Bloc

I heard about Bloc through a friend who had over 10+ years in front end development. He, being more tenured and experienced than my young millenial self, was a trustworthy reference. Bloc turned out to be an incredible experience. I thought I knew Ruby on Rails and Javascript before joining Bloc... and that was all due to self study. However, after going through Bloc, the difference is night and day. The cirriculum is excellent and always improving. You learn through building real world applications in today's most cutting edge languages and frameworks. Your mentor is there to personally push and guide you in the right direction.

It takes a driven and self motivated person to go through Bloc. The difference between Bloc and other code schools is the fact that you aren't forced to sit in a classroom and dedicate 40 hours a week, all the while wondering how you're going to pay your bills. Instead, the program is flexible enough to work around your schedule. I'm extremely happy I went through the Bloc program, they align themselves with you through the entire process!

I'm a current student at Bloc and I'm taking a Full-stack web development course. Next week, my back-end web development part will be over. When I looked at my past two months, I just can't believe how much I have learned at Bloc. Before I started the course, I did not know anything about Rails. Now I have 7 complete projects on my portfolio. It took just two months. Incredible.

1) I like having a mentor. This is a huge help. When I have a question that I can't find a similar question/answer, my mentor give me an answer. It's like a customized answer. Getting answers to my question is good but also it is really nice to hear experienced developer's advices. It is a good guide line.

2) I like that I can take a break anytime when I need to. I had a personal issue earlier so I had to take a time off from my course, I felt relieved that I don't need to worry about getting behind my course. If this was a on-site course, it would be hard to take a time off.

3) I like that I can study at my pace. When I don't understand a certain part, I can spend more time to research deeply so I can understand better.

4) I like the curriculum at Bloc. It certainly teaches so many practical skills that is up-to-date. I enjoy very much learning new skills/tools every time it is introduced. Because Bloc course's explanation is very descriptive and uses a conversational words so it is not hard to understand a new concept.

I wish I started Bloc earlier. I searched many online/on-site bootcamps before I signed up for Bloc. I was thinking too much about which one is good for me. But I am glad that I started at Bloc and I am very excited to start my next Front-end course in 2 weeks!

Let me start off by saying that this is an online course and not an in person bootcamp where you have an instructor hovering over you to help you with every little difficulty you encounter.  Bloc's mentor model is exactly what it sounds like, you have mentor who can help you and guide you, but they are not there to hand hold you or to feed you.  So, if you are self motivated, resourceful and can manage your own workload, this course is great for you.

Anyways, Bloc's mentor model is great. Most of the interactions between you and your mentor is over skype (or another chat service).  If you have problems with code, you can share your code with your mentor. You start off by learning revision control and the basics of iOS development/objective-C.  After the basics, you are thrown into develping a couple of Apps with just a few parameters. These projects are almost 100% free form, as you get to decide how you want to create your app.  There are suggestions to guide you in these projects, but the real gem is here is how you utilize your mentor in developing these apps. You do your own research, you share with your mentor, you get feedback then you make your own decision on how to proceed.  With your mentor, you can discuss code, design, career, development environment, ideas about apps, pretty much anything you want relating to iOS field.  I dont need a bootcamp to learn about code, i can buy books and watch videos for that. However, with a mentorship and a very self driven course, i learned more about best practices, problem solving, workflow, desirable characteristics in being a developer and different perspectives of iOS beyond the work alone.  By being semi self driven, i was forced to research, talk to people. Interestingly enough, i was able to slowly expand my network without me even knowing or forcing.  

What I am trying to get is that through the mentorship, i learned a lot of other valuable skills that will help me become a better developer beyond the code itself.  While I do not know everything about iOS, Swift or Objective-C, i feel comfortable in talking about iOS development and mentally deconstructing how other people's app were built.  

One aspect that I did feel Bloc should improve on is the job support.  They did have a resume and job search module in their curriculum, but decided to remove it.  This is in no way a knock agasint my mentor as he was able to provide me additional support in jobs. But I wish bloc at least should have at least given some samples or advice for job search than to solely rely on the mentor.

I wanted to write a review about my time at Bloc.

I joined Bloc while looking for a remote learning opportunity, as I had some schedule constraints and issues that precluded me from joining a full-time bootcamp.

What started as a decision based in practicality, quickly became one of the best decisions I’ve made in my career so far.

The format lends itself to extreme self-sufficiency in developers, a crucial skill in today’s job market.

You work with a senior engineer/mentor that has a vast amount of experience in programming/coding in a high-level business environment. 

You meet with one person, and you deal with YOUR learning struggles. If you’ve ever been in a classroom setting where there was one smart kid who kept asking questions way beyond the rest of the class, or the inverse, sitting there bored while everyone else struggled to keep up, this is for you.

You’ll push yourself harder then you’ve likely had to do in your life (I know I did), but you’ll come out of it extremely strong, and able to grow within this field, a crucial requirement to advance your career in development.

Bloc balances the need for autonomy as a developer with simple teaching format extremely well.

I didn’t feel pressure to keep learning beyond the curriculum, but at the same time, I was encouraged and coached to push the boundaries of what was taught, and try and understand things that were interesting to me. My mentor guided me through the resource hunting process, and taught me how to digest material that was beyond the basics.

I learned best practices while operating within a development team, and I learned how to build things on my own. There’s no better feeling.

The pacing of the program is extremely individual as well. If you’re a night owl, work as late as you’d like. If you work part-time? Do a slower pace. Have some off-time from work, and want to get in an extra session? Speed up your pace for a week. 

I had a week where I wanted to “take a break”. I reached out to my mentor, and was able to ‘freeze’ the program.

The bottom line: Bloc is extremely motivated to ensure each and every student’s success, provided that they show up motivated to learn.

My advice: show up. It’ll be the best move you ever make.

Hey,

I took the BLOC Rails Web Development course. It was very detailed and gave me a firm understanding of Ruby on Rails. The mentorship was what made it a valuable deal. I didn't take the full-stack version because I considered myself already front-end oriented. However, it would have been a much better decision for me because all of my front end knowledge wasn't up to date. 

Any time I was stuck, I could message my mentor and I would get help within that day. We also had two skype calls per week where we would discuss any issues I had and go over new topics and ideas. I completed a couple of the BLOC projects and I made my own project too. There is also an active Slack community where all of the students and alumni can get to know eachother, ask questions, and share information. 

One of the cool parts about the program is that it is a lifetime membership. So as the curriculum changes, I will be able to update my skillset to the latest and greatest changes to rails. I am continuing to take the strong foundation I recieved from BLOC and also using other online resources to keep myself fresh for interviews. I didn't get any job assistance from BLOC but my mentor did lead me through some mock interviews and it was very helpful. I'm currently interviewing for a rails job and I made it to the second interview so fingers crossed. 

Now the real question. "What would make BLOC.io even better?" 

I think having more interactivity in the lessons would be helpful. mini quizzes and code challenges in each feature. To the point where it is very repetitive, because repetition caters to learning new things. Whatever prevents "copy & paste" learning. There really isn't much to change though, it is a well designed program. 

I struggled with the decision to attend a bootcamp in the first place, as I had a full-time job and two young kids at home. But I am so glad I did. No lighter-weight tutorials would have given me the confidence to move forward on starting a company, which is what I really want to do with my life. Here are a few key points:

a. The curriculum is tough: the Rails foundational project is a fairly serious app for a beginner, not like the many happy-path tutorials that are out there. It cuts no corners, is very up to date with best practices, and will be available to me for years afterward. A "Resources Library" comes with it.

b. The pace of the program allows you to go deep into the "why." I didn't have any peer pressure rushing me along, so when something interested me, I dug into it.

c. Bloc teaches you to teach yourself. My mentors were great because they taught me to fish, as the saying goes. There will always be tons of things to learn, and even though I'm just beginning, I feel confident I can level up.

d. You learn how to deal with frustration. My learning curve felt flat for a looonnnggg time, and then all of a sudden it went vertical - everything fell into place at once because I had stuck with it.

My only regret is that I didn't use the Bloc Slack and Facebook communities to find others who were moving through the same part of the course as me - a buddy would have been great. But if I had it to do over again, I wouldn't hesitate to choose Bloc. 

My mentors have been very accommodating with me and I'm able to pace myself in the coursework.  Traditional dev bootcamp in-person wouldn't work for me, since I don't have enough savings to live without an income for 4 months, and I also have my doubts anything would sink in within 4 months.  Bloc allows me to set my own priorities and schedule.  The mentors are always available to me, even outside of regular schedules.  It's like having a private tutor.  Highly recommend for the mid-career professional with a family (exactly the type that tech should be trying to diversify with! :) 

I began Bloc to change my career from landscape design to web development. I chose to enroll in the Full Stack Web Dev Track which teaches you Ruby on Rails for the first half of the course and then for the second half swaps to front-end development utilizing JavaScript and jQuery. I feel like the overall flow of the coursework was excellent with a hands-on appraoch that fit my learning style well. I am currently still looking for a job but I feel with the tools and knowlede I learned from Bloc I will have no trouble finding a postiion. 

Having been through a previous coding bootcamp that charged and arm and a leg to find my first taste of the darker side of the tech world, I went to Bloc because it provided a means to learn more than just code in a way where the typical brogrammer mentality didn't exist. I found dedicated , with years of experience under their belt mentors that helped shape what the real world was looking for. I took the Design track so it included three months of full time UX work and 3 months of full time Front End Development. My UX portion was invaluable. I was mentored by someone that I have major respect for, for his tactful techniques of guiding me away from disaster into things that were not only aesthetically pleasing but intelligent in their design.  I was pleased with my front end course because my mentor let me blaze some new trails doing projects that spoke to me instead of making me stay on a strict track. For that I am eternally greatful because it allowed me to find the fun in code. All in all , there were some minor blips but when aren't there in anything i would give this my full reccommendation for someone that doesn't have the money for a bootcamp or likes to learn in a different way than the typical programming camp does. Their capstone projects also led me into being accepted at an accelorator and starting my own company. 

I took Bloc because I wanted to develop my technical vocabularly with one-on-one guidance from a mentor.

My mentor was knowledgeable, dilligent, and genuinely invested in my success. He responded well to feedback and helped me address numerous pain points. More than teach me the nuances of code, he helped coach me to think like a developer.

The curriculum is an excellent primer for beginners, though it can lack depth. Checkpoints and assignments in the foundation section can be easy to plow through if you're at all familair with HTML/CSS/JS. The real meat of the course is the projects/capstones part of the course, which I thought was great for its flexibility.

At the end of the day - like most bootcamps - you get out what you put in. Committment can be the hardest part, but if you're dedicated and willing to learn, Bloc is a great resource for learning to code on your own time.