is limited interaction with typical "instructors".

Tools software developers use are well integrated into your learning, quietly exposing and teaching you how to use:

• Github
• Atom
• the command prompt
• Chrome's "inspect"
• Test Driven Develpoment

The community of instructors/helpers and students are well integrated into your learning environment. You can always ask questions and join in discussions with other students right from the lesson you're curently working on. You will only see questions asked on topics up to the last lesson you've completed. Anybody can also schedule study group sessions for a more structured learning space/time. With these systems in place, I've found little need to go to their Slack community for much of anything.

This curriculum is still being worked on though (perhaps slowly), so there are some things to watch out for.

Content:

• This is a bootcamp prep course geared at people who have had little experience in programming. More experienced programmers with minimal web experience may not get much but an overview of Ruby, HTML/CSS/JS and TDD.
• Complete beginners may have some troubles going through the content on their own but that's what the community integration is for. 
• There are some gaps in their content. For example, they may mention having talked about one thing but never have. It'll be up to you to look it up. They also tell you that a certain attribute is depricated so you should use a newer one, but they won't mention that it's not possible to pass future lessons using this newer one.
• Their lessons have some broken tests, incorrect information, are from a previous iteration, etc. This can be annoying and stop you in your tracks if you are a beginner. These lessons are open source though, which is awesome. That means you and other students can contribute / fix things in their lessons and start using Github in a way more often used in actual open source projects. After noticing multiple things that could be fixed however, I've slowed down making issues and PRs on them. It does not seem that they keep a very active eye on their repos or update it too often.

Support:

• Their question and answer system is overall very good and well integrated. Their helpers are very responsive your question typically resolved within a few minutes. This is only during working hours though. As I live in the middle of the Pacific ocean, questions I ask in the middle of the day typically won't get answered until the next day.
• Most helpers seem to be going through or have just completed the course as well, so their knowledge might be limited. They do have more technical people on staff, but they can be harder to get ahold of or get answers from.

Learn IDE 3:

Learn.co provides an IDE for all their lessons. You can either do it on their web IDE or download their desktop version, Learn IDE 3. These were some issues that came up with the local version. Overall though, the IDE is pretty well done, amazingly integrated with Github.. Scarily integrated with Github 

• It clobbers your ~/.atom. You'd think they'd move its settings elsewhere if they went through the trouble of making it a separate app. They say it creates a backup, but that was not the case for me. Backup your ~/.atom before installing to be safe. If you've never used Atom, this is not a concern.
• Often takes 2-3 tries to open up the lesson.
• Often times you'll have work done on a lesson when you accidentally disconnect or close the IDE. The next time you open up that lesson, your work is often lost.
• Has a different set of Git Credentials than your global config? This usually is no problem unless you have your "Keep my email address private" setting turned in Github. Not sure if they keep your credentials on-server though..
• Scarily integrated with Github. You give them access to reading, writing, and creating new repos under your name, reading and updating your user data, reading and writing SSH and GPG keys. Wow.

As a whole, if I were to recommend something to people wanting to really commit to learning programming, I would point them to something like https://github.com/ossu/computer-science instead; a list of also free, but more comprehensive and complete lectures from reputable universities. These materials of course would require a higher level of commitment than this convenient, relatively content-concentrated beginner bootcamp prep

The admissions process at Flatiron was seamless - I really enjoyed talking with both of my interviewers (the first is a simple meet and greet, the second is a technical interview). I am brand-new to coding but after following the technical track for JavaScript, I felt that I was well prepared for the technical interview. The learn.co courses are of two types - purely informational, and coding labs. I feel that the information excels at explaining the basics - if you are brand-new, like me, you do not need to worry about jumping into something that might be over your head. Everything is explained very explicitly - not just the coding methods themselves, but even the programs and files that you use to do the labs, and how they work together. The labs begin simply enough, then quickly become more challenging - Flatiron uses a TDD (Test-Driven Development) philosophy (which they will explain at length - so don't worry if you don't know what that is) that I believe perfectly sets you up to be able to understand the labs and how to be successful. There is online support that is extremely helpful if you get stuck. I have been extremely pleased with my experience with Flatiron so far. 

The enrolment/application process was smooth - the admissions team and interview instructors were helpful and friendly. I chose to do the interview and technical work in JavaScript. The Learn.co course is good enough, but perhaps could be better for someone brand new to coding like myself. The pacing for me personally was a little inconsistent, and the fact that certain lessons involve uninterupted blocks of text makes it a bit more difficult to absorb information compared to other online introductory courses (for example, Codecademy, which I had more success with). The IDE specific to the course is also a bit clunky compared to some alternatives (which in some cases make it easier to experiment with bits of code and have more 'instant' feedback), although it is helpful for getting (somewhat) familiar with Github/'IDE's (?). Overall though, a good experience, and with excellent external support. 

The experience itself is fine but would have been made far better if the Learn IDE worked properly. I use VS code and am acclimated to making things work together but this was a little sad. I understand there could be some bugs but I had to use the in browser option because they are essentially between builds and the atom build had a bunch of conflicts and issues. I would recommend everyone use either a repl.it on the side to test smaller parts of their code and to change the Learn IDE settings to in browser.

That being said, the instructors are responsive, the community is fun and generous with their time and knowledge, the incremental lessons are also quite helpful. I would also like an multi-level percentage breakdown of how much has been completed but only the course you're in provides that on the dashboard.

Picking Flatiron Full Stack Web Development course was an easy choice.  I was working full-time and planned to study online, I liked their bootcamp Prep Course, they offered job search support and the payment schedule was flexible - you pay $1500 a month up to $12k, after that it's free. So if you're able to finish the course in 4 months, your tab is only $6k. Plus they offer $1500 merit scholarships to 25 motivated students each month.
 
The structure of the course is pretty straightforward. You learn a new topic and in the next lesson you pass the test which usually consists of writing a function or fixing a broken code.  At the end of each module you build a project that will be part of your portfolio when you go searching for a job. There are tons of videos and webinars, 24 hr online support plus you can always schedule a session with an instructor.  Luckily for me I could find answers to most of my questions on StackOverflow so I didn't really use their support system. At some point I was even thinking that I chose the wrong program -  you can get the same course for $150 a month but without instructor's support (there is still a community-based help). That,  however, would have been a mistake as I realized later. 
 
I think the main feature is their post-graduation support. I was assigned a career coach to touch base weekly. She helped me build a resume, a cover letter, gave me tons of advice on how to speak to recruiters and employers and provided moral support all the way though my job search.  In addition to that Flatiron has a resourceful Business Development team who provide you with leads you won't find online. I wouldn't be able to find my job without those guys. I received tons of rejections, even though I made it to the last round of interviews at some companies. After almost 4 months I got an offer which was way above my best expectations. So I don't regret for a second it took that course, it's a life changer!

I was in legal IT and legal management for over 10 yrs before I figured out I wasn't happy, call that stubborness if you want but I wasn't happy. I began taking a lot of courses on sites like Codacademy, Pragmatic Studio, Treehouse, etc. Those are great sites but they don't emcompass everything you need to succeed. I set out looking for something more, something to get me over this educational hump and came across 3 bootcamps/online learning schools. Not to get into what all 3 institutions were I researched all 3 HARD. I just had a peace about Flatiron. Flatiron online courses were hard but not without an ability to get help, it takes time but only the amount you are willing to put in, its not cheap but isn't your future worth it? They want you to succeed and give you the skills to do so in the real world. Don't take your future lightly... research and make the best choice for YOU, Flatiron is a good place to start looking though.

Every step of the way I had doubts and despite seeing the success of my classmates around me didn't want to believe the outcomes Flatiron was telling me. I'm now sitting in the Downtown Chicago library writing this after getting my first fulltime job as a software developer and am 100% sure this never would have been possible without Flatiron. They exhibited significant dedication to my success during the curriculum and the job search in a way that put my public university education in English to shame. This is not an easy journey or a get rich quick scheme, but if you want to make it happen you can. Now Flatiron is the only organization I would trust on the journey and I believe that their model for post-graduation student success is something that colleges and universities need to learn from. 

I'm currently a little less than %50 through the prep work with FlatIron. Before starting on the prep work I also worked on the free boot camp prep on their website Learn.co. Though, I didn't complete the boot camp prep yet(hope to circle back around), the work I have done translates well into the prep work. I have had a little bit of confusion particular in the Local Environment Setup. The link for the setup wasn't working but the prompt suggested that I could proceed without it and that I would just use the broweser environment until I got to FlatIron's campus. I proceeded and got confused because the lessons were instructing me as if I had the Local Enviroment Setup and I didn't understand why things weren't working correctly. It was soon fixed when I reached out for help. The help came very quickly. The lessons can be challenging and some require asking for help, however this is a good thing. Unlike another online website I tried, they don't hold your hand step to step in which you aren't learning. FlatIron, so far has given me the gentle push that I need to proceed, and when I truly get stuck, if I ask, they give me a even larger push. I have been please thus far in my experience. I also very much enjoy the dashboard to help me stay engaged by setting visual goals.