Learning with Learn
Learning with Learn
I recently wrote a Quora post describing my reasons for joining Learn. Figured I would share it here as well:
Question
How and why did you pick an online coding bootcamp/course?
For those of you that have done an online coding bootcamp or course like Udacity and Thinkful: what was your process for picking it? What things did you look for and think about, what resources did you look at, and finally what went into your final decision? There seem to be so many to choose from.
Answer:
I’m currently in middle of taking the Full Stack course at Flatiron’s Learn-co
Why did I chose Flatiron?
A few months ago when I was shopping for a bootcamp I knew I needed an online option, I simply couldn’t afford to take 3 months off work for a traditional bootcamp.
As mentioned in the question there are many courses out there. After looking around quite a bit there were a few factors that went into choosing Flatiron:
- Established school: there are many bootcamps and online courses, Flatiron is one of the first bootcamps out there with a great reputation and an established record.
- Proven results: all bootcamps make big claims about their hiring record, average salaries, etc. Flatiron is the only one I’ve seen that published their results and had them verified by a third party.
- Working environment: Taking Flatiron’s intro course (which anyone can try for free here) I was struck by the difference between their way of learning and most other courses I tried. Most online courses provide you with a sterile environment that looks nothing like the environment you would use in real life. At Learn you write code in Atom, run it in your terminal and then push it to GitHub so it becomes a permanent part of your portfolio.
- Teaching style: Another thing that impressed me with the intro course is the style of learning. I’m a hands on learner, I can’t listen to a lecture longer than 5 minutes. At Learn they keep video and text lectures down to a minimum, most of the learning is done hands on by actually coding and solving problems in a test driven format (you run the test, see the errors that appear and based on that you know (or figure out) what you have to do). I was learning, and retaining, more in a day than I could in a week of watching YouTube videos.
Those were pretty much the main reasons that had me leaning towards Learn. I obviously still had many questions. Interestingly, just at that time Avi Flombaum (the dean of flatiron and best teacher out there (more on that later)) held a Quora session. I asked a few questions, followed a few others, and was finally hooked.
That’s as far as the reasons why I chose Learn in the first place. After I joined I discovered a more reasons to recommend:
- Community: Learn has an awesome community of students (in addition to their very knowledgeable and helpful instructors). Being that I still work full time, I do a lot of my learning at night. Instructors are around until 1 am but if I ever get stuck later than that I can always hop on to Learn’s Slack channel and usually find a fellow student willing to be my second pair of eyes and look over my code.
- Avi Flombaum: I know I mentioned this earlier but I really need to explain. Avi is hands down the most amazing teacher I know. I mentioned earlier that I always have a hard time with lectures longer than 5 minutes, with Avi I find myself sitting for an hour-and-a-half lecture straight and enjoying it. I’m not sure why that is, but I think it’s the way he teaches. He doesn’t sit and give you a lecture, he sits and codes a project while you watch. You get to hear his thought process, how he writes code. It’s not rehearsed, he’ll run into errors right there in the lecture and not get flustered, it’s all part of the process, he’ll Google the syntax right there. In fact, I probably learned more from watching Avi Google errors than from the actual lectures. It really feels, not like a lecture, rather like you’re coding together with a senior colleague or something.
So those are my reasons. You can definitely try on your own by taking their free intro course. If you have any questions feel free to to ask.
Originally published at www.quora.com.
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