The amount of things you learn in four months is crazy (good crazy). It takes a lot of commitment, work and dedication to learn everything but everyone is so helpful and always willing to help you with everything. The instructors are amazing, the program is amazing, all the digitalCrafts team are amazing and friendly, so for everyone who is thinking about going for a change and are not so sure to just go for it because you have no experience or very little experience, my advice to you is to just go for it and go with digitalCrafts, you will not regret it and personally, i’m really impressed about where I am now, and where I was four months ago.

PS: The pre-work is really helpful to not be lost the first days if you’re really new to coding; and if you’re not its a good practice, so do it.

This course is the best investment of both my time and my money that I’ve made in my career. If you’ve been teaching yourself code through tutorials and books, but are having a tough time pulling all those elements together to build projects from scratch, DigitalCrafts will get you there. You just have to be willing to put in the work.

The technologies taught here are extremely relevant in today’s development landscape, and there are many high-paying roles where you can solve interesting problems with the skills you’ll learn in this course. I think you also get a good survey of the differences between back-end and front-end development, so you can make an educated decision about which to specialize in. Or, you can be indecisive like me and try to be both ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The instructors were another big positive here. Lachlan and Adam are both extremely knowledgeable, and have each carved out great tech careers. Folks that are lucky enough to find a technical mentor have a huge leg-up in teaching themselves to code. Not everyone has access to a mentor, so having these two industry experts to ask questions to and learn from for 6 months was a huge part of the value of this course.

I’d also say the folks leading DigitalCrafts are very open to feedback. We saw quite a few changes made on the fly based on feedback from students, and I’ve already heard some great ways they’re improving future cohort’s courses based on our experience.

Finally, the structure of a classroom environment and a cohort of peers all learning and struggling with the material alongside you really helps. When you try to teach yourself watching YouTube tutorials and you don’t understand something, there’s not much you can do other than find another one or keep re-watching until you understand it. When you are in a classroom and you don’t get something, it’s likely there are other classmates that don’t get it either. The instructors are pretty good about checking for understanding, and can find another way to explain the topic until everyone’s on the same page.

The less-than-great:

We started things off with a Programming Fundamentals section, which is an excellent place to start. However, it was taught in Python, which we never used after that intro. DigitalCrafts heard our feedback loud and clear on that, and I have heard they’re just going to teach this section in JavaScript (the primary language used throughout the course) for future cohorts.

I’d offer the same critique as the Python section for the jQuery sections. Though it’s still useful, jQuery is pretty dated, and we replace it with React later in the course. I think teaching the DOM manipulation stuff in vanilla JavaScript would be a better use of that time, and build familiariity with the language earlier on.

I don’t count this as a “negative”, as it’s not part of what the course sells itself as, but Computer Science fundamentals like algorithms and data structures are not covered in the course. Learning these makes you much stronger in tech interviews, so I’d recommend taking the more CS-themed electives as they become available, and spending a lot of time becoming practicing these kinds of problems on leetcode.com or codewars.com.

As a student: DigitalCrafts was a great choice for me as stay at home mom with no experience in coding. The initial pre-work was useful and necessary to get you started on the right foot. I would recommend the flex program to anyone who is needing to continue working or cannot dedicate 3 solid months to learning how to code. There were some rough patches at times since this was their first flex cohort, but I still feel like the quality of instruction was good. The instructors were very knowledgeable both in content and career. Keep in mind, if this is something you are considering, it will take a lot of work on your end. Instructors provide lecture and advice but if you are not willing to put in the time and effort you will not be successful.

As a DIR: Though it hasn’t been long, since becoming a DIR I have been able to watch DigitalCrafts improve. One of my highest compliments to the company is their ability and willingness to listen to feedback and adapt. They ask for feedback often and will take action on comments from their students and staff. I feel and hope that this program will only grow and improve.

Now, it is indeed a challenging 16 weeks. The curriculum packs a lot of work (projects, assignments, extra-curricular learning, etc) in such a short time. However, the resources to succeed are there. Attentive instructors and TAs, as well as the resources from the DigitalCraft wide network of alumni and current students. In addition to the actual material covered, the staff, including the Campus Director, provide insightful and constructive job-seeking feedback, as well as thorough presentations to make sure that the students are well prepared to tackle the job market.

I could not be happier with my decision to enroll as I see myself light-years away from where I was 5 months ago.