Chris Cain is a recent Coder Foundry Master Class grad. He recently accepted a position developing projects in .Net through Coder Foundry placement. We sat down and fired a few questions his way. Here is what he fired back:
1. Why did you look into enrolling in a coding school?
I've always had a passion for programming but it wasn't until late in my pursuit of a Comp Sci degree that I realized that I didn't have all the skills I needed to be competitive in the job marketplace. Coder Foundry bridges the gaps in my skill-set to get me ready for employment. Coder Foundry won't only give you experience, but they also give you an opportunity to create a portfolio of products to show off to employers.
2. What questions and concerns did you have about enrolling in a coding school?
The investment of both time and money was a big concern for me. Since the alternative was to get a head start on hunting for a job, it took a compelling reason to decide to enroll in a coding camp. Learning valuable skills is an important part of that, but the most convincing part of the entire package was the money-back guarantee of a job offer at the end of the course.
3. Why did you choose to enroll in the coding school you took?
Coder Foundry's job placement offer was a major part of my decision, but the fact that you learn the high-demand Microsoft .Net ecosystem is something worth noting as well. I knew that combining my existing background in Comp Sci with an in-demand skill-set would make me valuable to potential employers, no matter what.
4. What were you hoping to gain from a coding school?
I wanted experience working in a language and ecosystem that would be useful to begin a career in programming. My degree from a university was valuable, but they spend too much time on theoretical concepts and not enough on developing practical, hands-on experience.
5. Were you satisfied with your experience in Coder Foundry?
The class was outstanding. Both the class structure and instructor have exceeded my expectations set from my experience in a university setting. The amount of attention you can get at Coder Foundry is incredible. In addition to the instructor, we had several mentors (professional software engineers) who would stop by to teach us how things get done in the real world. The best part is that I have been placed into an awesome career opportunity.
6. You have a Masters in Comp Sci....How would you compare your experience at Coder Foundry to a standard university educational experience?
There's more actual hands-on activities involved. Since everything is project based, you're constantly working on code and applying knowledge and concepts as opposed to just accumulating knowledge to be later dumped onto a page on a test. Each individual project in this course is roughly comparable to a final project in a course at a university, but completed at a much higher rate.
7. What are the good (and bad if any) aspects of learning at a coding school?
With Coder Foundry, you get more personal attention than you'd ever get at a university. Whereas you have limited office hours available for a professor at a university (often overlapping with other classes you might be taking), you get access to an instructor and several mentors throughout an entire working day at Coder Foundry. This gives you immediate access to many different founts of knowledge, which can be important if you're stuck on a problem or even just curious about an approach.
8. What was the best part?
Launching my career in programming with a head start in experience.