My Experiences in a Coding Bootcamp for 2 Months

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Image from my Instagram account @juliancanderson

My Background

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Julian Christian Anderson and I am a Web Developer from Indonesia. I don’t have any background at Technology, in fact I have a degree in Industrial Engineering. I finish my Industrial Engineering Degree this June and a year before finishing my degree I found out that my passion is actually in tech industry. So back to 2017 I learnt about web development by my own through Youtube and Udemy videos. After couple of months, I decided to be a freelancer in my last semester. When it comes to basic stuffs things may not get that hard for me but I faced a roadblock.

What I Feel

I faced a roadblock after a couple of months because I am aiming to be a full stack javascript developer. In the Javascript world, there are a lot of frameworks and things that you should know. I jumped from a framework to another because I got stuck at one of them. Jumping from a framework to another did not solve my problem at all. The worst thing is that it keeps adding more trouble to my developer journey. At that time I don’t even know what should I do next or how can I fix my problem. Because when I enroll a course at Udemy I can’t meet the person face to face and sometimes it is hard to explain a problem in form of text. I tried to find a community at my city and I couldn’t find it so I keep the problem to myself.

What Did I Do Next?

I tried to find some kind of workshop near my city. The first thing I found is a mobile developer bootcamp located in my city but I have no interest at all. Luckily I came across a Full Stack Javascript Bootcamp located at Jakarta, Indonesia. I read the testimonials and study their curriculum then I got attracted by them. They will start the bootcamp on July and the deadline of my final project is on June. I talked about this with my parents and I am grateful that they agreed. They gave me their full support then I tried to finish my final project soon enough so I can enroll at the bootcamp.

instagram @juliancanderson

What is A Coding Bootcamp?

The definition of bootcamp according to Google is :

“a military training camp for new recruits, with strict discipline.”

And the definition of Coding Bootcamp according to http://thefirehoseproject.com/developer-guide/1 is :

“a technical training program that teaches the programming skills that employers look for. Coding bootcamps enable students with little coding proficiency to focus on the most important aspects of coding and immediately apply their new coding skills to solve real-world problems.”

So basically it is a training on programming with a strict discipline. But the thing about is that is really powerful is that it only teaches us a certain “skills” or “language”. There are a lot of programming language out there and it can be really overwhelming to learn them all. So the solution to the problem is by making a coding bootcamp that focus on the basic of programming in general and a specific programming language.

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What Do You Do At A Coding Bootcamp?

So my coding bootcamp is separated into 4 phases. At phase 0, I only came to the campus on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Each day there is a single lecture for 2 hours and there will be assignments for that week that we should finish at home. At this phase I feel like it is not that busy and you can still do other stuffs after the lecture. You also get a live coding session which is basically an exam to test your knowledge every single week. This phase 0 lasts for 6 weeks. Phase 0 is all about basic Javascript and Programming. We learn about array, looping, objects, etc.

Now I am on phase one after finishing my phase 0 with a pretty good score. I can go through Phase 0 without any major problem because I have been learning Javascript for a while. Without an experience in javascript and programming I couldn’t do that well. Phase 1 until 3 is called “Immersive Phase”.

At Phase 1 I go to the bootcamp everyday from 9 AM to 6 PM. Sometimes I go back home later at night because of unfinished assignments at the bootcamp. So for a typical day in immersive phase we have 2 lecture for 1 hour-1,5hour. Rest of the time we spend is on the practical stuffs on the things we have learned at the lecture. The bootcamp also give assignments on the weekend usually to make us understand everything we have learned the week before.

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My Opinions on Coding Bootcamp 💻

Pros :

1. For me a coding bootcamp is a great solution for people who want to dig deeper into programming or a certain programming language in a short time. Because it is usually shorter in time to a CS Degree.
2. Coding bootcamp is also a great thing to enroll because everything that we will learn in it focus on the important part of programming and language. They also give a real world example problem for our assignments so that we can have a knowledge on it even before we graduate.
3. The thing I love the most in the bootcamp is they mentor system. Mentor is a very crucial thing in every aspect of life. Before I enter the bootcamp I don’t have any mentor on web development and I don’t know what to do when I have a problem. Now because the lecturers become our mentor, I can really improve a lot by their guidance in the web development world.
4. I also love being on a bootcamp because of the community. Before joining the bootcamp I have small amount of friend who code. I can not talk about the tech industries with them and I don’t know where to talk to. Now I have a lot of friends with the same passion so it is a fun thing to be able to connect with a lot of developers on the bootcamp.
5. The last thing is in a bootcamp they have a very structured curriculum that has been improved over time. So it will always be up to date and helps us in many ways.

Cons :

1. Because of the short time the bootcamp has I feel like the pace is so fast and if you don’t focus everyday you can be left behind. Every day or even every lecture can be a different things to learn.
2. Coding bootcamp also took most of the time in our day so I feel like I can’t do anything else beside of the coding bootcamp assignments. Sometimes I really want to explore something else but after I got home I feel so tired and go straight to bed.
3. You must go all in on it. Don’t get me wrong, I love going all in on things that I do. I was a freelancer before and now I don’t even have time to do client works because of the overwhelming assignments on the bootcamp. So the only way to do it is by hustling until midnight after the bootcamp. It can totally reduces your sleep time and that is totally a bad thing to do since you have to wake up so early in the next morning.

So, do I recommend joining a coding bootcamp?

I totally recommend you to join a coding bootcamp if you have the time and money. It is a bit expensive but it is a very great investment for the future.

I also suggest that you should study the curriculum first before entering the bootcamp and see if it is the thing you need or else it will be a waste of money. Prepare everything you need, never stop learning, and don’t ever give up even in a difficult situation!

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Thank you for reading. I am open to suggestion since it is the very first time I write. I am sorry for all the mistakes I made on the article and I will totally improve on my next article! 🔥⚡️

Follow me on Instagram and Twitter :

Instagram (@juliancanderson)

Twitter (@juliancanderson)

Comments

[Herka Trya Fitra]

naiss article mase, saya juga ngebootcamp programnya 1thn, saya tidak tertarik dengan javascript sialnya senang pakek reactjs untuk problem solving ditahap building, meski prosess gak enaknya saya juga rasain,
belum lagi banyakan culture perushaan2 dinegara kita masih exploitasi "paid less, profit more and more"
kita deep learning technology jelas satu step kita udah punya sayap besar, terus dengan sukarela masuk sangkar karena kita kalah dalam game of interview yang mereka sekenariokan, belum lagi kalo mereka tau kondisi keuangan programmer ini, waduh jadi curhat

awesome to comment your post and using our mother language, cheeers \m/^{^}

[Julian Christian Anderson]

Thank you!
Coding bootcamp di mana mas?
Awal belajar React kesusahan karena basic Javascriptnya kurang sih jadi berasa susah banget.

Setuju kalau soal poin yang kedua. Masih kurang kesadaran dari banyak orang di industri teknologi di Indonesia. Apalagi dulu waktu coba freelance, semua orang cari semurah mungkin tanpa menghargai developer untuk waktu yang mereka pakai buat belajar dan explore.

Cheers!

[Herka Trya Fitra]

maaf baru bales mas, habis rehat dari internet sejenak sembari refactoring kodingan bahan portfolio, aku niomic.com sama sekolahkoding.com
aku udah setaun ngedeep mas di reactjs dkk, masih belum dapet feel Ahh buat style nulis code versi sendiri,
iyaa aku 2016-2017 freelance design juga begitu haha sedih kalo diinget,
rencana aku mau coba ambil kesempatan dev job pen coba ngerassain atmosfirnye di industri IT,
betewe mas yang udah duluan, seru gakmas ? ato ngeselin parah ? hehe

[Matt Upham]

I was an industrial engineer before switching into technology too! Small world!

[Julian Christian Anderson]

That's awesome! It is indeed a small world!

[abbhishek971]

The usefulness of the coding bootcamp is all dependent on the instructors from what I have experienced. They will try to cover all the concepts without going into much depth many of the times. Some of them are really good, they teach you the basic concepts really nicely which enables you to learn anything on your own.

Also you said in your post that you kept jumping from framework to framework. Don't do this. Research the market in your country using Job Listing sites and Developer Surveys, that is Indonesia in this case, then stick with the one that you like and also will provide some good $$$$$. :-)

Whatever bootcamps or courses you attend, at the end it will all boil down to how much hard you are willing to work. Keep working. After, you get a nice grasp on fullstack-development, try to study from some computer science textbooks about software architecture and design as you don't have a educational background in Computer Science. Development is all okay and good, but to really climb the ladder, you need to be good with some theory and design level stuff as well.

[Bob van Hoove]

I've heard a lot about coding bootcamps, mostly opinions. I haven't read a lot of stories from people with first hand experience and this was a pleasant read. Thanks for sharing!

[Julian Christian Anderson]

Thanks man glad that you enjoy reading it! 😄
Will graduate from it in a months and will make another one on it.