Chegg Skills

I'm a Mechanical Engineer with a Masters in Psychology who currently earns a living as a Project Controls Manger in Oil and Gas. Due to a volitile energy market, and an overwhelming desire to work remotely from anywhere in the world; I decided it was time to become a FULL-STACK WEB DEVELOPER.

I needed to find a school who would teach me what I needed to know in the shortest amount of time possible. So I did a Google search (I think my search terms were something like "Best Online Schools Full Stack Web Developer") and up came Thinkful. Their website suggested that they could teach you to be a Full-Stack developer in 4-6 months, so the timeframe was just right. And then, when I saw that Thinkful offered mentorship I 100% knew I'd be signing up. What better way to get through a program quickly than to have 3 one-hour mentorship sessions per week! 

The curriculum at Thinkful is challenging, there is no doubt. The learning curve is steep! But they teach you everything you need to know, using the tools of the trade that you will be using when you get your first job, and the mentorship they provide ensures that you stick with it, even when the going gets tough.  

Learning to code isn't easy. If it was, everyone would be doing it. I am grateful to have found Thinkful because if I was trying to learn to code on my own, I'm sure I would have quit more than a few times already!

I enrolled into the Thinkful python programming course after two failed attempts to learn python via Coursera. The main thing that reinforced my decision to enroll in this course was the mentor arrangment which I felt would accelerate my learning since I would have someone I could talk to.  

I have enjoyed working with my mentor(Hoa Tran). His approach to working with me is not one where he just solves my coding problems by  typing out the solution. Instead it is one of "forced learning" where he asks me to think and try to solve the problem by myself. Most times this is very frustrating but it has helped improve my problem solving skills when it comes to finding out errors in my code. Another avenue that I have really enjoyed is the Thinkful slack community because there is always someone to help, with whatever issue you are confused about. Sometimes as coding newbies one is ashamed to ask questions because you are worried you might be ridiculed, but I have never experienced that in the t´Thinkful slack community.  Rosuav a thinkful mentor has been especially helpful. 

The course content is very thorough and you get to learn a lot of things and type out really great code. There are however some areas which I think need to be improved. For instance there are no python workshops available on the website. Some of the topics covered in the python course are really complex and require more than just written text for a newbie to understand. I also wish there were more python Q&A sessions. This used to be the case when I first started the course but in the last few weeks, this has changed. 

Overall I have had to make some sacrifices financially to take this course but I have no regrets. It has been a worthwhile experience. 

I enrolled into the Thinkful python programming course after two failed attempts to learn python via Coursera. The main thing that reinforced my decision to enroll in this course was the mentor arrangment which I felt would accelerate my learning since I would have someone I could talk to.  

I have enjoyed working with my mentor(Hoa Tran). His approach to working with me is not one where he just solves my coding problems by  typing out the solution. Instead it is one of "forced learning" where he asks me to think and try to solve the problem by myself. Most times this is very frustrating but it has helped improve my problem solving skills when it comes to finding out errors in my code. Another avenue that I have really enjoyed is the Thinkful slack community because there is always someone to help, with whatever issue you are confused about. Sometimes as coding newbies one is ashamed to ask questions because you are worried you might be ridiculed, but I have never experienced that in the t´Thinkful slack community.  Rosuav a thinkful mentor has been especially helpful. 

The course content is very thorough and you get to learn a lot of things and type out really great code. There are however some areas which I think need to be improved. For instance there are no python workshops available on the website. Some of the topics covered in the python course are really complex and require more than just written text for a newbie to understand. I also wish there were more python Q&A sessions. This used to be the case when I first started the course but in the last few weeks, this has changed. 

Overall I have had to make some sacrifices financially to take this course but I have no regrets. It has been a worthwhile experience. 

At first, I was hestitant to go forward with an online bootcamp, but now that it has been a month, I am definitely pleased with my choice.  Yes, there are free materials online and books you can buy, but sometimes books/tutorials are too theory heavy, lack projects, too dry, or erroneous.  Sometimes you also need an experienced guide to help you separate the wheat from the chaff, when it comes to learning new materials.

In my opinion, the best way to learn a language is to use it and develop meaningful projects.  This course does just that.  There is ample room for creativity for the projects and you'll get a good base of the fundamentals from which you can self-teach.  

Mentorship is excellent because you learn by asking the right questions and getting feedback.  Sometimes you get stuck and need to dig your way out, but in the beginning stages, you crawl before you can walk.

I would definitely recommend Thinkful to anyone interested in learning in a structured environment using a pragmatic approach.

Thinkful has been one of the best decisions I made. I am actually enrolled into a software development bootcamp for April and I would have been very nervous and skeptical about it had it not been for Thinkful. After my 3-month course at Thinkful, I am confident I want to work in this field and am excited for the new challenges. The coursework has been very well written and the challenges are quite good. I would also like to make a special mention of my mentor Ms. Alissa Pierce. She has been the best mentor I could have asked for. She is always supportive and patient, answers all my stupid questions and has been incredibly easy to work with. She has helped me grow and trust my skills. I have learned so much from her these past 3 months and will always carry her suggestions and advises with me. Just a big thank you to Alissa for being as awesome as she is.

It's been about a month since I started this program with Thinkful and it's been nothing but great experiences.  I wanted to learn how to code because I felt stagnant at work and I wanted to make a change in my career direction.   The material has been great, easy to understand, but at the same time challenging enough (they try to not give you the answers straight away).  I've had a good amount of instructors, career coaches, mentors, etc. reach out to me to check on my progress in addition to the online community of students across various stages that are quite helpful as well.

Quite looking forward to the rest of the material as well.  Even though they've got curriculum set up when you enroll, it seems like they're willing to let you pick and choose what you believe is more relevant.  For example, I'm looking at CSS preprocessors and the course is recommending Less.   But my mentor and I discovered that Bootstrap 4 will be providing more support for Sass instead and so we're thinking about exploring Compass/Sass as an alternative.

Another great thing is that the community seems more than willing to share code and projects for inspiration.  I can't speak too much about job assistance yet, because at this time of writing, I haven't gone through mock interviews or anything of the sort (still just 1 month in!).  Having said that, my career coach has already reached out to me to recommend steps I should be taking to make myself visible, etc.

Upon my joining the Thinkful community I had no expectations and was really nervous to join a group of individuals who have so much knowledge of development, coding and building.  It can very intimidating to learn something you have little or no knowledge of and expect to be successful in accomplishing the course. When something is new you have to embrace it and the Thinkful mentors and resources will make sure they help you get there. I'm having a wonderful and exciting learning experience with Thinkful. 

I was completely new to coding when I started this course about five weeks ago. Within that short time, Many Thinkful staff members in various roles (about 9) have reached out.  Each and every person was friendly, inviting, encouraging ahd helpful.  I sometimes have trouble comprehending the written course material and often become only more confused by what I find when I google. However, the 3x/wk meetings with my mentor, Marius, have been invaluable in helping me past what sometimes seem like insurmountable hurdles.  I like that things are moving along at a realtively rapid pace and am looking forward to my first  "mock interview" which is tomorrow.  I have no doubt that the job assistance and coaching will be just as valuable as the course itself.

I strongly feel your courses including its structure works and so glad I found this site. In addition, your staff contains real people whom I could talk to and understand people (case in point--I had the need to study front-end with Javascript and I was given free access to that course and my mentor drilled me for my job interview and that worked! I got the job as a Sr. Web Developer close to home). I knew I could do the job--it's just that lots of gray areas in my full stack skills and that's where you guys came in--fill those gray areas and expand my knowledge more in the same way I teach myself and that is to actual projects.

I am almost 6 weeks into the course. So far I am very pleased. This program sets you up with great resources. I meet with a mentor 3x a week for an hour. I attend a lot of the workshops to get my questions answered. The Slack community is also a great way to get help. The curriculum can be lacking at times but mentor sessions can make up for that. Also this style of learning teached you to research on your own. I'm finding that being a good Googler is an important part of web development. It also teaches you to communicate what you are struggling with to mentors. 

I have had no problems with any of the mentors. I also have been hellped by students that are further in the program. Overall a great experience. Do not regret enrolling.