really horrible program

they dont care about you or your work

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Going to try and make this review as short as I can.

Background

Before theFirehoseProject, I was a recent digital marketing graduate that was working in web analytics and as a digital marketing assistant for an educational web app. I had my hands in SEO, PPC, email marketing and I also helped create landing pages while revamping my company's website. So in a way, I already knew HTML/CSS/jQuery. However, that didn't matter as much since what I was going to learn there was way more in depth.

Why I Chose theFirehoseProject

The points of interest for me (and the ones that would eventually help my decide) were

• 1. Mentor sessions once a week that are flexible
  2. A community that encourages learning and helping others (fellow Firehose students)
  3. A Capstone project where you will work in real-world conditions
  4. Price point was much better than most courses I found

1. Having a mentor in general is always great for learning. The one hour I had in mentor sessions a week was enough to cover any concepts I wasn't sure about in week of learning. Sometimes my mentor (Federico) would even go past the one hour just to make sure I understood what I was learning. And even if you don't get it by then, you can probably always email your mentor or ask in our dedicated community channel (which brings me to my next point).

2. The community of Firehose consists of people from all walks of life who all share the passion of learning to code. You can usually ask questions in our group chat and someone will answer (both the founders Ken and Marco can be found lurking there too along with the alumni). What's also great is that people will share useful resources or tips in the channel that will definitely help you as you go through the course. It's always better to feel like you're learning with others as opposed to going solo.

3. The capstone project was to build a chess game with Rails alongside 3 other students. This will definitely give you an idea of how to work with other developers and understand team workflow processes that professionals use. Getting to this point, you should have completed 90% of your course and are now ready to take on a real project.

4. I can't really say much about this other than that it was a 3rd of the cost of one of the other bootcamps I was looking at (Flatiron). 

The Perks

• Office-hours (6 PM EST) is a live video chat where you and other students can ask Ken and Marco questions in regards to either the courses or a general programming question. If you get in early, you'll probably hear Ken and Marco talking about random things (they're super nice and funny!).
• Practice your lightning talks with the community. This is where students can give short presentations on specific topics such as a framework or concept. (Made possible by fellow Firehoser Colin)
  
  P.S. Presentations are suggested to have many puns and uses of gifs
• Access to all the materials even after graduation.
• Challenge problems in regards to learning algorithms and data structures (which I don't see being taught much by other bootcamps).
• An entire section dedicated to job preparation.

Final Thoughts

When I started theFirehoseProject, the one goal they really emphasized in their curriculum was getting to the point where you can learn to teach yourself new things. With the amount of languages, frameworks and concepts out there, it's hard to condense that into a lifetime of learning let alone a 15-week course period. This is exactly why they train you to become a self-sufficient developer. 

When I finished the program, I was confident that I could teach myself anything. As a developer, you should always strive to be learning new things anyway. For that, I'm glad I picked theFirehoseProject and would definitely recommend over the bootcamps that claim to get you a high-paying job as soon as you graduate (seems unrealistic to me). 

If you're still unsure about what bootcamp to go to, this post was helpful: The Definitive Guide to Choosing a Coding Bootcamp. This should say a lot about the company itself when they write a guide to help choosing the RIGHT bootcamp (even if it may not be their own).

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I’ve had a few days now to come to terms with the fact that theFirehoseProject is all over. It’s been an amazing ride over the last 3 months and the skills I learned will leverage me into my next career pivot. I’ve met some really great people, experienced horrible frustrations, and felt amazing triumphs. I’ve went from slowly trudging through the Rails tutorial sea of mud to learning how to be a web developer. To have been able to accelerate my skill acquisition in this way would have been damn near impossible had I continued to do it on my own. It truly has been an amazing program to be a part of and it is easily one of the best decisions I have ever made. In a lot of ways the Firehose Project has brought me a significantly higher quality of life than I had prior to starting.

The program starts off at a slow pace but quickly ramps up in progressive succession. By the time you are done with the program you will have a simple quote generator, a business/restaurant review site, a two sided video streaming marketplace, and a complex chess application. You’ll also get the taste for writing JavaScript, in depth understanding of object oriented programming, test driven development and learning complex algorithmic processes with the difficult coding challenges that the Firehose Project provides. Oh the coding challenges, they will be the most difficult thing you will do. You will want to, at times, bash your skull in with your keyboard out of frustration but when you get it, and you will, you will have the most uplifting and reassuring confidence boost you have ever experienced.

In addition to the coursework you will be assigned a mentor. Some how Marco and Ken knew exactly the right mentor for me. They paired me up with a seasoned veteran of the software development industry who spent a lot of time developing video games such as Bioshock Infinite, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed 2. We jumped into our first call and it was super easy talking to him about basically anything. Over the 3 month program my mentor and I got to know each other pretty well and it felt as much as a friendship as it was a mentorship. He helped me through my frustrations, gave me insights into the industry, gave me advice about jobs and the hiring process, pushed me to keep coding more and more difficult things, and taught me information that went beyond the Firehose Project and into the foundations of computer science so that I could fully understand the impact I would have on the systems I’d be interacting with in the real world. My experience with mentor was very much a highlight of the Firehose Project and I was super fortunate to draw the mentor that I did.

When you look at a bootcamp you look mostly at two things, the course work and the mentor. What you will often overlook and not even consider (myself included) is the community and the social interactions within that community. The Firehose Project community is a caring and supportive community encompassing founders, mentors, alumni and students. When you join Firehose you get access to the private G+ community and the Slack channels but on top of that you get office hours, the weekly meeting of students, founders, and mentors to go over things we may have struggled with throughout the week. Access to these social/community channels, if taken advantage of, will give you access, insight, support, friendship with the other Firehosers, and an ability to level up. My experience being a part of the community was a special one for me, many of the digital communities these days are toxic, hellish, and negative battlegrounds of vial opinions but not with the Firehose Project. You don’t see all the negative things that you would in the wild on the internet but what you do see is an overwhelming level of support and kindness to the other Firehosers, something truly special in today’s digital communities. Every one of my interactions in the community were positive and in kind I did my damnedest to return that kindness and support in magnitudes of order. I think communities are as strong as their weakest contributors, if you have a supportive and active community, then you have a strong community, the Firehose Project is a strong community. The community was already primed and welcoming for me to contribute before I began. To play my part I wanted to amp that community up and give my all to it, I want the new students to feel as welcomed as I was when I started. The TL:DR; the Firehose Project community f-ing rocks!

Interacting with the founders was also a great experience. Ken and Marco make everyone feel welcomed from day one, they’re supportive, and they’re completely open to feedback. I have never felt from either one of them that I was simply a dollar figure to them and have always felt, even from the first time I met Marco or Ken, that I am a welcomed and contributing member of the community and the program. To me that speaks volumes for the caliber and quality of character of the founders and honestly was one of, if not the primary, reasons why I joined the Firehose. If a founder or founders truly believe in their product and see their customers as parts of their family and not just dollar figures I know they have a solid product that I too can believe in. Of course they’re selling something, it is a business after all, but what happens is they undersell and over deliver in EVERY aspect of the Firehose Project. From even the pre-work course you get the feeling that they’re not in it to churn out as many students as possible so they can make the highest profits possible. Then when you start the program you realize for them it’s all about empowering people and sharing their passion and joy for programming, that excitement is infectious. I have zero disappointments in the experience and no regrets or hesitation saying that the Firehose Project is worth 10 times the cost of admission!

Continuing in the same vein of community and the founders I’ve got to say everyone is welcoming, open to trying new things and open about improving the community. When I suggested Firehose Project Lightning Talks to the community I thought I would get a “sure, that’s a good idea but it’s not something we can really do right now because we’ve got a lot of things up in the air already” instead I got “That’s a great idea, lets do it!” Everyone seemed excited about it and we had our first ever Firehose Lightning talks in less than 2 weeks after suggesting it, the feedback was positive and it had a great impact on the community. We’re about to hold our second ever community lightning talks this week. In addition to the talks we’ve also got a community Firehose Project blog where students can contribute as writers or developers on the open source environment that we have created for the students. That’s what I mean by the founders are open to ideas and improvements, I never thought I would’ve had the feedback that I had about the lightning talks nor did I ever see it happening that quickly but the founders saw it as a great way to increase the quality of the program and saw the impact it could have on students by getting them comfortable talking about technology, public speaking, and encouraging them to explore beyond the curriculum. That mentality says a lot about the character of the people running the show and how much they care about the community and ecosystem they created.

Those are basically just the highlights reel of my experience at the Firehose Project, if I wrote everything that I have experienced and felt about the Firehose Project I would have a short novel because it truly has been a wonderful experience (you could also just go back through my blog and read my week in review posts). There is a sense of bittersweet sadness accompanied by joy and accomplishment that I have with the Firehose Project and to me that is a sign that it is something truly special. I’ve done a lot of things in my life, I’ve accomplished just as much but very few things upon completion have been accompanied by a feeling of “I just don’t want it to end” most the time it’s “Hell yes, finally it’s over, now I can do this!” With just that mixed bag of emotions I can truly say that this was something special, that the Firehose Project is something truly unique and special, and it will be one of the greatest experiences that I have ever had the great fortunate to be a part of. When I look back on my time at the Firehose Project I can see the leaps and bounds I have taken in pursuit of my new career and passion, I can see the great relationships and friendships I have made and the promising future that is in front of me because of this experience. The best part of the Firehose Project though, I don’t have to leave, I can stick around and contribute, continue to help and improve the community, give my support and encouragement to the new students and do whatever I can to continue to help make it a great experience for everyone who joins. This ladies and gentlemen this is what makes the Firehose Project great, I still want more. More coding, more community, and more Firehose. A big CHEERS and THANK YOU to Ken, Marco, Kevin, Ben, and the whole damn Firehose community! You folks all made this one of the best damn experiences I’ve ever had.

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I've tried 4 other onlince boot camps and was accepted into Dev Bootcamp in NYC. I'm beyond happy that I chose to learn from The Firehose Project. These guys truly care about your education and honestly want you to succeed. The owners are very successful programmers and not just entrepreneurs who jumped on the boot camp money train. They're also very active on a daily basis with students.

They offer a free 2 week course and after taking that, I couldn't sign up fast enough. The teaching is just incredible!

Highly recommended!

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I started my first job as a developer right after the firehose bootcamp and was
lucky to observe a team of really experienced professionals at the new company.
Thinking about what makes a developer a good one I came to the conclusion that
firehose taught me just about everything a good developer needs to know. 

Divide and conquer
The whole learning experience of firehose is based on projects with increasing
complexity. Each and every step in the development process is broken down so one
can easily follow through and understand the required steps. The knowledge gets acquired gradually and with the experience one’s confidence grows as well.

My daily tasks as a developer require this exact skill. Breaking down the problem into tiny and manageable pieces and learn new things on the way. Through trial and error you finally arrive at a suitable solution. 

Be humble and work with people
Our knowledge as an individual is really finite. I think that our combined knowledge as group or company is near to infinite. There are times when you don’t know what the next step is or how to tackle an even simple problem. Here comes the magic of being humble and working with other people. By being humble I mean not being afraid to acknowledge that you don’t know something and ask others. So far every time it yielded a better and/or quicker solution and a sense of being part of something bigger than yourself.

This experience was a cornerstone of the firehose training as well. Weekly office hours were the highlight of each weeks’ learning process. While going through the material on your own every one encountered similar problems others did only 1-2 week prior. It is a valuable time to share one’s perspective on the assignments and learnings as well.

But this team experience got even stronger and more valuable when working on the group project. The group project is a perfect simulation of the future work environment. You are not restricted to the assignments everyone needs to get through anymore. You are on your own, but as a team. As a team you decide where the project will go (which by the way may or may not be the case on the real job - thats what the product manager may do for you) but more importantly you start to think about the implementation of the new unknown. Real questions start popping up and your team is the place to go to aks for a second opinion and feedback.

Have a mentor
I recently finished reading a very interesting book: “Self Leadership and The One Minute Manager” by Ken Blanchard. One of the ideas presented in the book was that on different stages we all need a different leadership style to help us grow. Basically there are four skill development stages and four corresponding leadership styles:
 

1. Low Competence / High Comitement needs Directing
2. Low-some Competence / Low commitment needs Coaching/Mentoring
3. Moderate-high Compentece / Variable Commitment needs Supporting
4. High Competence / HIgh Commitment needs Delegating

Without going too deep into the theory, here is how it translated for me in my firehose process. 

Before beginning the course I certainly was on the first level. My commitment had no limits and the competence was pretty low. You dive into the learning process and celebrate your first results (the first app is done within a few days and it feels great). But then real problems kick in, self doubt comes up and works against you. Thats exactly the time when your mentor comes into the game and guides you (directing) through the learning process. On the next stage he gives you valuable feedback on how to learn better and what to focus on practicing. 

Why is it important for a developer? Well, development is a skill and a craft in one. We have to learn form the best and study from the mistakes of others. A mentor is someone who has the needed perspective on where you are and is able to guide you through the learning process and point out the connections you just didn’t see before.

To sum it up - chunking the problems into small pieces, working as a team and asking questions and having a trusted mentor who will support you in your growth are in my opinion the things which help being a good developer. The firehose bootcamp certainly incorporated all of them for me and helped me continue those practices not only on my job but in other areas of my life as well.

Thanks guys.

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Everything is online and I simply love it. You can work from home at your own pace and schedule. You get online support 24/7 and it is quite quick. You get 1 on 1 sessions with your mentor which are very useful. Office hours happen weekly and it is another opportunity to ask questions and learn something useful from Ken and Marco. Should you be busy, there is going to be a recording posted so you don't miss out.

They teach you practical things that you will apply in the future.

People are very friendly and helpful. I really enjoy it.

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Good online flexible program for getting some good basic web design skills and some algorithm challeneges. They also offer pretty good courses on how to get your resume out there. The best part of the course is teh mentor program that can get you working on some good strong private projects to make you employable. 

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I'm a broke college student, so I unfortunately won't be able to enroll in the full program (just yet). However, I can honestly say that the prep course is easily comparable to the Codeacademy HTML/CSS course if not better. 

The videos were a lot more interactive than Codeacademy's reading, so I was a lot more engaged with the material. 

The Ruby was helpful and easy to understand, but I do wish that they tied in the Ruby and HTML/CSS language since, to me, it didn't make a lot of sense to suddenly jump into another language. Nevertheless, it never hurts to learn another language!

I would definitely recommend the prep course to anyone who is willing to learn how to make a website, and if you have the money, I would absolutely recommend you to go for the full program. If the prep course was this informative and helpful, I cannot imagine how much the full program would greatly improve yours skills as a software developer. 

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I am pretty new to this type of course, online, and find the information for the most part is easy to follow, and the mentors are really good at getting back to you in a timely fashion so you can move forward. I look forward to mastering more difficult material in this program.

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I am still in the prep course, but so far it is easy and The instruction is clear, simple, giude you step by step, and the support team are always available. you can find all necessery to start your way to coding.a few days after I using the Projrct, I could see my first web site live in internet , maybe it is a basic web , but I think that give me a big push to go further and don't stop, I tried many time to start with html books, but  I couldn't get past the first day.

I encourage everyone want to learn to be developer , Firehose is the right place to start.

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I've only tackled the intro course through Firehose and will start my official day next week.  However, for a quick overview of my experience thus far, I am pleasently surprised.  I've worked through Treehouse and codeacademy for the past 6 months and it was fine.  The interface to learn, the excercises and modules from Firehose all illicit a deeper learning than anything I've tried.  It is forcing the concept of deliberate practice on you, which is tough, but rewarding. I've also interacted via email with instructors from Firehose that review your code and provide constructive criticism.  This is essential in terms of skill development and I am excited to see where I will be in 22 weeks after I finish the course.  So far, I am very happy with my choice, which took me over a year of research to finally commit to.  Firehose is set up perfectly for you to succeed, all you have to do is show up and work.

I am only giving 4 stars because I haven't started the official course - I will update in August 2017 after I am finished.

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I recently graduated and have some mixed feelings about Firehose Project and online programs in general. I believe their founders have good intention, but they are still trying to figure things out right now.

I selected Firehose Project because of its price and great reviews, however, I think you get what you pay for, even though it is not that cheap. 

The curriculum is well put together, but in the end, you are still on your own to gauge if you are actually learning or just getting good at following the lesson. For the most part, weekly "mentors" are there to help you with what you are currently struggling with. They have short term memory and don't really come to mentor sessions prepared with what you learned last time together. 

The slack channel is decently active. It is a hit or miss if people will answer your questions. 

They are actively changing/adding a lot of new curriculum which is a good and bad thing. They are still figuring out how to run an online boot camp but are dedicated to making it better. So you will always learn something that is "outdated" which is understandable. 

Good luck on job searching. A lot of the people I know that graduated are struggling to find a job. The job search portion consists of blog posts/advice and some technical problems you might find in interviews. 

I haven't taken other online boot camps, so I can't say how it fares in terms of the others, but if you are going to spend thousands of dollars on something, be SURE you are intelligent and determined enough. Not everyone can go through the program and get a job. Probably most cannot.

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I had a great experience at The Firehose Project. The apps you build throughout the course are very useful and cover many core aspects of development. The challenges touch on many other aspects of coding from kata challenges to high level algorithms, as well as soft skills aquired through the group project and developing networking skills. The weekly mentor sessions are key to understanding how things tie together and clearing up any fuzzy areas. The way the course is setup you are fully emersed in the build process. At first it can feel overwhelming but thats a good lesson to learn early on, then things start to click and by the third app you're starting to anticipate the next move. I would highly recommend this bootcamp for anyone looking to jump into the development field and is willing to push through tough times and really put in the work. 

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