Coding DojoReviews of codingdojo.com

I loved my experience at Coding Dojo! I was able to change my career and get a job in Tech two months after I graduated!

Coding Dojo is not worth the money. I graduated Sept 2021 and have applied to thousands of jobs without getting a single interview. I continued to work on Udemy classes after the bootcamp, I worked on leetcode every day and I worked on two volunteer web projects as recommended by their career services. For their lifetime career services support, I have been passed off to four different career counselors. The first guy was helpful, the second and third never replied to e-mails and the last hasn't been helpful. Two out of three instructors were former students with no industry experience. You learn the very basics and nowhere close enough to get a job. Wait until Udemy has a sale and buy 10 to 15 web development courses for less than $200. You will learn much more and build a much better portfolio. I only know of one person getting a software job out of the classmates I still communicate with. I don’t know where they got the statistic that 91.1% of their graduates get a relevant job within 12 months. No one has ever sent me a follow up survey to see if I’ve gotten a job. I feel most of the positive reviews are from optimistic people who just completed the program. After wasting a year of my life and $7000, I finally gave up looking for a software job and took a position as a fast-food manager.

My experience as a student at coding dojo gave me the confidence that I can become someone with coding skills. Throughout the 6+ months of nonstop grind, I learned so much with the help of amazing Instructors, Teaching Assistants and fellow Cohorts. Now I can confidently say and do software development with what I learned. I will 100% recommend Coding Dojo to anyone who's interested.

Hard work but an enjoyable program. Had a great cohort!

I attended Coding Dojo from August of 2021 until December of 2021. I attended the full-time program, which consisted of a pre-program (called "Programming Basics") followed by a frontend program for HTML/CSS/JavaScript (called Web Fundamentals). Following Web Fundamentals, I spent one month on each of the following: Python, MERN, and Java. The goal of each of the three major stacks was to learn to create fullstack servers, i.e. applications which have CRUD (Create/Read/Update/Delete) functionality, in which a user can add items to a database, change items in the database, read the database either as a whole or on a single page, and delete items from the database. For Python, this involved learning Flask and MySQL, and for MERN, this involved learning Node.js, Express/React, MongoDB, and Mongoose. Finally, for Java, we mostly worked with SpringToolSuite/SpringBoot. Along the way, students learned about other programming languages and concepts: we had a little introduction to deployment with AWS, we practiced daily algorithm challenges, we learned about JSON and API calls, Postman, as well as a little Ajax, jQuery, Bootstrap, etc. When I think about the sheer volume of tech I worked with at Coding Dojo, I find it pretty amazing. The TAs were very helpful and the instructors were supportive. I especially respect Instructor Rob's brand of life coaching and his helpful pep talks. The program also has career services support, and as an alum, you still have access to alum channels in the Discord server, and you can access lifetime career services support. There are a number of payment options as well. I financed my time in Coding Dojo through an income-share agreement. The best thing I can say about Coding Dojo is that the sheer breadth of learning really empowers you to be able to approach tech independently once you graduate. I have the tools I need to learn anything tech-related, now, and that's saying a lot. As for why I docked one star: there are a few areas where Coding Dojo could be improved, in my opinion. The first is that I think students should have lifetime access to the Login/Learn platform after graduating. I am writing this review partly in hopes of securing an alumni pass to keep my access to the platform. Don't get me wrong: I don't mind doing so, and am happy to leave reviews. But students are paying 18K to attend the program. It just seems like a baseline kindness to let them keep platform access. Cutting it off after six months comes off a bit coldly to me in terms of investing in students' well-being and letting them stay invested in their own well-being. Six months' post-graduation access is fairly scrappy for that kind of money. Just my opinion. The other thing is that while I think Coding Dojo does an exceptional job in teaching students how to build a fullstack server for three stacks (note: some students take MEAN rather than MERN, which is Angular over React, or they take C# or other languages), some of the other coding-related content is organized a bit haphazardly. JSON is introduced at the end of WebFund and doesn't come up again until the end of Python, in the context of API calls for the project. Speaking of, project weeks only last a week, and if you don't take your exam on the very first possible exam day (and you may not be able to, if you need a bit more time to complete core assignments, as some do), or even if you do, you may not have time to complete a project with full API integration. Although students are placed into SCRUM teams during project week, your cohortmates are likely to be wrapped up with their own projects and won't really be able to assist you if you need help. Even most TAs struggle to assist with the individual ins and outs of some APIs. My project weeks were always a bust because I didn't have the support or preparation or time to really work with APIs in any meaningful way. The instructor just kind of leaves it up to student discretion and there isn't adequate preparation for working with this tech, despite it being in some ways more rigorously complex than the fullstack servers we've been building throughout the stacks. Also, deployment is something which comes up in the context of being able to get Black Belts and isn't really taught or practiced in the stacks. It's basically a footnote at the end of the Python chapter on the Login platform, for example. This results in a situation where the students who excel the most and come out with the most thorough work from the bootcamp tend to be those who already had some prior grounding in tech. My advice would be to give more support during project weeks and maybe extend them a little longer. As it is, they felt a bit haphazard. Overall, I recommend Coding Dojo, especially for the core stack learning and the breadth of tech, but with some caveats.

I took the Data Science 12 week bootcamp. Be aware that in a 12 week course, you have 24 actual classroom hours (2 1-hour meetings per week) where the instructor goes over a powerpoint, then demoes some of the concepts you're learning that week. They attempt to get to the point where there is time for a group exercise (of which there is little value) but there is rarely time for that due to the overwhelming number of questions from students (in my class there were more than 25 -- hard to be sure because I wasn't clear how many were TAs of the 30+ that were logged in). Personally, I expected much more facetime with an instructor and was disappointed by this. I was also disappointed by the heavy reliance on a learning platform that was being built as we went along and was full of errors that I frequently reported. It's also worth noting that in my course, we had a highly qualified instructor for the first 4 weeks, a new to teaching instructor for the second 4 weeks (who had a backup to help with student questions), and another brand new instructor for the last 4 weeks that was actually a TA during the first 8 weeks. You should also be aware that they have a monthly drawing for prizes for people that submit reviews. Now, if you think this kind of experience is worth $8500+ then this is the place for you. I did not, and will not be recommending them to any of my peers. EDIT: after reading the response from CodingDojo I'm even more disappointed. They are presenting thier position as one that is interested in student success and support, however, I frequently filled out every survey expressing my dissatisfaction through out the course, I expressed my disappointment to instructors, and I contacted program management directly about my concerns but they fell on deaf ears. The program only got worse as it went along. Making a statement that they care and that I should contact support well after the fact is an empty platitude. The money has been spent, the experience has been had, and if they cared, they would have helped me when I was still a student. They would have offered me a partial refund, or additional courses, or really ANYTHING which they did not do.

Coding Dojo having the best ratings for coding bootcamp in the world? True? I say, yay, yay. Best of the best learning platform. Best of the best instructors, TA's, fellow Ninjas. Best of the best community. Best of the best experience. 10/5 would recommend.

I was very nervous and not very confident coming from a retail background but wanting a career change. After The first couple awkward weeks I began to feel confident and supported by not only my instructors but the entire community. This program is great for anyone who is motivated and wanting to learn new skills.