Code School Questions

Where did you go and when?
How much experience did you have before starting?
What do you feel your coding school did best?
What do you feel your coding school did poorly?
Did your classmates struggle with the same issues?
Did your classmates struggle with different issues?
Were you connected with your local developer community before attending your code school?
What did you have to learn/are you having to learn afterward to be effective as a developer?
Would you recommend someone else go to a code school?
Would you recommend someone else go to your code school?

Why did you choose to attend code school?

yessss.

I will just answer them all here. I have nothing to hide or shy away from.

Where did you go and when? LAMP Camp November 2014-March 2015

How much experience did you have before starting? 1 year .NET mainly

What do you feel your coding school did best? It was very much an immersive program. There wasn't much hand holding. We were coding on day one, and working on production applications, so we didn't spend time hiding away from real life problems.

What do you feel your coding school did poorly? As fun as it was diving into the code, there was very little instruction in general.

Did your classmates struggle with the same issues? The struggles varied person to person, but generally if someone struggled, it was a learning experience for all.

Did your classmates struggle with different issues? Same as above, yes. Some of us knew PHP/MySQL well, some knew Javascript well, some knew Git well, so it was a group effort to get everyone up to speed.

Were you connected with your local developer community before attending your code school? A bit yes. There was an effort to go to AtlantaPHP every month. But outside of that, we were on our own in terms of blogs, twitter and other places to look for people to connect with.

What did you have to learn/are you having to learn afterward to be effective as a developer? How to Google. What an important skill. That supersedes any language skills out there. Fighting through a problem with Google is ten times easier then without it.

Would you recommend someone else go to a code school? Im always weary. Its not for everyone. Some people excel by teaching themselves. Some do well with more personal one on one interactions with a mentor. Others are great in the class setting. But these days, programming can be learned via the internet and a user group. Both of which was way cheaper then the $12,000 programs being taught at certain places. (Full Disclosure: LAMP Camp was 100% free of charge. The kicker is that we worked on apps for the business providing our sponsorship)

Would you recommend someone else go to your code school? PHP is a fantastic language and the community is really awesome. But LAMP Camp leaves a lot to be desired. Do your due diligence.

Why did you choose to attend code school? I chose to attend cause I felt it was the needed boost to my career. A 12 week program designed to immerse me in code was exactly what I wanted, and it was free as well. Ideal at the time cause my job then wasn't exactly going anywhere.

What was the application process? Were you asked to provide code samples, complete challenges, do a "culture fit" interview? I provided my github, which was discussed, but it wasn't a big topic. They wanted to know that I was committed to pushing through the tough times.

What was the class format? There wasn't a class format. There was a team format.

What was the homework format? Was homework required and graded? If homework was graded, how? No homework, but we were encouraged to go home and start working on personal projects as a way to grow

Were group projects part of the curriculum? N/A

How many languages and frameworks were taught in your course? PHP/MySQL, Git, Bash, Javascript

Were you provided with a mentor through your code school? Ehhh, not as much as it should have been.

Did your code school teach how to work on development teams? Yes.

Were you taught about testing? Negative.