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Discussion on: Booting Up: Why I Chose A Coding Bootcamp

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shawnhuangfernandes profile image
shawnhuangfernandes • Edited

Hey Matthew!

The pace is very quick. In my cohort we have few people coming in with programming experience (like a CS degree), and majority of people with no experience. I lie somewhere in the middle (because of my EE degree). Everyone is keeping pace, it's actually really inspiring

That being said, this specific program is split into 5 "mods". Mods are basically levels or "grades". You graduate from one mod to another by completing a code challenge and a project (that encapsulates the concepts you learned during the mod), and each mod is 3 weeks long.

I am currently in Mod 2. My experience in Mod 1 was like this:

  • I was bombarded with new concepts, and I benchmarked my own progress by completing coding labs
  • Every day during the 9-6pm session I worked with my cohort on discussions questions, pair-programming excercises as well as the labs. I took this time to get support from coaches, instructors, and my peers to fill the gaps in my knowledge so I maximize my time learning and not be stuck.
  • Because I am a slow learner, I spend my nights and weekends also working on labs (and creating cheat sheets or "brain dumps" to make sure I was ready to tackle the next week). I'll be writing a blog post on my strategy for "learning" coding concepts soon!

I am so glad I am full-time, because I feel like it's a good reflection of what working as a dev might be like:

  • It teaches you how to learn, and learn quickly
  • You have to learn to leverage the knowledge of other people (peers or otherwise)
  • You get out to industry quicker
  • Everyone in my cohort is extremely driven, so it's a great environment to work in

From what you're telling me, you would have been an awesome fit for a full time program. But the important thing is that you're through!

Thanks for asking!

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mrrwmix profile image
Matthew Winemiller

That sounds like such a wonderful environment to learn coding in. Your dedication and preparation will take you far! I would suggest looking at problems on Hackerrank, Leetcode, and Code Wars to get better at whichever programming language you're learning, if you're not doing something similar already. A few classmates and I studied on those sites together weekly to prepare for interviews. That being said, however, I was only asked to reverse a string and query SQL tables in the interview I had for my current dev job.

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shawnhuangfernandes profile image
shawnhuangfernandes

Thanks for encouragement! We do a daily algorithm but I didn't actually know all the different places these algorithms were pulled from. I'll be incorporating this into my weekend study sessions! Really appreciate your input Matthew!