Why Code School? Why Bloc?
For the TL;DR crowd out there (like me!): Coding schools have their place and can be a viable alternative to going back to university full-time and self-learning for some disciplines (for example, I feel the ROI on data science boot camps is dubious given the huge emphasis on advanced degrees for most data science positions). I am, for the most part, very much enjoying my experience in the full-stack Web Dev Track at Bloc. But before plunking down your hard-earned cash try some of the many and various high quality self-learning options available first to make sure coding is something you want to do all the time.
When I was in high school I washed dishes at a retreat house run by the Franciscans. Our supervisor, one former Marine Corp DI turned monk named Brother Mo, was the first one I heard use the phrase “Excuses are like assholes, everyone’s got one and they ALL stink”. So unless anyone voices a particular interest in hearing the whole convoluted journey I’ve been on I’m going to skip the story about how I find myself finally making this commitment to code professionally at a relatively late point in my life. I mean, if I love coding so much why didn’t I major in Computer Science in college and been coding my whole life?
If I had a time machine and could go back in time and be 17 again, but still knowing what I know now, I would choose to major in Computer Science instead of Physics (which somehow morphed into International Relations with a concentration in Political Economy by the end. A long story for another time). I just don’t think the there is any substitute for the depth and breadth and demand of a CS degree. Thinking about it some more if I had the choice to go back even further (still knowing what I know now) I would teach myself to pitch left-handed and switch-hit. But I can’t go back and do either of them, so how do I and the other “regretfuls” out there get to where we want to go from where we are now?
First, don’t let the regret for past decisions stop you from taking action now.
As I mentioned in my first blog post the fact that you start is more important than how you start, but once you decide to get the ball rolling you will eventually get to the point where you will have several options on how to proceed: Traditional College, Code Schools/Boot Camps, or on your own Self-Learning. The number one question I get asked is: “Is enrolling in a coding school or a coding boot camp worth it?” Isn’t the internet dripping with free resources that could teach me what I want to know, and aren’t there a lot of really skilled coders out there who are self-taught? Yes to both BTW, and being able to teach yourself is an important skill for any developer to have throughout the course of their career regardless of where or how they learned to code. A.B.L. Always Be Learning
But here’s where it is important to make the distinction between possibility and probability. Just as many play in garage bands but only a few become rock stars, a lot of people start out learning to code at home in their spare time online but most never get where they want to go. When you are on your own you don’t know what you don’t know so you will miss some crucial material that could make a difference in your employability (Agile, user stories, and kanban boards anybody?). When you are on your own and you get stuck you can spend a lot of time and get very frustrated wandering the internet looking for an answer. I can’t tell you the time I have wasted on StackOverflow falling down a rabbit hole on a debate about whether a question is worth asking or not, let alone deciding which among the answers provided had any relevance to my issue. And when you are on your own it is very easy to lose focus and commitment with no encouragement or concrete goals.
I am a case in point. Over the course of 20 years I dabbled in over a dozen programming languages, various network protocols and database types, and even got certified as a CompTIA A+ PC tech along the way. But with kids and work and life happening I never gained what I felt was a professional level of performance in any of them. So I knew I needed a change of strategy and after taking several Udacity courses to make sure that coding, and specifically JavaScript, was something to which I still wanted to commit myself I decided that given my particular personality configuration and the time frame within which I wanted to achieve my goals that I could use the support of a solid, reputable code school to provide me the structure and accountability I felt I needed to get “job ready” in a reasonable amount of time.
While a lot of people will balk at paying any amount for what is theoretically available for free I will put the fact that a code school costs money down as a positive in their favor: when you are putting out your hard-earned money for it and have some “skin in the game” you will be more likely to focus on it so as not to see your money go to waste. Other more tangible pluses of a code school for me were:
- Having proven professionals cut through all the fads and frameworks-of-the-week and design a curriculum that is in one sense tested and proven and in demand in the real world, but at the the same time cutting edge if that makes any sense. For example one reason I chose Bloc was their focus on React for the frontend very early in the program where my second choice was still teaching Angular 1 early and React only later. At Bloc I get the choice of learning RoR or Node and it’s the only school I found that gave me a choice on the backend. That will probably change as Node continues to build momentum but at least at the time I was researching schools you had to have some idea of whether you wanted to learn RoR or Node for the backend part of the stack as most schools were teaching only one or the other but not both.
- At Bloc I have a Personal Mentor to help guide me on my project work, Technical Mentors available via Slack 16 hours a day to help get me unstuck, and access to a very supportive community of alumni and fellow students when I get frustrated or want to celebrate a victory. Oh, and the group sessions are the best! Small group live video chats with a mentor on various topics like the javaScript execution context and event loop in the V8 Chrome engine and another focused on how it works in Node, another on Intermediate Git and Github that expands on the Git basics already included in the curriculum, as well as Frontend Design and portfolio critiques among many others.
- One seriously tangible benefit of a solid code school are going to be the career preparation services they offer. I can only really speak for my experience at Bloc where the Student Success team seems to take their jobs very seriously and are sincere in their desire to make sure we are not just successful students but also successfully prepared to start a career. Career preparation is not just a process you go through at the end but rather it’s woven into the curriculum early on with an orientation on Day One and each module containing several concrete exercises and calls to action that must be completed before you can progress. They go way beyond the usual things you think of like help with resumes and practice interviews to include tangible requirements on professional networking and developing my personal brand.
All in all I feel I am getting an excellent ROI on my investment of $42 a day.
I feel like this post is getting away from me and I haven’t even gotten into the process of how to choose a code School! The most succinct advice I can give there would be to go to SwitchUp.org or CourseReport.com as well as data on student outcomes from many schools available through CIRR. You are going to find two main types of code schools: In-person intensive boot camps and online coding schools. An in-person intensive experience would perhaps be the best choice but for me, even though I already live in the Bay Area (I ♥ Campbell!), traffic sucks so hard getting to and from the major in-person boot camps in San Francisco like Hack Reactor or General Assembly it would have taken me three or four hours in a car, longer by bus and BART. So unless you are willing to pay to live in San Francisco ($$$) on top of some steep tuition ($18K for HR and $14K for GA) it would be a tough road to hoe everyday just getting there and back and I know they are serious about attendance, at least at General Assembly if you miss 3 days for any reason or are late 5 times you are out with no refund. Among the online coding schools you have the choice of synchronous programs where you have a fixed start and end date and go through with a cohort of students attending set classes at set times of the day, or asynchronous programs where you can start at any time and proceed at your own pace. GA and Hack Reactor both have synchronous online programs in addition to their in-person offerings (same tuition), while the two major asynchronous programs are Thinkful and Bloc. Thinkful and Bloc are very similar in structure and cost (~$8K-$9K), and have gotten even more similar since I started writing this blog post as Thinkful acquired Bloc yesterday, though apparently operations and brands will remain separate.
There was a lot more that I found out during my search for the right code school for me so if anyone else out there is doing their own search please feel free to drop me a line here on Medium, by email, on Facebook, GitHub, or Twitter and I would be more than happy to pass on what I learned and help you if I am able. Thanks for your time, and Keep Coding!
