Epicodus

TL;DR: Epicodus was a fantastic experience for me, and I would wholeheartedly recommend the program to anyone looking to learn how to code, up their skills, and/​or make a career change.
I came to Epicodus mainly in order to change careers. I’d always liked programming but hadn’t been able to study computer science formally in the past. I was on another career path entirely, but hating it the deeper in I got. A year ago, I decided to take a chance and pursue programming and software engineering on a ‘non-​traditional’ path. I was certainly impressed initially with Epicodus’s very affordable tuition and payment plan options, but wondered if the quality of the program could truly be so high for such an affordable price.
After completing the program, I can definitely say that the quality of the curriculum and teaching was great overall. I also feel that the school makes a genuine effort to foster diversity in the program and bring in students from a variety of backgrounds, which was awesome. My class of 30 students was nearly half female, had several students who were visible minorities, and several who were non-​visible minorities, including myself. There was also diversity in the ages of the students; I would estimate that the range of my class was early 20s to mid 40s, which was also a great asset.
In addition to the great curriculum and classmates, the Epicodus internship program is an especially strong and unique aspect of the school. Epicodus has worked hard to make strong partnerships with companies that can provide real-​world programming experience. In my case, I was especially fortunate. Only seven months ago, I had pretty much zero professional programming experience and knew only very basic HTML, CSS, and the tiniest amount of JavaScript. After three months of (intensive!) full-​time study at Epicodus, I began my internship. And after four months as a full-​time intern, I’m about to transition into a salaried, full-​time software developer position at my company. I’ve certainly had a good deal of luck, and this is not the experience of every Epicodus grad, but I definitely feel that Epicodus has been a great springboard to opportunity for every member of my cohort. I really can’t overstate how happy I am that I took the leap and that I chose Epicodus. There’s no way I’d be where I am without the curriculum, support, and connections that the program provides, and the tuition is more than reasonable for all the benefits that come with enrolling. Do it!

Attending Epicodus has been a pivotal experience in my life. I had the time of my life: learning to program, getting to know my wonderful classmates, and having great support from the people who work there, but it wasn’t a walk in the park. There were times I found it difficult struggling with new material every day, over the course of four months. However, by following the instructions in class, doing the homework, and ask my classmates for help, I have come out the other side with more than I ever thought I could learn.
In class, we learned some of the industry’s tools and techniques. The prominent of these was pair programming, programming with a partner. At times, it was the most challenging and rewarding way to program. Learning from each other and helping each other every day has made everyone a better programmer. By programming with others, I have built relationships that will last the rest of my career, too.
After my class ended, Epicodus offer lots of help for finding jobs and practice for nailing interviews. I have never felt so prepared for an interview as I do now. It has been over a month out from our internships and most everyone from my class has a great job. I, myself, have had several promising leads and am currently expecting to receive an awesome opportunity with a great company by the end of this week.
I truly feel lucky to have been a part of Epicodus and I would recommend it to my friends, family and anyone else looking for a positive, supportive place to make a big change in their life.

I appreciate my time at Epicodus. It had its ups and downs, but I would do it again in a second. I have been employed as a developer since before the bootcamp ended. I had better luck than some because I was willing to look outside of the Portland OR area.

I will always consider my time at Epicodus to have been a key turning-​point in my life. I drove alone in Winter across the country, from Baltimore, Maryland to Portland, Oregon, because Epicodus was one of the few schools who had a payment deferment program for students who couldn’t afford to pay upfront, which I really needed in order to even be able to attend. I actually couldn’t even afford the gas money to get there; I’m blessed to have generous friends who sponsored my trip on GoFundMe. Web development and art are two subjects I’d always been interested in, but also considered myself not good enough, or smart enough, or privileged enough to pursue ‘seriously’, and limited myself to just doing work with them as a hobby.
I worried constantly that I still would never be good enough, even after I was accepted and started the program at Epicodus. Thankfully, I was quickly overwhelmed by how welcoming and engaging Michael, the director, and the rest of the staff and teachers were. They took a very positive, progressive approach, and strongly discouraged any negative talk — including negative self-​talk. I have PTSD, severe anxiety, and morbid depression, and I’m endlessly grateful for the positive, empathetic, and inclusive support that the educators at Epicodus provided to me. Sometimes the stress and anxiety would get overwhelming and trigger migraines, but the classes are set up in such a way that you can access everything online, and Michael and my teachers were very understanding and flexible in allowing me to work from home when I had especially challenging days.
The classwork and program itself was excellent. Michael takes great pains to listen to and respond to student feedback, and refine parts of the program to make them more effective. Everything for class is conducted online and organized into units that build on one another, and the materials include video lectures, video and text tutorials, and links to outside resources, which is especially great if you want to revisit certain things or get ill. Videos are also transcribed, which I especially appreciated. I’m hard of hearing and having a textual reference to refer to when I missed something was fantastic.
In the end, I of course didn’t need to worry about whether I’d ever be good enough. Before I even finished the program, I had secured a job back home in Maryland, working as a web designer. I didn’t even do the internship portion of the program at Epicodus — I just went straight to full-​time, with-​benefits work. I’m so grateful that Epicodus was able to give me the training, preparation, and above all, the self-​confidence I needed to finally begin a career that I’m happy to go to everyday.

I attended Epicodus last summer. I had very little coding experience. The first day of class I felt completely overwhelmed with the amount of information. It is now a year after I began attending Epicodus and I have had a full time salary tech job for three months. Epicodus was a quick way to get the skills necessary to get a job as a developer. One difficult thing about it is the student to teacher ratio. When I attended I think there were 60 students and 2 instructors. This meant that you didn’t get a lot of one on one time with instructors. However every day you pair with another student. Some days my partner was more advanced, some days less, some days we were about even. If you want to learn the skills you can learn a lot from other students in the program.
Working as a developer is a culture and I think it just takes some time to get used to the culture and decide if you want to be a part of it or not. As a developer you spend a ridiculous amount of time in front of a computer. My first exposure to this was with Epicodus where you are in front of the computer at least 7 hours a day 5 days a week. There are meetups every week, different languages and frameworks that people use and are involved with etc. I didn’t start doing well in interviews until I became interested in coding and the whole culture. I have found that it is not really just a job. I think I would have had an easier time in Epicodus and my internship if I was already excited about and committed to being a part of the culture. So what I’m saying is that Epicodus is a great program. I learned a lot, but I would recommend studying how to make websites, write code etc. on your own for a while before attending.
Also, they will put in a lot of work to help you find a job. They worked with me for months after the course was over, making introductions, helping me set up interviews. I really appreciated that, and overall I thought it was a great program.

I love my Epicodus family (shout out to the Winter 2015 Ruby cohort). I am extremely happy with what Epicodus provided me. If you are considering attending a code school, I think you would be hard-​pressed to find a better value anywhere else in the US. Epicodus gave me a leg up on a career change into web development, taught me how to tackle difficult coding problems, and showed me that I am capable of teaching myself new languages and frameworks. In the Portland area (and perhaps beyond) Epicodus has a reputation of graduating successful developers that follow best practices and pick things up quickly. This is not by accident. The staff is caring and from the top down everyone wants to give you what you need to succeed as a developer, including staff dedicated to facilitating your initial job hunt once you’ve graduated. Emphasis is on pair programming, which translates into the ability to work with people from different backgrounds, to contribute as part of a team, and to explain what your code is doing. It also results in the class partially teaching itself (as novel techniques disseminate through the classroom with each new pairing). I came into the program with a small amount of experience programming in other languages, but not a lot of confidence in my abilities. As with any code school, your personal motivation to become a developer is the most important ingredient. Having a computer background helps, but I also saw fellow students who came in with little or no background excel through hard work. The pace at Epicodus was reasonable, the night homework was generally 15 — 90 min. I have zero regrets about my decision to attend and I am optimistic and excited about the opportunities now available to me as an Epicodus graduate.