Illustration by Icons 8 from Ouch!
Coding Bootcamps - My experience at 23 Code Street.
I explored a number of coding bootcamps before choosing 23 Code Street. I went with 23 Code Street because of their mission to level the gender playing field in tech, and the flexible schedule of just two evenings a week was convenient for me.
Table of Contents
- Bootcamp Selection
- HTML & CSS
- Mentorship and Practice
- JavaScript: Bringing Websites to Life
- Our Project: Museum Meltdown and GitHub
- Conclusion
Bootcamp Selection
Although 23 Code Street was a great experience, the school unfortunately doesn’t look like they are running any new courses at the moment. If you’re currently researching bootcamps, you’ll find a wide range available, from free courses to fee-based programs.
Here are some other bootcamps I considered:
I know a lot of enginners who have successfully found jobs in the industry after completing programs like these.
HTML & CSS with 23 Code Street
We did small HTML and CSS projects initially. I appreciated the support and ability to discuss code with a group instead of learning on my own.
We had a Slack channel for support outside of lesson time so we could continue learning on our own.
A great CSS resource I got here was Flexbox Froggy, a game which makes learning Flexbox fun. I definitely recommend looking out for other apps that gamify learning to code when you are getting started.
Mentorship and Practice
Our instructors were all experienced software engineers and we used tools like Trello to replicate real project management.
It was useful to be mentored while working with JavaScript as it was a big step up from HTML and CSS. We worked on projects throughout sessions and could pair with mentors if we needed to. This really helped with the learning process.
It was still necessary to practice outside of the class as we moved through topics very quickly. I did some more challenges at home and would go back to The Web Developer Bootcamp for some topics. I also used YouTube all of the time. There are free tutorials and project ideas on almost any coding topic imaginable.
JavaScript: Bringing Websites to Life
JavaScript can make websites interactive and enables everything from dynamic thumbnail images on e-commerce sites to updating shopping baskets in real-time. We started by exploring the HTML canvas, creating functions to generate random patterns, and even built a basic version of the game, Flappy Bird.
Our Project: Museum Meltdown and GitHub
The brief for the final project was to build a game for the Natural History Museum that features information about accessibility.
This is a vast topic, so the game was designed to just focus on how loud spaces, like museums, can be difficult for people with Autism.
It’s built on a HTML canvas and uses HTML for the structure of the page, CSS for the style and JavaScript for the interactivity such as moving the player’s arms and making it look like people are moving.
You can see the final project here:
This project was also my introduction to GitHub. GitHub is a hosting website for code that allows you to share and collaborate on projects across different computers. While there’s a lot more to GitHub than just that (version control, collaboration tools, etc.), it’s a fantastic platform where you can host small projects for free.
Conclusion
My experience at 23 Code Street was challenging but incredibly rewarding and ultimately, the final project gave me something great to talk about in interviews. If you have any specific questions about the course or my time there, please don’t hesitate to get in touch over Linkedin.
