First real post in and already two weeks into the program. Where did the time go? I found myself completely immersed in the material the last two weeks, and the eager and doe-eyed honeymoon phase quickly turned into long nights of javascript and the blue screen of the command line. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves, let’s back up for a moment and first answer the question:
Why Bloc?
Why not the dozens of other coding bootcamps? And why a bootcamp at all? Why not a traditional classroom, or a comprehensive book? The decision was not a hasty one, which is somewhat uncharacteristic for me as I’m usually diving head first into things with a unashamed sense of reckless abandon. The truth was I knew I liked writing markup. I have taken a handful of frontend development classes in my time in “traditional” education while studying for my graphic design degree. I’m comfortable writing HTML and CSS, and I had even dabbled in a little javaScript before enrolling. I even changed my major from graphic design to web design at one point, which I sheepishly crawled back to a year or two later because I had already met my cap on federal funding. So when I was looking into enrolling in a bootcamp the first prerequisite was made: It needed to be more affordable than a traditional college education.
A bootcamp sounded like a solid choice. Most marked themselves proudly as intense, rigorous, and less time consuming than a traditional degree as well. Sweet! But still, why shell out thousands of dollars for something that I could probably teach myself? There are countless sites out there like Codecademy, CodeSchool, Lynda, and FreeCodeCamp that offer free, or very affordable online classes. Ultimately, Bloc out-shined all of my other considerations because of a few key factors:
One-on-One Time with a Dedicated Mentor
This is huge for me, and by far the factor that held most weight in my decision to go with Bloc. You get to choose your own mentor depending on your availability, and meet with them either once (52 week pace) or twice (27 week pace) a week. This is thirty minutes of questions, pair programming, and career prep with a real life human being. I am just two weeks in now, and I can already tell I will be a better developer in six months because of these short sessions with my mentor than if I was teaching myself. I didn’t even get this much individualized time with my teacher in my college coursework.
Job Guarantee or your Money Back
It’s a scary thing, to put a lot of time and money into a program without knowing where you’ll end up at the end of it. The job guarantee is reassuring mostly because it shows that Bloc is confident in their program.
Flexible Pace
Bloc offers two paces for the Web Developer full stack program: 27 weeks, and 52 weeks. I am currently in the 27 week track, and though I’m only two weeks in now, I am not finding it terribly difficult to stay current. However, if I fall behind or life happens, I can slow my pace. Working full time, taking half-time college courses, and mom responsibilities will all be competing for my time during the next six months, so having that option to slow my pace down is a nice reassurance. A lot of bootcamps I researched were 12 week courses, 40 hours a week. That is an insane time commitment, and obviously impossible for my situation.
Full Stack
I walked into Bloc with a fairly strong foundation of HTML and CSS, but with zero knowledge of how that frontend markup talks to the rest of the application. I could probably make a pretty decent portfolio website as is, but what if I wanted to make an ecommerce site? What if I wanted to add other dynamic functionality that HTML/CSS couldn’t swing? Self sufficiency is a desirable thing, and acquiring the skills I need to build a web application from the ground up is why I chose to go full stack.
100% Online
I fell in love with online education in 2008 when I enrolled at Academy of Art as a 100% remote student. I was living in Guam at the time, and the art majors were pretty limited on island. I loved the flexibility it allowed me, which was especially important during my son’s first few years. Online classes require a sort of self discipline that is sometimes hard in practice, but I consider this a fair trade off for being able to arrive to class in my pajamas. Taking a bootcamp online just makes more sense for my schedule, and I can bypass all that LA traffic. This is a win in itself.
And there it is. I’m now two and a half weeks in, and look forward every day to the time I get to spend behind my computer hacking away.
Onward!
