Prep work and mental preparation

This blog is intended to provide an insight on what goes on in a coding bootcamp and also to display my personality and growth.

In about 2 weeks I will be starting a 12-week developer bootcamp at Coding Dojo in Bellevue, WA.

About 2 months ago I decided to take the path of becoming a software developer. The thing that most attracts me to this industry is the unlimited potential and having all the tools in your computer. Other industries such as mechanical engineering require materials and supplies. However in software engineering, everything that you need is right in your computer. All the information can be found on the internet.

Furthermore there's no question about the demand for competent software developers. I like to emphasize the word competent because there are two sides of the argument as to whether there is a demand or not. And the two sides both come to the conclusion that if you actually do have what it takes to be a productive employee in a company, they will pay you great money for your services.

I have decided to attending Coding Dojo because I want to accelerate my learning and be surrounded by people that are on the same page with me. I want to inspire those when they are feeling bogged down and I want the motivation from others when I'm feeling overwhelmed. Learning code has a steep learning curve and I need the mentorship to get me through "the dip".

From what I know the course will be intense and I will have to put everything on the back burner in order to pull this off. I've informed my family, girlfriend, and friends that this is a priority in my life that will consume over 70 hours a week. Coding Dojo is an immersive program that runs 5 days a week in Bellevue. I live right across the water in the University District neighborhood of Seattle (which is right next to the University of Washington).

I've made a couple contacts with my future classmates. A lot of them seem to be well educated in this industry. We have some former SDETs(Software Development Engineers in Test), some graphic designers, and others previously in tech. It doesn't seem like any of these guys are beginners, but at the same time these guys are no experts.

I've dedicated about 8 hours a day learning Ruby on Rails and front-end development. I've flown through all the basic codecademy courses, finished Code School's HTML/CSS course, Michael Hart's Ruby on Rails online tutorial, Agile Web Development for Rails 4, and currently working on finishing the Javascript course from Code School. After that I intend on getting a good understanding of node.js.

I do all these preparatory material because you can never prepare too much for a coding bootcamp. The more you already know, the less overwhelmed you will get. I'm doing everything I can to prepare myself and get comfortable with the languages that we'll be learning.

Coding Dojo will teach us front-end development(HTML, CSS, and other libraries like bootstrap), node.js, and Ruby on Rails. I know they teach other stuff like PHP and wireframes like Codeigniter, but I think those 3 are the main stacks that they want you to walk away with.

I'm really excited to learn more Ruby on Rails. I think its such a brilliant MVC framework that powers so many applications that we use today. But at the same time, it seems like node.js is the up and coming tool that is steadily growing in demand. I'm just glad that these two tools are going to be the main focus of the bootcamp.


Coding is extremely fun but I'm not going to bootcamp to become a hobbyist. I'm going to bootcamp because I enjoy it so much that I want this to be the thing that I do for the rest of my life and get paid for it.

From what I've read of a former student. About 60% of grads get a job one month out of graduation and 80% in about 3 months out.

It's all about dedicating the time and effort and I'll end up as one of the 60%. I'm taking steps to meet members of my coding community. I'm taking steps to becoming a developer. I can do it!