Cultivating Coders

An excellent opportunity to immerse yourself in coding.
This course makes the intimidating concept of learning how to code outside of school accessible. Without a doubt, it requires a great deal of work and attention personally to become competent in the material, but those teaching the class were flexible to our needs which is what so many working-class adults need as they gain new skills.

If you're looking for some help and guidance as you look towards coding as a new future for you, but know that a traditional institution isn't what you need, Cultivating Coders is a great place to get a foundation of knowledge and meet a passionate community. 

Be ready to work outside of class hours and be unafraid to ask for a lot of help. This, in many ways, is a self-paced course. It's on you to use the resources offered to you to keep up and pursue your own interests. The team is caring and capable though, always ready to help with the small or big stuff.

The bootcamp was intensive and required you to be commited. Though I had heard about 'coding' didn't really know what it is was and that it entailed so many different fields (web, phone etc). The instructor required us to put the work in and be dedicated, and we  were told before not to miss any classes right in the begining. There was a local company that was interested in recruiting from our class so the focus shifted for a while on the technologies they were using in order to prepare us. The company also came in to talk about their work which I appreciated. I liked that we were given enough time in class to finish our projects and were able to get hands on help from the instructors. The curicculum is designed in such a way that you can start getting small projects on the side  by week 4 (frontend). And we were also introduced to many online job portals (I didn't know people could work completelt remotely!) and went  through sample job postings to see where we fit in.

This bootcamp is for people who are serious and want to get employed in the industry. You get a laptop and the skills to get a job using the laptop.

And we also got lots of snacks which was appreciated!

I had lots of fun meeting a new group of students from my area. Cultivating Coders has allowed me to expand my mindset as well as my experiences and skills. I highly recommend this boot camp to those looking for more opportunities in their community. This program helped expand my interest in computer science. The instructors I had were Dana and Kyle. Very friendly and also very helpful. We learned new material weekly and were able to create a web page after 8 weeks. Being apart of cultivating coders has opened up doors I never thought were possible. 

As a working professional I was slightly apprehensive about learning to code this far into my career. However, I do thoroughly enjoy problem solving so I was up to the challenge. The coding camp was an amazing life changing experience. The curriculum was very modular and presented at smooth comfortable pace. I liked how we went into depth with topics and did not proceed until the majority of the class expressed we were comfortable to proceed.The instructors various styles and attention to each student’s needs were outstanding. The student to teacher ratio was really low allowing plenty of time for additional explanations of topics in small groups and individually. Topics were presented in a fun engaging manner and I enjoyed the blend of group and individual projects. The class comradery was very cohesive and I like how were worked in teams. Instructors encouraged us to research and problem solve as well as work together to share successes. I look forward to dev projects from the camps cohorts I have witnessed what we can build. It has transformed how I look at the web and applications and far exceeded my expectations. Homework was assigned and projects were due. Hackathons with real bounties were exciting evenings in class. Learning environment was incredible and even snacks were provided. We were introduced to a larger local dev shop and even had an introduction to internships. If you enjoy a challenge and love to problem solve I would absolutely recommend this camp.

I'm a recent attendee(for lack of a better term) who has participated in Cultivating Coder's summer bootcamp in New Mexico; I have to say,  In terms of the material we went over, it was certainly a lot to take in, and it was refreshing to know first-hand what coding is like! Although, because I have never coded in my life until this point in time, it was difficult to grasp the material, which was because either:

-There wasn't enough time to really feel out how to formulate a line of code, or what it means, as we had brief explanations given to us about what certain parts did. The problem with this, I think, is that because in terms of coding, because there are a multitude of ways to create a functioning code, it becomes rather confusing if there is no "right way" to code. 

-We had to ask multiple different questions, as we were anticipated for a good majority of the camp for things that we did individually, as opposed to doing things more so as a class when the people there almost had no knowledge of coding to begin with. It would be helpful, I think, if we were able to go over things as a class much more formally than what was done. Another thing would be to give the class daily assignments that they would have to do after the class, in order to get a better understanding of the material and content, but also to ensure that not everyone falls behind.

-Not everything we were promised was given to us. Specifically, when we were told that we would be able to use Oculus Rift headsets to learn how to code in virtual reality. Though I didn't have a problem with this, all things considered when learning the general process is much more important than moving onto more advanced curriculum. Although I did anticipate that we would go through that material, regardless.

Since I'm still new to coding, and what it entails, I take the class with strides as a hope to actually be capable of having more opportunities to learn in the near future, and to hone my skills that I've developed in the camp even further!