Designer News
Where the design community meets.
Growth at Bloc Joined over 9 years ago
Personally, when I got laid off from my job as a marketer last year, I resolved to finally learn to code so I could build my own startup. When I saw the prices of some of these bootcamps, I immediately realized that wasn't an option. I don't have $15,000 lying around.
So I started learning with Udemy, Codecademy, and One Month Rails. And at the end of all of that, I was still a beginner, who couldn't build a real website without severe copying-and-pasting.
What I've realized is that you really need to ship a lot of projects from scratch to get comfortable enough to really know what you're doing. I think what you're paying for with these programs is accountability.
They hold you accountable for showing up each day, doing the work, and getting to the finish line. But you are also holding them accountable for a learning roadmap that will get results. That's designed to lead to real outcomes.
What? that changes everything.
Love this. Is it going to be recorded and posted online?
I haven't looked at them lately, but one of the best brand marketing agencies I ever worked with was Wexley School for Girls in Seattle. They were very offbeat and created an amazing campaign for me when I was doing student lifestyle marketing at microsoft. The concept was something like Steve Zissou's Life Aquatic, as an undersea exploration of Xbox, Zune, and Windows Media Center. super-geeky but pretty cool.
sorry aaron. we use GoToWebinar rather than Hangouts or other tools, and GoToWebinar requires users to register beforehand. I at least created a better-designed registration form than what GoToWebinar offers.
I've looked at GoToMeeting but it doesn't support the same number of users. And I've looked at Google Hangouts, but we really really like that GoToWebinar stores the entire Q&A and gives it to me in a report so I can follow-up with individual attendees and answer more questions.
If you'd prefer I can send you a youtube recording - no registration wall!
If you're a complete beginner looking for a structured bootcamp-like program that will get you from beginner HTML/CSS/JavaScript to proficient with AngularJS, you should take a look at Bloc's Frontend Development program. It's more like a Frontend bootcamp. Check out the syllabus here - https://www.bloc.io/frontend-development/syllabus
If you're looking for an online tutorial that is more for experienced developers who just want help on learning Angular, the guys at Thinkster.io are fantastic.
I'll throw Bloc out there as well. (disclaimer - i work there). We teach iOS (including Swift) from beginner to "junior developer" - similar to a bootcamp - but our program is delivered online and we have a full-time 12-week program as well as part-time 18-week program.
We're actually the only immersive bootcamp out there that is already teaching Swift (I know some other folks have announced they'll be adding Swift soon).
From my understanding (somewhat limited), Big Nerd Ranch is the ultimate iOS development experience, however it also seems like it's a short week-long training and isn't really geared for a total beginner. I could be wrong here... I just reviewed their classes here to make sure - https://training.bignerdranch.com/classes
I would tend to agree with Kyle. From my experience the development languages that are being taught in higher education today aren't aligned with what's being used by real practitioners.
Without understanding your goals better, I can't say which one you should go to school for, and which one you should learn outside.
I would perhaps recommend studying design, and then during your first summer taking a dev bootcamp or a course like Bloc [Full Disclosure - I work at Bloc] so that while going through design school you are also cultivating your developer skills. I would not recommend doing the bootcamp at the end.
The nice thing about Bloc is you can do it part-time and online, so you could do it while doing a summer internship or while working full time.
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Hey Tori, I work for a startup called Bloc - we're a part-time coding bootcamp and we have a frontend course!
(we also have courses in Rails, UX/UI Design, iOS, and Android)
Our frontend program is 18-weeks, part-time, and covers JavaScript, jQuery, AJAX, building responsive sites, and an advanced frontend framework you may have heard of called AngularJS which is pretty popular at the moment. You'll graduate having built 4-6 real web applications like a replica of Spotify.
If you'd like to learn more, here's the course page - https://www.bloc.io/frontend-development-bootcamp
Best, Prasid prasid@bloc.io