The Firehose Project

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.