It’s Sunday following my first week of Tech Elevator’s coding bootcamp.
We started the first day with introductions and administrative information, with a short lecture in the afternoon. Starting the second day, we got straight to coding, with homework exercises and reading each night. The daily format at Tech Elevator is a lecture from 9am to 12pm, lunch from 12 to 1pm, followed by coding exercises for the rest of the day. It’s really important to soak in everything from the lecture, because if you don’t, you’ll spend the rest of the day, and night, trying to understand the concepts.
I’m enrolled in Tech Elevator’s full-stack, .NET bootcamp. This means we’re taught every part of web application development, but our back end programming is done using Microsoft’s framework of programs. In class, we started by reviewing the fundamental tools of a .NET developer; Visual Studio, Git, Command Line , and of course, C#. If you’re new to the tech world, these tools are used to create programs that run on Windows operating systems, and C# (pronounced ‘C sharp’), is the main computer language. The rest of the week focused on the C# basics; variables, data types, expressions, loops, arrays, and so on. I’ve done well with the coursework, finishing my exercises each day, and completing each night’s reading. While it’s been kind of a breeze, I expect things to get far more challenging.
I’m sure anybody who is considering a bootcamp wonders where the instructors come from. My main instructor, John, is a veteran .NET developer, who has been a consultant, a Senior Developer , and a Computer Science professor at Franklin University. The other instructor, Joe, has written every language you can think of, and has most recently been working as an independent contractor for small businesses and government organizations. John lectures while Joe adds to the conversation and provides assistance to students.
When it comes to my fellow bootcampers, I didn’t know what to expect. After all, bootcamps pride themselves on the fact that you only need a high school education to participate. Tech Elevator claims to only accept 1 in 10 applicants, but it wouldn’t surprise me if that number is exaggerated. It turns out the bootcamp is a melting pot, spanning all segments of society; ethnicity, religion, socioeconomic status, you name it. If my counts are correct, we have bootcampers from 7 countries, and 4 students with masters degrees. I’m learning to program with a tattoo artist, a guitar instructor, a teacher, a trucker, a nuclear engineer, a student, a salesman, some college dropouts, and even a student currently working on his master’s in computer science. Everybody pools their knowledge to help one another, and it’s been really rewarding.
Next week we are digging into more complex concepts in C#. As always, if you want to know more, email me at joeosterfeld@gmail.com.