DevPoint Labs UT Review

Ever since I decided I wanted to be a developer, I had 2 questions: “What is the fastest way to become competitive in the coding job market?” And “Can I do a better job on my own in a similar amount of time?”. I had just graduated from college and didn’t want to attend another 2 years to get a second bachelors degree. I first turned to online resources like https://dash.generalassemb.ly/ and freecodecamps.org. Ultimately I had questions and because of my preference for introversion, was hesitant to become involved in an online community.

Sidebar: now that I am a developer I realize you need to be apart of online communities because of the value they can add to your life. Slack channels like URUG, UtahJS, UtahQA(check what this is called) have been instrumental in the job search and solving tough problems. Stack Overflow is an online community that is a must for developers to be apart of. Sidebar over.

So many Bootcamps, which one do I pick

I looked at local bootcamps in the Utah area as well as online bootcamps. DevMountain, Nucamp, Flatiron school, V school, and CodeFoundry. I ultimately decided since I learn better in person, I wanted a local option. Price was the main differentiator for me between Lambda School ($0 up front but 17% of your salary for 2 years up to $30,000) or V school ($22,000) and DevPoint Labs ($11,000). DevPoint Labs and DevMountain seemed pretty comparable, as far as location and price went. Their curriculums looked similar for the program I wanted (full stack web development). Ultimately what it came down to for me was this: DevMountain does a lot of different things (iOS development, UX/UI development, Java, Python, Data Analytics, and QA) and while that may be a plus for some people, I wanted a program that was focusing all their time and energy on one single refined product.

DevPoint Lab’s Product Offering

DevPoint Labs offers full-time and part-time cohorts that both teach full stack development. The cohorts are 13 weeks (Monday — Friday) and expect to code on the weekend and have homework most days after class. The average size of a cohort is about 14 people. Although they advocate for solving problems on your own, TAs are readily available to answer questions and point you in the right direction. Each cohort has a lead teacher and 2 TAs. My teacher had gone through the program years earlier before working in the industry for several years and then returning to DevPoint to be a teacher. My TAs had both taken the course prior to TA-ing and were intimately familiar with the coursework and curriculum. The curriculum is nicely divided into a

Daily Schedule

Your typical Day in the life at the full stack program includes

9:00am — 9:15am coding warmup challenge

9:15–10:15 lecture / code along with an instructor explaining the concepts

10:15–10:30 break

10:30–12 code along with an instructor explaining the concepts / group project / self project

12pm — 1pm lunch break

1 pm — 4:45 project time / additional lecture

4:45–5:00 Wrap up

This fluctuates a little: towards the beginning of the cohort you spend more time in lecture/less time coding and towards the end you spend less time in lecture and more time coding on personal projects or your group final project. During your time there expect to code about 45 one day projects, 5 projects that take 2–3 days, and one final project that is 2–3 weeks. About half of what you code will be on your own and half will be in a group or pair. The content of my cohort went from Ruby > Rails > Javascript > React. And our projects went from basic Ruby CLI programs to Rails monoliths, then basic frontend react applications, and eventually full-stack react/rails projects that could be anything from a basic e-commerce website to a photo storing and sharing platform. I have heard that since I was in the bootcamp they have adjusted their curriculums and now do Javascript > React > Ruby > Rails. Personally I think Rails is easier to learn first, but you can never spend too much time with Javascript especially if you’re a front-end developer and I think the Utah Job offering is greater for javascript/react than for ruby/rails.

Life after DPL

I had taught myself HTML, CSS, some Javascript, and JQuery before attending coding bootcamp. It was during bootcamp that I hit around 700 hours of coding and felt confident that I had knowledge that companies would pay for. It took me about 3 months (in the middle of a COVID-19 pandemic where no one was hiring) to land my first job, where I made significantly more than my previous job. My job used a stack that was completely different than what I learned in bootcamp. React/Rails PostgreSQL was what I learned in bootcamp vs Vue/firebase/Cordova

The following things are things I either use everyday as a full stack developer or things I have been asked in interviews for developer positions

Things it does not do a good job of preparing you for:

• networking questions (OSI model, Network Protocols)
• data structures and algorithms (Big O, Algorithmic Complexity, Memory Allocation)
• Pipelines/ CI/CD
• Performance/n+1
• Code reviews (you teacher will review your final project with you and give you good feedback, other than that your TAs grade your other assignments and give you 100 if you did it and 0 if you didn’t)
• Progressing Web Apps (local storage, lighthouse, web sockets, location, device orientation)

Things it briefly covers but wish it covered more:

• debugging code in the chrome dev tools (basics like console logging and using a debugger are taught)
• Redux (two days are spent on redux, it has potentially changed with the curriculum restructuring)
• testing (one day on jest testing)

Things it covers well:

• React in depth including: Lifecycle hooks, Props, React context, Virtual DOM, directly immutable state and why, react router, HTTP requests, fetch/axios
• Rails concepts: MVC architecture, generating models/views/controllers, irb, rails console, Rubys ORM, sanitizing parameters and why, migrations, routing, relationships, REST APIs/CRUD actions
• SQL: joins, querying, distinct results, relational databases, ER diagrams,
• Git and GitHub (in the first 2–3 weeks expect to be using git and GitHub every day. By the end of the cohort, you will have a strong grasp of the basic git workflow developers use)
• Collaboration tools: slack, VScode Live share, Zoom
• Basic agile practices

Something has to be said for the networking and the DPL community after you graduate. I have been able to get help with problems, speak to mentors who were in my shoes 2+ years ago, and see jobs that weren’t advertised other places. The DPL community is welcoming, friendly, and eager to help you.

TLDR; It’s possible to learn to code on your own. For me it took about 700 hours before I was confident in my ability to do development work professionally. That would be taken me 2 consistent years (assuming you’re spending your time in the right areas) vs 13 weeks at DevPoint labs. I very much recommend DevPoint Labs as a way to break into the tech world