Hey! a little bit about myself, I am Brendon and I live in Utah. I self-taught for about a year and a half and started off watching youtube videos, and bought a udemy course that helped me learn HTML, CSS, and minimal javascript. I then jumped into php and mysql. Using what I had learned I made a little site where you could search a database for graves in a graveyard, you could also login and create posts and do some CRUD if you were an admin. After that I hit a plateau in my learning. I had been contemplating joining devmountain for a while and finally decided I needed some help learning along with a network of people with that same goals. I signed up for the online cohort in late November of 2017 and started March 26 2018, at first we went over html and css which was a good review and jumped straight into javascript.
The month before you start is called basecamp. The goal of basecamp is to help get you started with the basics of html, css, javascript, and git. It was a really good intro if you had no experience and really had the drive to learn. The javascript portion of it was awesome for me. I learned all about objects, arrays, and the methods used on them. Since I had experience with php some of the concepts transferred over pretty nice. I was amazed at the high order functions like map, reduce and filter which I'm still getting used to. Week 1 was basically a review of basecamp along with assignments to make sure you understood what you needed to. Week 2 was all about objects and arrays along with the methods you use with them. Week 3 was about getting started with react and learning the syntax and how components work with some jsx. Week 4 (which I am currently in at the time) is about more react and starting to learn the basics of node.
It might sound like things are moving quick which they are, but they give you a good understanding of concepts and when to use them and why. We will later be diving deeper into react and node obviously but I am so excited learning react and node. So far I feel like I need to just write some more code to really get the concepts down of state and how and when to change it. As for node, we are using express which I'm currently reading the docs and blogs about. But we are using get, post, put and delete. Out of the two node is definitely the one I'm having a hard time grasping. I know I just need more time with them to really solidify the knowledge. I will continue documenting about things I learn and hopefully be able to give some helpful info and tips to my fellow coders! Thanks for the read.
Top comments (7)
Hi Brendon,
Thank you for sharing your experience. I have been searching for someone who is attending the Online course for Web Development at DevMountain to get some insight of what they thought and how things were going. I am looking into starting their next one in November 2018. How are the night classes? How much time do you find yourself studying outside of class to get assignments done? Any feedback you have would be greatly appreciated.
Hey! The night classes aren't bad at all if you have the schedule to be there! It's not too much to digest if you practice outside of class. As far as studying outside of class I made it a goal to spend a minimum of 2 hours a day working on assignments or trying to understand why something works or doesn't work. I go pretty hard on the weekends and get like 3 more hours than class runs on a Saturday and about 5-7 hours Sunday morning. The biggest thing I've learned is ask questions if you don't understand because that's what the mentors are for and really try to grasp the concepts. You may not get it the first two or three times you try but it all comes together if you spend time with the problem!
Thank you for the information. I am going to definitely give it some serious thought. I have been following them for awhile now, and had always wished they had an online program. I believe this winter will be my time for enrolling. Was gonna do their March online Cohort, but I know how I am during the summer months.. always ready for vacation and on the go. I am pretty much stable in the winter... lol. Again, thank you for your review. Much success to ya!
Hi Brendon,
It's me again. I haven't taken the leap into the web dev with DevMountain just yet. I hope all is well. I wanted to check in to see how things were since we last chatted on here. When you meet online with DevMountain, is it really live lecture or are you just reviewing a recorded video and have access to the mentors from 6pm - 9pm. How's the interaction with the rest of the class? Are you on Slack Channel?
Hello!
Sorry for the late reply! Hope you had a good holiday.
As far as the class goes it's a live lecture that you can ask questions or have them slow down if needed, we used join.me for the video and audio and also had a slack to keep a archive of questions and answers. They also record every class so if you miss it or need to review you can at any time! The class I was in was great everyone got along and were always there to help out.
Hey Brendon, welcome, and thanks for sharing your experience so far.
How many weeks does your bootcamp run?
So it runs for 26 weeks! But we only meet 3 times a week Monday 6pm-9pm
Wednesday 6pm-9pm and Saturday 9am-2pm.