Makers Academy

I've been to university before that, and I have to say that I have learned more in 4 months at Makers than my 2 years at university, hands down. The programme is condensed, not for the faint of heart and anyone planning to do that part time (we were working 70h/week) but it is so worth it and absolutely guaranteed to get you a good first position in tech ! 
I was able to learn so much so fast thanks to the coaches who are absolute angels and very understanding of your everyday struggles, but also thanks to the whole cohort. One treasure you will gain out of this experience is the people you've shared it with, they will be your teachers and sometimes your students and you will grow so much more thanks to sharing that experience with 20+ other people. 
All in all, I highly recommend Makers as a bootcamp choice if you're in London, it's an amazing opportunity for change and growth :) 

It's an **intense** 16 weeks course and even more challenging when you have 2 young children and doing this on the tail end of your maternity leave! The curriculum is good. I'd suggest more materials for certain concepts in Javascript and functional programming. The coaches were supportive, in both technical and emotional wellbeing. Post-course was a bonus! I couldn't attend sessions since I returned to full-time work, however I received support from my cohort and coaches around my time. Multi-tasking between working full-time, being a mum of 2, consolidating and job searching was very challenging but I managed to get a job offer through Makers hiring partner within 2 months post-course. Very grateful for the support throughout my journey

I heard about Makers through a couple of colleagues who got amazing jobs soon after completing the course. I used to be a Web Designer so I had a bit of knowledge in terms of HTML / CSS already but it really wasn't all that necessary to complete the course.
I was on the August cohort, which was a fully remote cohort. You'd think it would have lowered the quality of the experience to have it remote, but it really did not. The first day we received all our Makers goodies by post, and had lots of social events online to get to know each other, so it really went smoothly.
I learnt all about Object Oriented programming and TDD development during Makers Academy, which was very different from everything I encountered so far but made a lot more sense compared to the development process I had witnessed previously.
I also learnt how to collaborate efficiently and handle version control within a team of developers.
I completed quite a few team projects, and the whole experience truly was eye-opening about what I had missed from my previous jobs, especially the collaboration, sharing of knowledge within a team and continued learning while working. The best part of Makers really is your cohort and learning / supporting each other.

I started the course with almost zero initial knowledge in software and it felt like a jump with a parachute. It was super exciting and motivating. A way of learning which is collaborative, ever-changing, very dynamic but also mindful. The focus is very much on finding your own path of learning while interacting with others. When the 12 weeks finish the career-searching phase begins. And the support given to me at this stage was absolutely brilliant! I found a job with the help of the Makers Careers team and now working in a very well-respected company.

Overall, a great experience that I would recommend to anyone wanting to switch careers into tech. The course consists mostly of pairing and group-work, so I recommend looking elsewhere if you don't play well with others. The rest of the time is for self-led learning, and some coach-led workshops. The coaches are great, very supportive, knowledgeable and held us to a high standard of code quality. One draw back though is that the coaches will not give you much in the way of individual support or attention unless you ask for it - you may notice a small, vocal minority getting the majority of the coaches attention because of this. 

This is an intense and expensive course.  It is a worthwhile investment if you want to find the 'quick' way into the world of software (however do be prepared to not have that software job for several months after the course - I picked up part time work to cover my expenses during the job hunt and eventually landed a role after 4 months, which was earlier than most).
The 4 weeks pre-course is relatively tough but can just about be done whilst holding down a full time job.  The main 12 weeks of the course is very intense and participants should commit fully to this.  Also, when studying the codecademy course beforehand, I will point out that 'Lambdas' and 'Procs' have never cropped up for me since.
I spent the entire 16 weeks feeling out of my depth, but in a good way - whenever I looked back on previous work I was confident with my abilities regarding that topic.  It is also easy to feel that others are progressing more than you, but remember that you will be progressing more than others, and in the wide scheme of things everyone knows barely anything compared to a professional software developer.
There are a lot of online resources available for students during the course (sometimes too much!), but the students who excel the most appeared to be those who would constantly communicate with both the coaches and other students.  This can feel daunting at first, but you'll soon get used to asking for help and having someone point out that a word in your code has a small typo!  Proactivity is also a must - there are some weeks where you are left to your own devices and it is easy to take the foot off the pedal... beware!  Give yourself plenty of down time so that you can crush it during office hours.
During the job hunt, the resources available are excellent, but very much in a 'you get out what you put in' manner.  There are coaches available to help you prepare for tech tests, write applications etc. along with Makers linking up with hiring partners to advertise roles to you.  You just need to be proactive about engaging with the resources to get the most out of them.
Finally, I would say that you should try coding yourself a lot before committing to this course, even paying a few £'s to have a go at an online class.  It's a big commitment to make so make sure you would be willing to do it as a career i.e. screen time, chair time etc.  Also, reach out to previous Makers students.  I have had several people contact me through LinkedIn and have had several calls with these people to discuss their expectations.
For me, if your finances and personal situation allows for it, and you have found coding to be compelling and interesting, then you should give serious thought to signing up to this course.

Pros:
- Huge amount of resources available during the course (you can choose the topics you want to focus on).
- Post course careers support (writing CVs, cover letters and building up necessary skills for a job).
- Hiring partners give access to jobs specifically targeting bootcamp graduates.

Cons:
-  A lot of work during the course, especially if you go in with zero experience (I'd recommend spending time to learn basic syntax and be able to write simple script eg. on codewars)

Makers has a well-defined program, which works through the various facets of software development in an organised way. There are extensive banks of learning exercises, along with good access to coaches. I would say that there is space for some additional resources that teach you the topic, rather than just provide exercises for you to practice it.
The decision to use Ruby as the primary language is sensible in many ways - it is a straightforward language, and, with the addition of Sinatra or Rails, allows you to build websites. However there didn't seem to be many junior developer roles in Ruby. The course also teaches JavaScript, by translation from Ruby, and encourages students to branch out to new languages/frameworks for their final projects.
The after-course support from the careers team is where Makers really shines. Help is available for graduates to consolidate their learning, apply for jobs or interview for jobs, with regular workshops run for each. There are also careers coaches available for 1:1 advice and support. The coaches are interested in graduates as individuals, and focus on helping them to understand and display their most marketable skills.
I learnt so much on the course!

Pros:
- Enforces habits and rituals of engineering environments that it would be really hard to achieve self-led (e.g. diagramming, TDD, BDD, Agile, CICD). My technical interview questions were based on these! 
- Amazing emotional support - they want you to challenge yourself but to also practice self-care above all else which is excellent.
- Great people; both coaches and jobhunting team - every one who works there is smart, so supportive and keen to help you succeed.
- Really is a transformative experience. I knew next-to-nothing about software developing in November, enrolled in February and then got my first dev job in May - three weeks out of the bootcamp, with a Makers hiring partner. Not everyone has been that lucky though and some have been searching a long time for the right role. 
- Alumni community is amazing. 

Cons:
- Zoom fatigue: you pair every afternoon for 3-4 hours which can be exhausting, and there are a lot of group projects. Also there is little time for you to do self-led learning (which is my personal preference).
- Syllabus needs a bit of love - the links are out of date on a lot of the curriculum.