Learn Git at These 383 Git Bootcamps

When I signed up for Inventive Academy about two months ago there were no reviews on Course Report because the bootcamp had only just been registered (under its new name: Inventive Academy rather than Inventive University) with the Texas Workforce Commission. I am currently part of the first cohort of 2019 and we just finished week 8, which is the first week of JavaScript.

I wanted to write a review specifically for anyone who is in the position I was in before I signed up--thinking that the bootcamp looked incredible on paper but a bit confused by the lack of reviews. I can assure you that the bootcamp is as incredible as it appears-- currently 5 hours in-class, 4 days a week, 26 weeks and really they are very generous about helping you during non-class hours, either answering questions promptly online or even allowing you to stop by their offices to hang out. Inventive is also a consulting company, so during the day they are there working as professional developers. This means that there is no risk of getting an inexperienced instructor for the course... Andy and Miguel know their stuff and are both very kind.

I suppose it's hard to know if you are fully satisfied with your bootcamp until you land your first job, but so far Inventive Academy has me feeling very confident and vindicated in my decision to attend. To put it in perspective, by the end of the first week you can reproduce the layout of an actual (albeit simple) website using HTML and CSS and by the end of week seven you feel pretty confident that you could replicate just about any web layout that you come across. And there are still nineteen weeks to go at that point!

Sometimes they can throw you pretty abruptly into some pretty complex problems, so you do have to learn how to teach yourself (being able to teach yourself is a necessary skill in the field of coding with its rapidly-changing technologies). But the teachers and TA's are always sitting right there next to you ready to answer any question. Classes are a lot of fun, and it's probably not a bad thing that they are sometimes very challenging.

I recommend Inventive Academy without reservation.

• Wants a comprehensive understanding of how to build a website
• Craves structure to stay motivated 
• And, is excited to learn a lot in a short time.

• The course is 24 weeks long, with no weeks off in between.
• Each week, we cover around 15 new concepts related to a particular area of the field. 
• For each concept, the instructor runs through a demonstration. Then, you go into a breakout room with other students and a tutor and you directly apply what you’ve learnt to an activity.
• There is a new assignment every week. You can only skip two assignments to pass the course.
• Class attendance is mandatory and your camera needs to be on. You can only miss up to eight classes to pass the course.

• Sometimes the feedback on my assignments feels a little generic/templated. That said, it’s far more feedback than I ever received on an assignment in my undergraduate degree. Also, I think it reflects one of my favourite things about coding—if you hit all of the acceptance criteria, then your work is good enough and perhaps there isn’t much more that needs to be said.
• I wish there were more opportunities to network, both in person and online, with people in the course and outside of it. I think they could do more to help us meet people working in the industry.
• A week off in the middle of the course would be nice.

I have taken two classes at Interface Web School so far - Foundations and Java. I am starting my third class with them, WordPress, on August 7. I have really enjoyed my time at Interface. The instructors, Nick and Kent, were great. I learned a lot from them. Nick ran the Foundations course, which teaches HTML, CSS, and jQuery, with a bit of Bootstrap (although Nick doesn't like that - he prefers coding in pure CSS). We did several projects, including one where we animate flipping a card over. I know it doesn't sound like much, but I have since used it in sites I am working on to create a spinning effect. We did not have one big project in that class, just some weekly projects. In Java, however, we did have one big class project. We made an online UNO game (the card game, that is). It works great! We finished the main work on it during class, but we still have some things we want to add, so we all agreed to meet on Sundays after the class was finished to add those things. One thing that the Java class had that online courses do not have is the back end. When you're making Java applications for a server, you have to add extra code such as POJOs to the package in order for it to work. We also had to learn a bit of SQL to get our data working for the game. I highly recommend Interface!

Disclosure: I did not have to pay out of pocket for Interface. A state grant has paid for my classes. I don't think paying for it would change my opinion though.