Mobile Makers Academy

I took the Mobile Makers iOS course online. Overall I had a good experience. The curriculum was challenging, fast paced, and I had to be really resourceful to figure things out... no spoon feeding! Having taken the course online, I think it was much more challenging that if I had taken the course at the Chicago location. Online student generally have to work more alone so the learning advantages of pair programing etc made it harder for me to keep up.  

I was new to iOS and OOP programming, but had a lot of technical/IT background and really had to work hard to keep up. I would suggest that if you are really a newbie with little tech experience that you take the course at the location and not online or you might be more likely to fall behind.

Also, the online course does not come with professional mentoring or coaching to help get you ready to get hired, but there are some guide docs provided. 

 

MobileMakers is not like any other online education or bootcamp. My experience was amazing. I had help every step of the way. The course has a great curriculum. What I loved the most about the course is that I was given an arsenal of tools that can be used in real life. We were tought how to look and where to look for solutions, the many different ways to solve a problem and most importantly gaining confidence in your own code and your own problem solving decisions. 

I completed over 20 apps, had mock interviews and also got job leads. I now have 2 iOS jobs and more coming!

Hi, Wade Sellers here... of the ELITE ALUMNI population of Mobile Makers Academy.  If you truly want an experience where you get your pennies worth... This is IT!!!  No I'm not lying and no I'm not being paid (although that Apple Watch giveaway did indeed, lure me in)...  OK SO LET'S BE CLEAR HERE... This stuff is difficult.  Becoming an iOS developer can be one of the most rewarding career fields if this is your passion but you gotta earn it which means being able to make a million mistakes and fight through them.  Everyone thinks "Coding" just means building... BUT Here's a free gem of a truth for you... It's more about fixing things.  Programmers arrive at solutions through trial and error... ALOT OF TRIAL AND ERROR.  BUT if you like solving puzzles like that, it could be for you.  FOR ME, IT ABSOLUTELY IS!  I love coding apps and right out of bootcamp, I landed a job in Denver (1.5 weeks after arriving)... Here's the truth, there's more work than there are developers.. What's that mean??? YOU GET TO FLIPPIN PICK WHAT YOU WANT AND MAKE MONEY DOING WHAT YOU LOVE???  Is there even another field out there that let's you pick your job based on personal motivations and passions once your there? You'll get job offers to boot and you get to be picky... You can find the project or company you personally have an emotional connection to and take on a career you honestly care about.

Did I mention it's difficult... CUZ it is... BUT, (in Urkel voice,) No Sweat My Pet... It can be done and done well.  It takes dedication and a relentless push from yourself to keep learning.  Bootcamps are MAGIC... WHY???  Because you get to turn the world off.  You get to say "Hey friends, family, signifigant other... I love you but I need you to leave me alone for 2 months while I do something that less than 1% of the population will achieve)... Yea dude(ette)... that's you... ELITE!!!

Mobile Makers has the top leadership teaching staff, support staff, and industry connections to give you an experience other bootcamps attempt to emulate but cannot duplicate.  It's iOS, it's awesome iPhone apps, it's not webpages and yada yada... IT's FLIPPING RAD iPhone apps that everyone around you uses a bajillion times a day. You will graduate with 30 apps under your belt... WHAT?  YEA I SAID IT.. I'LL SAY IT AGAIN... 30 apps built by you, on your computer, and you know every single line of code in them... CUZ... you flippin wrote them... YUP! 

I'm happy to answer any questions you have on the matter... hit me up VIA twitter @waderoni if you want some more juicy details.  But seriously... if you're thinking about this already, YOU KNOW YOU WANT IT... SO TAKE THE LEAP & JOIN US... We have cake!

Makers Academy was good, great and for the most important part bloody fantastic. I did the bootcamp remotely due to COVID and was in the Jan 21 cohort – graduating at the end of March. For me I think it’s important  to separate what happens before the bootcamp, during the bootcamp, and after the bootcamp – in my experience these were three very different experiences and I think it would only be fair to talk about each of these in isolation.

Before the bootcamp:

A session with the admissions manager to ensure you’re somewhat competent at coding. For me this wasn’t too difficult but others may worry at the prospect of an interview for acceptance into a bootcamp – I know it sounds cliche but the best thing to do is to just be yourself and talk through the questions. Don’t push yourself to get into the upcoming cohort if you don’t understand what was being asked of you, you’ll only be handicapping yourself during the actual bootcamp. Once you pass this you should get invited for the 4 week pre-course.

From my recollection the pre-course is meant to guide you through basic problem-solving skills following codewars-type exercises, understanding the terminal (or command line), and an introduction to pair programming and test-driven development. It sounds like a lot but they guide you through it very well via the teachable platform. It’s meant to be a 20 hours/week programme (for four weeks) and from my experience that was about right, if anything even a little less. It’s a fantastic appetizer for the main course – and you only appreciate just how good it was after completing the course.

During the bootcamp:

For me it was like trying to drink water from a hose. I learnt SO MUCH and I was desperate to learn from every coach out there and keen to hear their explanation / understanding of particular topics. I found the couple of weeks particularly difficult as there was so much focus on testing – a concept which was pretty much alien to me despite spending a number of months coding prior to deciding to enroll in this bootcamp. 

Broadly speaking, if I were to describe what I learnt week to week, the bootcamp went as follows: Week 1 - Intro to testing, TDD, understanding pair programming, effective debugging; Week 2 - Dependency injection, domain-driven design,  more testing – mocks, stubs and doubles; Week 3 - MVC architecture, designing a web app, more testing – feature tests; Week 4 - Databases, connecting a web app to a database; Week 5 - First group project: building an app to a specification in a team; Week 6 - Intro to JavaScript, TDD in JS (we were using Ruby up until this point so transitioning to JavaScript was a nice moment to catch up on these principles); Week 7 - second group project: building our own testing framework  to test-drive a frontend app that fetches data from an API; Weeks 8-9 - Third group project: Acebook (a fullstack Rails project with the goal of mimicking a typical dev team's development process using a CI/CD deployment pipeline); Week 10 - fine tune our "process"  by using TDD to solve tech tests individually; Weeks 11-12 - Fourth and final group project: various types of apps depending on your interests.
Along with this you had a chance to keep in contact with a mentor (and later be a mentor yourself), have weekly process workshops (to work on your TDD), and book individual “review” sessions to seek feedback from a professional on your TDD process.
As I said we learnt a lot and there was so much to do and dig our teeth into. Before the group projects we were pair programming with somebody else in our group to go through the material of the week – every week had a new focus and different learning objectives.
After the bootcamp:
Naturally, the focus shifts from learning to getting a job. They presented it as three different stages (consolidating, applying, interviewing). The work coaches are great for motivational support and they even have their own hiring partners where you can apply for a role through there internally via Makers.

The perception of how things are post-bootcamp will vary from person to person. They can only do so much as to advise you but it’s up to you to make the effort and grab an opportunity by the horns and really go for it. It took me over 7 months to find a job but admittedly I took a 2 month break after 4 months as I was just too burnt out from the interviews. It might take you more time to get that job, or less if you’re really determined. Everyone’s different, and I feel it’d be disingenuous to say something like “it should take you X months to get a job after finishing Makers”. 
The best aspect was undoubtedly the main 12 weeks of the course – make the most of it while you’re there as you may not have another opportunity to learn so much (and with coaches willing to teach you) in your lifetime.