The Firehose Project

The course material of The Firehose Project has a good flow that it holds your hands in the beginning and slowly make you do stuff on your own. Then enforces it with repetition with the creation of full-fledged applications.

The support team reaches out often. Code reviews, feedbacks in an instant. You get it in 15 - 30 minutes in the forum aside from having a 1-on-1 mentor access.

The overall learning process in The Firehose Project is great!! =)

I can give more feedback here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clarkngo/

At least, if you've got one near you.

Thankfully, I attended the Firehose Project back when it didn't cost $6.5k (it was $4k then), but I still sorely wish I could get my money back on something that gave no discernible ROI. While I was not expecting a job guarantee, their job assistance program was poor at best in 2015-2016. I put in my own work, applying to web development jobs and going through at least a handful of interviews never to get my foot in the door after completing the program.

I currently work in retail instead.

Marco and Ken were personable enough, and the initial code reviews were thoughtful and you felt like they were truly cheering you on (I remember Matt was the main person getting back to me on my code for Fizzbuzz, etc.). Looking back, the coursework wasn't in the best format -- it felt more like following along in an online workbook, instead of actively learning and building your own web pages and applications (until the chess app, but my group never even finished ours, and that was apparently okay with the people at Firehose -- but how does that look on interviews?? I couldn't adequately talk about an app that was never completed).

The depth of the work wasn't good enough to warrant the price of the program, and while I had a pretty good mentor (albeit we typically had some technical issues connecting for sessions), the only real job assistance was a quick look-over of my résumé and giving a few tips as to how to polish it up a bit. And overall, the group project they hyped up was a waste.

For all it's worth, enrolling in the FHP was definitely not one of my best decisions, and if I could go back, I wouldn't enroll in the program. I would urge prospective students to thoroughly consider what they're looking to get out of a coding bootcamp, and if it's actually worth the money. I'd definitely suggest doing everything you can for free first (I'm sure by now there are even more free resources out there than two+ years ago), or at least under one hundred dollars.

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to drop in and leave a quick review about my experience with the Firehose Project. 

Honestly, I'm typically a skeptic, as there are a TON of "online experts" out there with a lot of promises. This was not the first online course that I had gone through, although it was certainly the most costly and the most in-depth.

Short Version: IT DELIVERS.

I joined Firehose with a single goal in mind - I had started a business that was build on third party software and I wanted to bring it in-house. I wasn't here to learn how to make "pretty code" or to "try something new" - I was laser focused on making my business succeed.

Before I joined, I spoke with Marco (Firehose CEO) about my goals, and he was able to give me very specific guidance as to what the course would and would not cover, along with how he thought it would help.

If you don't put yourself out there, you'll never grow...so I slapped down a credit card and went for it.

At first, you'll feel like you're just "going through the motions" without a ton of context, but you need to trust the process. After the first few lessons, it'll all fall into place.

Long story short, not only did my time going through FHP allow me to complete the goal that I set out to do, I brought one of my classmates into the business as a co-owner and we're crushing it. We even flew to SF and met Marco, Ken, and the rest of the team - super great people.

If you want to lear RoR, just get on board. Work hard, learn the material, and see where life takes you. If I was able to learn it on my own, I would have done it already. FHP made it happen, and I'm super grateful to these guys for putting together such a killer program.

They have my highest recommendation.

I am working through week #10 of 42 in the Firehose program and am happy to report that it's going very well and that it is overall a great experience. The lessons are now becoming less "hand-holdy" and require more thought to work out, but there is still plenty of guidance to help you through the material. The material is set up and written in a very understandable and user-friendly fashion and the projects that you build are not only useful, but entertaining as well. The challenges are indeed challenging and are highly rewarding to struggle through and complete. The community is great and the resources to help learn are abundant. The mentor sessions are absolutley critical and one of the most helpful aspects of Firehose. Working with a live real person and talking out problems and concepts that you haven't quite grasped with an experienced pro is incredibly valuable and will often make the "light go off". You'll receive encouraging emails and phone calls from staff to ask about your progress and if there is anything that can be done to make your experience better. You'll soon realize that everything that is being taught all ties in and works together to form a good foundation for developing. I truly believe and feel that everyone at Firehose, mentors included, are really focused on my success and really do care about my future during and after the program. Super stoked to keep going and can't wait for the Agile Team Project!

I've taken 20 lessons so far in the Intro to Software Engineering course, which is a prep course for deciding on whether or not a bootcamp is the direction you'd want to go in. So far, the videos have been very high quality, easy to follow along with and descriptive. Some of the definitions have been a little lacking in my honest opinion because they tend to be less metaphor based (don't always have the novice in mind) but overall it's very high quality. This is not really an issue because you can google a term and another website like ruby for beginners at Ruby Monstas gave me some really in-depth and clear explanations for terms that weren't quite clicking with me the first time I read them on Firehose. Very good program structure overall. 

The Firehose Project is a fantastic course - I could not recommend it more.

The style of learning (written and video lessons backed up by mentor sessions) is a great fit for the aim of the curriculum: turning you into a self-sufficient developer. If you want to be able to build webapps, whether that be for yourself or for a company, this is the course for you.

When I was deciding between the vast array of options for coding bootcamps, I consulted the reviews on this board extensively, so I feel it only fair that I give a detailed and honest appraisal of my experience, split into a 'what you learn' and 'how you learn it'.

For avoidance of doubt: I am not affiliated with the Firehose Project in any way, and have nothing to gain from bigging it up.

 

Curriculum

You're building apps from day 1. You're still building apps in week 22. The whole time, you're building apps and this, for me, works. It's a 'learn by doing' approach. If you're determined to absorb as much as possible, it's a really effective method.

A warning: it would be possible to go through the course without taking much in. The code is all there for you on the page, and you could build the apps without really understanding anything. If you have an inclination to coast or free-ride, you need to be conscious of this.

In other reviews, I've seen people make a big deal about algorithms. I have to say, I'm yet to find a use for these skills, but I suppose there's no harm in having done them.

The language, Ruby on Rails, is brilliant. You'll learn to love it, but this shouldn't be a factor in choosing your course. Ruby is often intuitive and easy to read, but it's more about learning the principles of a coding language (methods, arrays, loops, properties etc.) than the actual language itself. Any would do, really.

 

Solo project vs. group project. I, foolishly, did both. I built my own app (which was the reason I took the course) with the help of my mentor. It went really well, and now has 1000+ users. However, I also signed up for the group project, and this ended up taking up too much of my time. DO NOT DO BOTH, no matter how well you think you're progressing.

Speaking of time, the course takes 30-40 hours a week. It is full-time, as promised.

What's missing? Front-end (making things pretty and intuitive for the user) is light touch throughout. There's nothing on UX design, and nothing more than basic Bootstrap usage and CSS. It's enough to get things to look alright, but you soon realise that there's plenty more that could have been covered.

 

Structure of learning

My mentor was simply excellent. He's an experienced Rails developer, who's worked for some of the big names in tech as well as being on a founding team of a successful company. As far as I can tell, he was mentoring because he enjoyed teaching people.

You have a 1 hour session each week, and you'd be amazed what you can fit into it. Send an email in advance of your session, detailing what you want to cover, and you'll get through it. The rate at which you can solidify or accelerate your learning during these sessions is impressive.

 

On top of this, there's a forum for each lesson on the website. If you have any questions, a moderator will get back to you typically within an hour. This ensures that you don't spend forever wondering what you've done wrong when you've got a colon instead of a semi-colon. Code is unforgiving sometimes, and having someone permanently present to help you out is necessary.

 

What's missing? I would have hoped for more videos and fewer written lessons. Watching seasoned developers code is a great way to improve - I think you can take more in about the thought process when watching and listening than when reading. 

I also would have hoped for more of a 'hackers' vibe about it. It does seem angled towards those aiming to get dev jobs, rather than build an MVP.

 

 

Outcome

I skyped Marco (one of the co-founders) before I signed up, and ran him through the app that I wanted to build. "Would I be able to build it by the end of the course", I asked. He gave a fair appraisal and said that it should be possible. I was unconvinced - he would say that, right?

In my first mentor session, I did the same. "Yes, absolutely, we'll build that", said my mentor. More convincing. By week 5, I'd started building Seed Music - you'd be amazed how simple some seemingly complex things can be with Rails - and by mid-way through, I had the fully functioning app.

It's now got 1000+ users, having just graduated, and I'm hoping to grow it further by rolling it out across unis in the UK. You can check it out at www.seedmusic.co.uk.

Some aspects of the build were fairly complex (multi-tenancy, worker servers etc.), and are not included in the course. That's fine, because FHP teaches you to be self-sufficient. You get to the stage where you can explain the problem or task to the internet (google), and Stack Overflow or an equivalent will have the answer. Becuase of the way FHP is taught, you'll understand the answer and be able to solve the problem. To butcher an analogy, it teaches you to code a fishing-rod rather than a fish.

This really is the one thing I'd stress. You become self-sufficient, and with that you can achieve a hell of a lot.

 

Overall, it's a great course, and the founders seem intent on continuing to improve it. It's not cheap, but it is worth it.

The program was great because I got to build several apps that all got increasingly complex over time. I also liked how i can ask any questions to the instrcutors or mentors or even students in the program if i get stuck on a code and they would be as helpful as they can.

The group project is awesome because it allows you to apply all of what you learned and beyond as well as working in a team of 4-5 students to build it which gives sense on how web developers work in their daily lives. The office hours were fun to attend and learn about things that are outside the material as well as getting to speak and ask the instructors any questions on your mind, even if you don't understand most of what happen in those hours you still get something out of it.

I would recommend this program to other people who want to not only learn how to code, but how to be a web developer.

Firehose was an easy choice after reviewing the schedule and curriculum with Brita and completing the pre requisite materials. It was clear to see this program could be completed working full time. Other bootcamps I looked into made me question my ability to focus on them with a less structured or more demanding lesson plan. I completed a few other structured study programs for other bootcamps before selecting The Firehose Project.

I really enjoyed how the lessons progressed and how the material you learned continued to evolve through each project. It was also great to have the material lead you into an error before revealing how to resolve said error. it really helped grasp and understanding on how it all worked. Resist trying to copy and paste material from the lesson plan into your editor, you will find yourself just trying to check off the lesson and not focusing on immersing yourself in the material.

The mentors are an incredible contribution to this program, that are not just students recruited to mentor after completing the course. I saw this in a lot of other bootcamps. They are actually working professionals that bring tremendous insight into your journey to becoming a developer. My mentor in particular assigned homework and those lessons really help enforce the bootcamp material. I still have some I work on to this day. It was great to speak to a seasoned developer about how the snippet or project you were working on would apply in the “real world”, that perspective was much appreciated.

The group project should you chose to do it was a great challenge and really does emulate an agile development environment. Those challenges with Git and pair programming will really be valuable once you are introduced into a production environment.

Could not recommend The Firehose Project enough and look forward to continuing to grow with the materials they have available after the initial program is completed. The job prep material is very thoughout and I still am working through it, but did not feel comfortable leaving a rating for it as I have not completed it. 

If you're looking for a boot camp that will help you on your journey to becoming a web developer, look no further. Firehose project has given me the initial push to enter into this new world. The team is very personable and have gone above and beyond to answer any questions I had while going through the lessons. They don't give you the answers to the homework that's assigned, but they give you pointers that will lead you to solving the problem.

The assignments aren't difficult but it takes quite a lot of thinking of how you would want to approach the solution. The forums that they provide on slack and in the lessons are very helpful as you can submit questions and either the firehose team will respond or another student will respond. Everyone is helpful and will have no problem giving you a response. 

This course is like an introduction into web development, you'll learn how to integrate ruby, html, css, javascript and postgresql to create an application that you can put into your portfolio. Pay attention to the lessons, attend the office hour sessions, ask questions on the forums, dig your mentor's brain during your sessions and research online. All these tips will help you during this course and push you to become a better developer.

Before I joined firehose project, I was unhappy in my career choice. I've found this bootcamp to be very helpful in my pursue of web development. Marco and Ken are great guides and mentors, they are very easy to reach and approach. They have no problem with answering questions but the way they respond is completely different from each other. They provide tips and hints but enough to get you to where you need to go.

Each lesson is different and as you progress through the curriculum you'll soon realize how they all tie in together. From the first application that you create to the agile team project, you'll soon realize how all the lessons, videos, quizzes and projects combine your knowledge of what you learned and create the final project. 

I seriously had a great time with Firehose project and after graduation, I still have access to the slack channel and can work on the applications that I created during this course. You'll enjoy this bootcamp and the cost of this is priced fairly compared to a lot others that are out there. So, thanks for reading this review and sign up to be a Firehose project student. Can't wait to meet you in the slack channel.

I had tried learning a little bit of coding on my own and was struggling to change how I think because I am a nurse, not a programmer. Firehose was the first program I found that I completely understood and was learning enough from to be able to code! I have recommended some friends to the site as well and they are enjoying learning about coding now too. So glad I found it! I am changing careers now that I feel like this is actually something I can do!

I delayed writing a review. I have been busy with our business and grad school studies.

I enrolled in The Firehose Project in May 2017 as a fulltime student.

I will keep in as brief as possible.

The TEAM is amazing.  They are super repsonsive, super helpful and super knowledgeable, and it seems never sleep.

The course program: as a new programming student... I had no experience, only bravado.  The coursework is challenging but fair and quite extensive.  It will get anyone off and running and give them the tools to explore the Ruby and Ruby on Rails language in detail.

Overall: I highly recommend attending The Firehose Project, it is the best bang for the buck.  You won't be dissappointed.

One thing: I have not explored the career advice from them, since I am still a business owner and grad student.  I won't be preparing to enter the job force until next year.

 

 

 

I am a career switcher and I found FHP to be the perfect fit for me! Each lesson was super engaging and like a good book...I found I couldn't wait to get to the next 'chapter' after each lesson was done.

FHP also has a very supportive team that help students get over road blocks. Ken and Marco (the co-founders) are very engaged and accessible. When you can see their passion it makes you excited to accomplish any coding challenge you may have in front of you.

I graduated in the early summer and just got a job as a Full Stack Developer. I had no official training in coding before I started with FHP. I now have a career doing something I am absolutely passionate about...thank you FHP!

 

 

 

I am starting my journey on coding and I have taken a couple online prep courses but The Firehose Project was by far the most interactive, easy to understand and result oriented free class I have come across. 

I was able to learn as i was building a real project so everything made so much more sense to me. The videos are easy and the way the lessons are make sense.

When I was finish and could see my page, it gave me a strong sense of pride and motivation.

I have moved to next chapter and I am doing the Ruby and finding even more exciting!

 

Can't wait to what's to come. 

I took the free 2-week "Pre-Course" offered by The Firehose Project mainly to check them out. I got more than I had bargained for!

The lessons were clear, well-structured, and fun. First I learned a bunch of html and css, then some basic Ruby, then more html and css. 

But the best part was HOW I learned these things: Over the two weeks I built a portfolio page advertising myself as a software engineer and featuring code I had written myself!

By the end I realized with a shock that I no longer thought of myself as someone who MIGHT someday learn enough to be a web developer. I AM a software engineer in the process of learning more of my craft!

Signing up for the full program was a no-brainer. :-)

 

 

 

I was all set to sign up for another online boot camp when I learned about the special feature only The Firehose Project offered: experience working with a real agile team creating a chess game two people can play that implements all the usual chess rules.

It seemed obvious to me that potential employers would be more interested in a boot camp graduate with this experience working on a team than in someone with equivalent “classroom learning” but without that experience.

So I checked student reviews and found other things to like. 

If you’ve read other reviews, this will sound repetitious, but I found that they were right! Doing the accelerated 22-week program, I found that:

• • Yes it took pretty much full time, but if I put in 6+ hours a day I could keep up. (Like any online program, doing this successfully WILL require a good deal of self-discipline! That includes the discipline to get up and MOVE frequently throughout the day, or you’ll get very STIFF as I did at first.
  • I’m changing careers (I’ve been a corporate trainer for several decades and want to stop spending all that time on the road), and found the program completely worked for me - challenging but doable, with NO prior experience with coding. (If you’d like to read about my experience, check out my blog at https://medium.com/@kalen7/a-surprising-career-change-93ad8f58d8df.

 

• • The lessons were well-structured, well-presented, clear and engaging, because they consistently taught principles of effective programming and web development along the way to creating real working apps. This both gave me a real feeling of progress and built up a portfolio I’ll be able to share with potential hiring managers.
    
    I DEFINITELY suggest following their recommendation of typing every line of code yourself. I discovered that one of my biggest sources of code that didn’t work was simple typos; by the end of the program I had gotten a lot better at simply looking at code and SEEING the typos because I knew by then what the code SHOULD look like. This meant I was really understanding what the code was doing AND the syntax that made it do that. This takes longer but is very much worth it.
  • Because the features of the apps we were building are ones I’d be likely to actually USE later (creating forms and saving user input to a database, authenticating users, uploading images and streaming videos, storing those images and videos on Amazon Web Services, processing credit card payments etc. I built up a set of notes that will save me huge amount of time when it comes to implementing features like those “for real.”
  • I discovered that I could indeed use what I’d learned to create an app for myself from scratch that I use as a dashboard every day to test goals and tap into beauty, weather reports, and inspiration (including from TED talks).
  • In addition to the prepared lessons, there’s a weekly “Office Hours” session where people can ask the top guys at Firehose anything at all. This means I got to ask questions of my own and also learn from answers to questions I had not thought to ask. (They allowed enough time to answer every question posed, even if the session ran over a bit.)
  • Unlike the usual situation when doing free tutorials online, the Firehose Project has full-time mentors responding to questions, so as I went through the lessons if something wasn’t working for me I never stayed stuck for long. I would post a question to the mentors, get up and walk around the house to stretch, and by the time I came back I nearly always had an answer waiting for me so I could move ahead.
  • The Firehose Project also provided an excellent 1-on-1 mentor for me to meet with every week for an hour to ask any deeper questions I had, talk about programming in general, push me to work on complex data algorithms and help me understand WHY the stuff we were learning about developing apps worked the way it did, give job-finding advice - any way I wanted to spend the time. Invaluable!
  • The Firehose people reached out to me via email several times to ask how I was doing, as well as paying attention to the notes I made on my weekly meetings with my mentor. For the first few weeks I had a mentor who was “OK” but mentioned that I wasn’t learning as much from him as I had hoped. I thought of asking for a different mentor but decided he was “good enough” and I was still learning a good deal, but when I expressed that they placed me with a different mentor who was FABULOUS.  So if there’s anything about this program that is NOT working superbly for you, I recommend making sure they KNOW that. They do seem to care a lot about student experience and will work with you to fix whatever’s not working.
  • There’s a VERY complete set of lessons with job-finding advice - everything from how to present yourself well via resume and portfolio through how to prepare for and make it through the job interviewing process and what to do your first day in your new job. (I rated everything about the program 5 stars except the Job Assistance section which I rated 4 stars: What they provide is excellent, but I would be even happier if they had provided two more kinds of assistance):
                1) Because the toughest part of getting hired seems to be the “technical interview” where an interviewer will ask me to solve computer challenges in real time on a white board, I’d like to have had more help preparing for that. To their credit, the Firehose People DID suggest a resource that was just what I needed: “Interview Cake.” (Google it!) It costs $200 and I think it’s worth every penny, but I wish they had rolled it in to their program or provided something similar.
               2) Some boot camps have arrangements with companies or headhunters that they claim increase the odds of newbies getting hired. Links with companies who are hiring would of course be best!
  • And the Agile team experience? It was everything I’d hoped for and more. The team lead, Jacob, was tremendously generous with his time - I had several Google Hangout sessions where I learned a tremendous amount about how to get complex things done through code. And working with the others folks was illuminating and occasionally exasperating and ultimately very satisfying just as a “real” team would be. I’m now in a position to talk about some REAL experience producing a product on a timetable!
  • So did I finish the program ready to get a job? Yes and no. Yes, I actually feel ready to DO the work of a web developer. No in that after applying a couple of places (and getting the response “your skills don’t match what we need”) I started taking seriously that most of the jobs in my area (Tampa, Florida) are looking either for php or C#. What I got from the program was a great grounding in Ruby on rails and JavaScript. So I decided to do a crash course in php. (The best resource I’ve found is at Laracasts. Free, but excellent. BECAUSE I have the grounding I got at the Firehose Project, I’ve been able to quickly move through the tutorial and UNDERSTAND what I’m learning! As the Firehose people said, once you know a couple of languages, picking up another isn’t hard.) So a little over month after graduating from Firehose, I’m about to relaunch my job-finding program.
  • In the meantime, would I recommend The Firehose Project? Without reservation! If what you’re looking for is a way to get a solid foundation for a career as a software engineer QUICKLY with support from truly helpful, highly effective people, DO it!

            

I started the bootcamp program in November 2015 back when it was an intensive 15-week course and I had no prior background in programming (I had previously only dabbled in some HTML & CSS courses online). I was looking for a structured program to take my coding learning experience to the next level as I have great difficultly learning from content that is not contextualized; in other words, online learning programs left me frustrated and not understanding how a piece of knowledge is applicable in reality.

The course structure is laid out very well and Ken Mazaika does a phenomenal job in explaining each concept clearly and concisely. The contrast is made even more stark when I watch content produced by similar instructors; Ken knows his stuff inside out and more importantly, is able to use the right terms and analogies to help students understand a new concept.

The course also includes lessons on algorithms but this was one area that I felt was a little lacklustre; it was intimidating to get into and did not provide much guidance in tackling the problems (students were to work through these challenges with their assigned mentors). This - combined with the fact that my assigned mentor was not too familiar with how the Firehose Project curriculum was structured - meant that the aspect of algorithms was a little glossed over, in my case. Perhaps the mentors could be more exposed to the Firehose Project coursework so that they can better prepare sessions with their students.

Also, one point to note for students not based in the US: during my time on the program, it was mildly frustrating whenever I had the opportunity to work on the program during the daytime (I'm on Singapore GMT+8 time) which meant that there weren't any available instructors online to help with troubleshooting. If there are instructors assigned to handle queries across different timezones in future, that would be really helpful.

Overall, I think TFP is an amazing option for anyone looking to get into programming. The fact that it's a remote bootcamp makes it an attractive option to individuals who need to balance this with maintaining a day job. I have recommended it to several friends and acquaintances whenever the topic of learning to code comes up, and I would continue to recommend it because I love their curriculum and the brevity of the content.

I have been a student in TFP's free online course for just under a week now, and I have to say, I'm very impressed with this school so far. Two things have stood out to me: 

1. The lesson content is easy to follow and even fun! Although I had learned the basics of Javascript and Python prior to enrolling in this course, I had not written a single line of HTML/CSS. One day after starting this course, I had built a basic portfolio page hosted on an actual website. I was hooked from the very first lesson, and I'm enjoying learning the basics of Ruby as I write this review. 

2. The level of support and guidance is unlike anything I've seen from a free bootcamp prep course. I receive personalized feedback on my coding challenges, and the student success manager, Brita, has been able to answer all my questions quickly as well as provide encouragement! I have yet to find a student blog post about a coding problem during one of the lessons that has gone unanswered for more than a few days. The team at TFP seems to really care about their students. 

In short, TFP has met or exceeded my expectations about what a coding bootcamp should be. I can't wait to get through the prep course and enroll in their Software Engineering and Web Development track. I'll post another review when I graduate from that course. ;)

I've tried many free courses all over the Internet, but I immediately fell in love with Firehose Project's prep course. The information is delivered in a fun, engaging way. It really didn't feel like work, and I tore through the first section in a few hours without realizing it. It made me want to keep learning. Keep coding. I'm not in the position financially to take a full course, but if I were, I would apply in an instant. The material and the way it's presented is just that good. It made me fall in love with Ruby even more.

I don't usually write reviews and when I do, I generally don't give out 5 stars. However, having been doing another bootcamp then coming to Firehose to try their free prep course I have been pleasently surprised how much I am enjoying it. Ken does a wonderful job explaining things and obviously has a passion for the work he does and from what it seems the rest of their team does as well. 

I am relatively new to coding and web design/development and have learned a great deal over the last week or so just from this prep course. I can only imagine how much I will learn when I sign up. I highly recommend you give the prep course a try if you don't know anything about anything like myself. You'd be surprised how well they present the content and how fun (albeit challenging) it is. I am going to get back to it now, hope to see you there as well!  

To begin with. I have very little experience with coding. Yet, a few days after using the program I feel as if I have gotten over one of the biggest challenges for new coders--- feeling like it's an impossible task to learn. The super fast replies to questions and the in-depth tutorials are just a few of the aspects of The Firehose Project that I absolutely love. In fact, the third-party clients that you use will probably be a much more difficult task of learning. Still, they have even come up with a solution for those issues they explain how to get started with and use them in the correct manner. And now I must end this review, not for a lack of things to say but because I'd honestly rather get back to coding. Peace.

I started the firehose project on Saturday 4/22/2017 and completed the first part of creating my portfolio using HTML and CSS within a day and now on the ruby project. Its really funny and easy. Actually, I was kinda surprised how easy it was since I used so many others and couldn't get past the first day. I don't want to stop. Unfortunately though I won't be able to afford the full class after the bootcamp. I wish I could go but have to work full time and take care of an older family member. This is an awesome course. The instant responses are awesome and the encouragement is really great. Thanks again for coming up with such a wonderful program. When you get a better payment plan, please let me know, I will jump on it in a heartbeat. 

The project-based curriculum that the Firehose Project provides, combined with the supportive community and excellent one-on-one mentorship, allowed me to kickstart my learning and exposure to the world of full stack development. I will admit that I did have experience with coding previously, but the motivation this program provided for me to learn a great deal of material in a short time was priceless.

I found the real-world insights provided in the learning material to be quite helpful and applicable, and if I ran into trouble working on a project, someone was always able to help me figure out a solution. I even had my code from the final group project brought up on a projector and reviewed during an interview, helping unlock the door for me into a position as a software developer - The Firehose Project definitely works!

As a graduate of the Firehose project, I found their curriculum to be nicely paced. Not only was I introduced to Ruby and the Rails Framework, I had also become a Rails full-stack developer across several different projects all live hosted on Heroku.

Their weekly office hours with Marco and Ken, the one-on-one mentoring and the team project were fun learning experiences and very informative. The mentorship was an invaluable added bonus when working on coding challenges, algorithms and guidance.

The final Chess project was a good introduction to working in a team environment with other developers.  We were working together on Slack, Trello and Github, in pairs or alone at times to create a working Chess application with everything we learned over the course. 

Overall, The Firehose Bootcamp delivers in value for the money and I would highly recommend the Firehose Project to anyone interested in learning to code.

In my opionin, the Firehose Project offers together with an appealing and profound education approach an excellent value for money.

What I mean by that? They seem to manage to provide a sort essential knowledge to help understand how the things in coding go together sort of end-to-end. Be aware it's a very complex topic for 24 weeks, so you really need to grasp essentials in a very short time which they managed in the crisp understandable videos and instructions along the sample web applications that you do throughout the course. The dynamic web applications (min. 5) teach you HTML, CSS, Bootstrap Ruby, Ruby on Rails and Java Script. All of them include a postgreSQL DB, scale in complexity and include zoomings out and explanations that help gain a programmer mind set or way of thinking. On top of that you are introduced to a computer science topics such as algorithms that you can try to solve quite challenging problems which again aim to help assume the problem solving mindset. Moreover, you can take part in a team project that simulates a real application development process to create a chess web application that users can create and/or join and play against one another.

Having said that don't expect to become a coding specialists because in such a short time it's impossible. This is not meant as a negative remark about the course but the reality. You need to do a lot of additional work since you get a lot of new references and sources to go through.

If I'd better realized the complexity I'd have taken more time to prepare on my own before I started the course or would have opted for the longer 44 weeks course which was introduced recently. You can then better leverage the mentor sessions and office hours to fit your needs and learning style. 

E.g. I started to create my own app that I had to solve problems which were not dealt in the course and I could still got the questions answered. The mentor sessions (1hour/week) had an excellent quality the more you are prepared the better. My mentor also answered every mail outside the session. The office hours (1hour/week) never let an open question with occassional shared screen coding, follow-ups, and run-overs when needed. I also always managed to get my questions answered on the Firehose community chatt by either mentors or other students or graduates. There is also a self-paced job-preparation track which includes advice how to present yourself digitally what to expect in an software developer interview, and other job searching related stuff.

Depending on your learning style and abilities, my experience was that minimum 20hours per week had to be spent just to be on track of the course. For a deeper understanding and becoming more comfortable with the topis 30 - 40 hours per week seem to work fine.

The only thing I would have appreciated more is if the applications styling differed across the application portfolio to make it look more attractive.

I completed The Firehose Project online bootcamp recently (January 2017). I am a career changer and came with very little coding experience. I did attend another online bootcamp prior to starting The Firehose Project that I was unsatisfied with. Switching to The Firehose Project was a great decision and completely worth the money, time and commitment. 

In the curriculum, you start immediately building applications. Then you gradually start to learn and work through algorithm, data structure exercises that build on each other. You learn problem-solving skills that give you the foundation to work in the software development field. I always felt challenged but was able to follow the steps and figure out from reading forum questions and answers or googling answers to steps I got stuck on. If I couldn’t figure out the problem, I could ask on the forum and get help.

After finishing the core curriculum, you have a chance to do a group project, which teaches you how to work in an Agile/Scrum environment with other student developers, use more advanced git commands and produce a working application to show off more advanced web development skills. This is huge in both your learning and selling yourself to employers. This helped level my skills up that I couldn’t have done just building applications on my own.

The Firehose Project community is wonderful and this is because the leaders, Ken and Marco, set a very collaborative, positive and supportive environment. Besides having weekly mentor sessions (they pick a mentor for you – did a great job picking my mentor, Seth), you can attend weekly office hours to pose questions and also watch other questions get answered. Watching Ken pair code with students to solve coding issues is invaluable and I think one of the best ways to learn to code. 

My journey since graduating from the FHP has led to numerous interviews, job coding challenges and a job offer. It hasn’t been a straight line but has (like the actual program) always progressed in the right direction. After you complete all the modules, you start the job prep module. It is important to go through it and do all the exercises, including rewriting your resume and getting it down to one page (even if you have a lot of prior experience from working more than two decades).

I would advise anyone who wants to become a developer and wants to attend an online bootcamp to go to The Firehose Project. They have an excellent curriculum, great leaders and staff, top-notch mentors and a wonderful environment to learn. I especially recommend FHP to career changers, like myself. I always felt a part of the community and not too old or different. I internalized Ken and Marco’s belief that if I applied myself and felt passionate about learning to code that I could accomplish a change into the software development field. I am doing it and you can do it too.

If you want to learn the skills to have a career in web development, but don't want to deal with classrooms and long lectures, then The Firehose Project bootcamp is an incredible investment. It's one of the few bootcamps that offers a free prep course, and that in itself is very valuable. I would encourage anyone thinking about bootcamps to first consider checking that out.

When you begin the program, you immediately dive into building a Rails app. You quickly set up your coding environment, outline an app, and begin creating the database. There's no time spent dilly-dallying in coding concepts that don't have immediate practical use. The idea is to get your first app off the ground and to learn as you go so that you know the exact purpose for everything you do.

Because the entire course was taught in this learn-by-doing manner, I've been able to really understand coding concepts and principles. It's easy to forget something when you don't know why you're learning it.

The 1-on-1 mentorship program will likely be your most valuable asset (it was for me). I had an incredible mentor during my time at Firehose who had been a developer for 13 years and had an astounding wealth of knowledge. Every week I would come to him with questions or coding issues, and by the end of each session I would have figured out exactly how to fix my code and gained invaluable information. On top of that, I recieved tons of great advice for my side app, my resume, interviewing, and much more. I can definitively say that I would not have gained a foundation for software development that is as strong as it is today without having someone to help guide me.

There's still a lot to say. The team project, the job prep course, the strong community backing, helpful forums, weekly office hours. The list goes on. These were all helpful in developing my skills as a programmer and providing insight into a career in the tech world. The only thing I could have hoped for was a little more introduction into a database language (like SQL) and a front-end framework/library (like Angular/React)...plus if I gave everything 5 stars, who would actually read this review?

That being said, I still got far more out The Firehose Project than what I paid for. It was an infinitely better decision than going back to college for a CS degree and I learned more industry-applicable knowledge over the 24 week program than I did over the 4 years I spent getting a mechanical engineering degree in college.

I change my life after take Thefirehoseproject, My dream was become a good software developer they make my dream true, I was 28 years man who dream it :) i can say nothing is impossible if you get proper guide line and little bit backup form who know their job and they know their job how to teach  , i really give them 1000000000.times { puts "Big big thanks for help me to change my career" } after finished this course i was not took me long time for get job, my first job was free job :) i mean internship i was doing that 4 month then i leave my internship and got paid job was not good salary but it was ok after 4 month again i change my job 
Now i am working in local company i am working as junior Ruby developer where i test TDD and BDD :) and i love it :)

What i like their course ?
Regular code reviews
High level Job preparation guide
Very friendly
Teach how to solve problem
Groups Project
Step by step guide line with will help you become good software developer
From my opinion if they can add more about Test it will be boost their student career because i believe to become a good software developer you have to be good in test

Again i wish them good luck and if anybody like to ask anything please don't hesitate contact with me via fb https://www.facebook.com/alifspb17

Note:- I don't have university degree but i am working as software developer its awesome achievement for my life and i think everyone can do it if they love what they are doing, i wish everyone good luck and advice never give up one day your dream will become true like me :)
Winner are not people who never fail, but people who never quit.

I have to say that the Firehose Bootcamp Prep Course is one of the best online resources out of several I've researched and tried out. The instruction is clear, simple and never overwhelming and all the while there is encouragement to keep trying until you get. The course uses videos and reading activities providing very manageable, step by step guides to learn coding concepts which the user is then encouraged not only to practice, but also to submit for review and comments from the course instructors directly. The instructors are always encouraging and very responsive! I strongly encourage anyone even remotely interested in coding to start immediately with Firehose!

Highly recommend the Firehouse Project. I took the course after a co-worker recommended it to me.  I was able to completed the course in a few months while working full time.  Ken and Marco did a fanastic job of supporting the class and individual students throughtout the course.  I walked away with a good foundation on which to grow.  Only recommendation is to add more Javascript to the course work, however I think they've added more to the curriculum  since I was a student. 

     It's very easy for me to write emails about and send letters to places that have done something that I haven't liked or to someone who I have feel has wronged someone in my family, but it's much more difficult to write a review for something that totally changes one's life for the better as The Firehose Project has done for me. This is actually not my first career, or even my second, but it's my last and best. I have a BS in Mathematics and an MBA with a Finance specialization, but I finally found my calling when I found The Firehose Project. I now own a small business and do one off projects for others, from home, doing something that I love and you know the saying...when you do something you love you NEVER work a day in your life! I honestly don't even know how I stumbled across their website http://www.thefirehoseproject.com/, but I am so thankful that I did.

     I actually started writing this over a week ago...and I've written and deleted more times than I can count...but if you ask Ken Mazaika and Marco Morawec, the guys who started The Firehose Project, that's nothing new. It was a pattern that I had when I first started to code...I was trying for perfection, so I would write my code and then instead of just reworking the code I already had, I started all over again.  So, I will actually start and finish this today.

     I'm not sure if you get to interact with the founders of every other bootcamp out there, but with The Firehose Project Bootcamp, you DO have interaction with Ken and Marco. And that interaction is specific and meaningful. I understand that their time is very valuable, but not one time did I ever feel that I was rushed while talking to them. Every Wednesday night during virtual office hours, Ken would schedule one hour to answer any questions, but he would not hesitate to spend more time on the call with everyone, if necessary, or to work with you one on one after the call if it wasn't an issue that others might also be having. I wasn't new to coding, or so I thought since I had been working with HTML and CSS, but I had no experience with Ruby or Rails and The Firehose Project encourages, well, forces you to jump head first into the deep end and begin coding. No, I didn't have a clue what I was doing or why, but I was watching the videos, reading everything I could, going through the lessons, meeting with my mentor, attending the weekly discussions and asking questions and after a few weeks I realized that I could actually quickly spin up a Ruby on Rails webpage, throw some bootstrap and some pictures onto the page and get my MVP (minimum viable product) up and running. So, not only was I learning, I was hooked.

     The more I learned, the more I wanted to learn. I've actually gone through the updated lessons a number of times, I still watch the slack pages for the new projects, I think I'm still on the hook for part 2 of a Docker lightning talk and if they'd let me, I would still attend the Wednesday night discussions. 

     Marco and Ken have not only managed to build a wonderful product that teaches you Ruby and Rails through a series of projects, videos and a personal mentor, but they cultivate a comraderie with the people that you go through the program with...even though you start at different times and are in different places in the project and it's all done ONLINE. I don't know how they do it, but they do...and it's wonderful.  Firehosers, as we are all affectionately called, become your family. You find yourself reaching out to them in the middle of the night for help with some code you know you should get, but you don't want Ken to know you're stuck on. Your fellow Firehosers are the ones in the chat room cheering you on as you tackle your first lightning talk, where you're sure that you're talking too fast and you KNOW that no one on the video call is remotely interested, but they're telling you what a wonderful job you're doing...and Ken and Marco are also telling you how great you did! Again, I don't know if you get this from other boot camps, but I've talked to people who've gone through other courses and I haven't heard them talk about their experience with the same passion that I have when I talk about The Firehose Project.

     Along with the curriculum, that includes different course tracks, you do have access to mentoring sessions, weekly discussions and cheat sheets that include information on Git, Heroku, Ruby and Vagrant. If you'd like, you have the opportunity, as previously discussed, to give a lightning talk and showcase your budding tech skills. You're building your resume as you move through the course...and yet they still give you more and more and more help with your job search!

     Yes, I could go on and on and on....I could probably write a book on how wonderful The Firehose Project is, so if you have any doubts, go to the website http://www.thefirehoseproject.com/?home=true and you can see for yourself that you want to be a Firehoser!

     I believe it's been almost 18 months since I've graduated from the program and if I had the chance to do it all over again, I would choose The Firehose Project.