Berkeley Boot Camps

I took the Full Stack Web Development Bootcamp at UC Berkeley Extension provided by Trilogy from May to November 2018. It was the online, partime program. Going into an online program, I expected mainly instructional material in form of texts without much social interaction. But the class was held in zoom with the option of small group work and was actually very social. Up front they told us that it was going to be fast pace and that one would need to put in a significant amount of extra study time to keep up. So it was! I was working only part-time at the time, but am very glad that I took the part-time program which gave me the extra study time I needed. The bootcamp does not really cover object oriented programming principals or network communication concepts and protocols, but it provides lots of practical knowledge, tips and tricks, lots of programming experience and creative room in assignments. I had taken several CS classes previously at a Community College, but felt challenged from day 1. I gained a level from which I can build my own applications now and enjoy doing so very much. Web Development is definetely the field that I want to work in and I am about to start hunting for jobs. Some of the career service workshops are helpful, but I find the greatest resources are the 1-on-1 sessions with my coach, and the feedback from the "milestones" coursework, where you write your resume, and set up your online appearance. The bootcamp is expensive, but overall it was a valuable learning experience for me.

• The administratin is very disorganized. We are being cut off one or two lecture days short because they messed up the schedule.  They failed to update the curriculum to match the holiday schedule.  
• We missed some materials.  Some materials were totally useless.  The materials weren't updated per the latest standard. The instructor had to rewrite parts of the code very often. 
• Career service was a joke.  Took lecture time to talk about career service while knowing some students are not looking for career service. Wasted their time often. Office hours in the middle of business hours. Can't attend while we were at work. 
• Only one instructor was good but whenever other instructors taught, the good instructor had to review the material again. 
• A lot of the students were very behind. Tutoring service was very hard to schedule during the time students attend.
• The web app interface looked like it was made 5yrs ago and it was not working when the class started.  Scary, coming from a code camp. 
• They didn't pay for Slack so we lost old important messages from instructors. 

This class is a fantastic example of getting out what you put in. I had no experience whatsoever with programming prior to my enrollment in the class, and having completed the program I feel as though I now have a great platform from which I can learn programming on my own. The instructors and assistants were personable, knowledgeable, and excellent programmers, and the career assitance that I received upon completion of the program was great. 

Coming from 0 experience I found it difficult to jump straight into a development role upon completion of the program, but I have no doubt that it is possible if one were to commit the requisite effort to do so. I took the class for the purpose of learning basic development skills and providing a platform from which to learn further, and that is exactly what I received. That said, the skills that I learned were nonetheless extremely helpful in bolstering my technical background (i.e. basic development skills are a fantastic resume booster regardless of whether or not one becomes a developer).  

My only gripe about the program (if any) would be that there is a little too much time spent learning jQuery (a Javascript library that I've found to have little use in the programming world), but the concepts learned were nonetheless appicable to further learnings and the rest of the curriculum was excellent. 

Overall, this is a great program for learning basic development skills. Be prepared to put in a significant amount of time outside of class if you're coming from 0 experience and want a development job right out of the program, but it is certainly possible! 

Be aware of this Berkeley coding boot camp. When you interested in the course and contact them, they will call you many thousand times. After you pay the deposit $2500 upfront, be aware that $1000 is no refundable, even you did not go your first day of the class. Also If you have any questions they don't want to answer you on the phone. They will block your phone number and you will directly into voicemail and never call into their admission main line. They reply email also very slowly like around 2 or 3 days later. They just want your money. After you pay your deposit they don't care about anything.