Turing School of Software & Design

As a career firefighter/paramedic of 23 years, when it became time for a career change I knew I wanted to become a software dev. After attending many meetups in my area I learned of Turing school of software & design. After completing the modules I can say that Turing made being a firefighter/paramedic seem easy.

When I asked a friend that had completed the school how hard it would be, she told me, 'you won't have a life'. In a sense this was true. You cannot hold a job and hope to complete this school. My social life consisted of speaking to other students. My family knew I would be back, but being from Ohio, it was hard to have steady communication. It's like you are in a different world.

Turing consists of 4 modules that are 6 weeks long, with 1 week breaks in between. The breaks are not really breaks. You will have assigned reading, tutorials, or something else to study. They certainly know the meaning of immersion. I personally worked about 16 hours a day.

This school is legit. I didn't want to attend college for 4 years, and 'hope' I found employment after. I don't know the current percentage, but a vast majority of students find work. I know many students that were hired before completing all 4 modules.  This school doesn't take your money and give you some tutorials with little instruction or guidance. They push you well beyond what you think you can do. They teach you what you need to know to find a job and have an awesome career.

The instructors are all awesome. Some of them were actual teachers before they worked for Turing, others were students just a few years ago and you would think they had been coding and teaching for a lot longer than that. This teaching experience shows. I think all of them could make more money elsewhere. The fact that they chose to work for less and teach says a lot to me. They also have many graduates that they employ to help teach or mentor when needed.

Another thing that is amazing is the community. There are mentors from companies all around the US. Many students graduate and then continue to mentor students 1 on 1, either in person or remotely.

There is also a great sense of 'we are all in this together'. When you are in module 1 everything seems difficult, but you soon realize that you are surrounded by students who are in modules 2, 3, and 4 who are all willing to help you and assure you that you'll be ok if you work hard. They aren't lying.

I can remember seeing awesome apps being presented at one of our community nights and thinking i'll never be able to do that, and a few months later you realize that you just presented something awesome too.

Are you afraid to speak in front of people? You'll do a short 5 minute talk every module and soon be over that fear. They also have classes to help you improve your communication skills and teach you to think on the fly. There is also help with creating your resume, and learning how to interview.  Student led sessions on fridays give you a chance to show others something you are good at, or learn something new from other students. 

One of the greatest things about Turing is they are always looking for ways to make the school better. Every week you have an opportunity to give feedback on things that could be improved. I have seen things that were suggested be implemented in future modules. Sometimes this presents some bumps in the road, and it's not always fun when that happens, but they are not afraid tweak things if they are not getting the results that they want.

Turing gave me all the tools that I need to be employed as a software developer, but I had to do the work. So while my friend was correct that for 7 months I wouldn't have a life, that is a small price to pay to have an awesome career for the rest of it.

Attending Turing flat out changed my life.

As a habitual career-hoppper, I can honestly say that Turing is an excellent way to give you a kickstart down the software development path. The program was perfectly structured for me; it’s full-time, very intense, and prolonged enough to impart a solid foundation of knowledge and skill. I have a lot of gratitude to Jeff and his team for creating the program.

I attended early on in Turing’s existence (3rd cohort) and there was a lot of room for improvement around things like the javascript curriculum, help with the job search process and technical interview prep. What I most admire is that the staff is 100% dedicated to improving the experience for each incoming class. The program is always evolving.  Talking to current students it is clear that concerns are listened to and continually addressed. I felt like I came out of Turing with a leg up on other job searchers from other bootcamps and I know more recents grad just keep getting better and better. In fact, my company just hired a recent grad and he’s excelling.

In my last career I would dread going to work on Mondays, to the point were I would have trouble sleeping on Sunday nights. It's not the case anymore. Thank you Turing, for helping me sleep like a baby.

I started Turing one week after my spring finals sophomore year of college. Turing was everything I had hoped college to be; an engaged community, an emphasis on teaching actual skills, good, fair values and a focus on the individual's success professionally and within the community.

Jeff Casimir and his team are the primary reasons for why you should come to Turing. Every single person on staff at Turing truly cares for all students (including alumni) and goes above and beyond what's "required" of them in order to ensure student success. This includes individual attention and regular 1-on-1's. 

All students fill out a weekly survey and the feedback is taken into consideration and acted on almost right away. Turing is constantly iterating on the feedback they recieve. 

The Turing community is what you make it. Student groups and student initiatives are supported and encouraged. Here's a sample of current student led groups: a women's group (Joan Clarke Society), an environmental group that works to reduce the community's footprint (Environment Variables), an LGBTQ group, a group that teaches kids how to code (Turing Kids Who Code), a group that focuses on computational theory - just to name a few!    

If you are in the Denver area try to come to one of the community nights to see what Turing is all about, or feel free to reach out to me @applegrain. Turing is awesome! 

I previously tried to teach myself programming.  I completed a number of online tutorials, I took an intermediate programming course at the University of New Mexico, and I tried building small apps in my free time to try to get enough experience to transition my career to software engineering.  When learning outside a classroom I found that getting stuck over and over again really slowed my progress and became demotivating.  While taking a university course I learned a bit more, but I never got any feedback on my code other than "I'm glad it works".  The Turing School of Software and Design helped to solve these issues in addition to teaching me skills that I use every day on the job.  We received consistent feedback on our code from peers and instructors and were consistently challenged to productively build well structured and tested software.  I struggle to provide any constructive criticism of the school because it truly was the best educational experience of my life.

Making a career change is an incredibly difficult decision. I was eight years into a successful career when I finally decided it was time to make a change. After extensive research I put my trust and money in the Turing School led by Jeff Casimir. For anyone who may be in a similar boat and decides to make that jump I can say from my experience that you won't be disappointed with Turing. Jeff runs a challenging program staffed by instructors who are both incredible developers in their own right as well as gifted teachers (a rare blend). You will be putting in a lot of hard hours over the months of the curriculum, but in the end you will most definitely be prepared to step into a developer role. 

A year ago, I recognized that I was unhappy with my career and decided to make a change into Software Development. After researching several programs nation-wide, I ultimately settled on Turing for a few reasons: 

1. Their emphasis on the importance of pedagogy 
2. A (relatively) longer program sounded appealing 
3. The reputation of Jeff Casimir within the industry

Overall, I am beyond satisfied with my decision. At the risk of sounding fanatical, it's probably the best choice i've ever made.

As a student, you are surrounded by a wonderfully weird and diverse group of intelligent, driven, and empathetic individuals, all working toward a similar goal. Most of the instructors come from an education background, and do a remarkable job of patiently walking you through very complicated subjects. In addition to the teachers and more 'advanced' students, you also have access to an ever-growing network of mentors that provide one-on-one guidance. 

That said, the program is incredibly demanding, and you get out what you put in. It's up to the individual student to fully utilize the resources which are provided, and often you will be thrown into the deep end without much hand-holding or direct guidance. This can be very frustrating at times, but also forces you to learn how to problem solve on your own, creating confidence to tackle problems in a professional setting.

Also a brief warning: DO NOT assume that acceptance into the program guarantees success. People often fail or drop out, and I would strongly encourage anyone considering the program to at least spend some time doing free online tutorials (codeacademy, etc) to get an idea of what you're getting into before making the plunge.

After 7 (very difficult) months, I landed my dream job. If that wasn't such a common occurrence among Turing graduates, it'd be remarkable.

Full Disclosure: I am currently employed by Turing as an Assistant Instructor.

There's a lot that I can say about Turing, and my experiences there. It would be best to start at the beginning.

Before Turing I was a Systems Engineer at a large company, and I didn't enjoy my work. It was procedural in nature, and I started exploring Ruby to automate some of my work. Like so many others, I found that working in Ruby was actually REALLY fun. After a while I started wondering if I could somehow make a living from this.

I contacted a friend of mine who had done the same thing I had, making a career change to become a developer. I got accepted to a few programs, and wanted her input on them before I made my decision. She said to me that if I wanted to do this right, I should go to Turing. That I should spend seven months there and become a better developer than she was. She put me in contact with an alumnus.

I was not planning on spending seven months unemployed and in school. Denver wasn't even on my radar as a place I'd like to spend seven months. I had never even been to Colorado before. But I asked questions. A lot of questions. And in the answers to the questions, I came to the conclusion that yes, if I wanted to do this right, I would have to go to Turing. It was the structure of how things were laid out that sealed the deal for me. How there were warm ups to get the mind working at the beginning of each day. How there was a mix of work time for projects and class. How Fridays were more about guest speakers, learning new things in a fun way, possibly working on open source.

I applied and got accepted. If you're interested in how that all went, I wrote a lengthy blog post on it. Just Google, "Turing Application Process."

Looking back, there are just SO many adjectives I could use to describe being a student at Turing. I came to Turing thinking that it was just a tool. I would pay my tuition, I would come to class, and in return, I would get knowledge, and a better job after graduation. It turned out to be so much more. It's a community. It consists of the staff here, the students, and our incredibly amazing alumni and mentor network.

As a student, I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of not so fun. I learned an incredible amount. I worked a ton. I felt frustration. I felt triumph. I made incredible lifelong friends. I learned how to code. I learned about other people. I learned about myself.

Much can be said, and much has been said about the instruction and the curriculum, and you can see from the other reviews here actual student outcomes. 

Choosing the right program is hard, but there are two imporant points to be made. First is that this is a non-profit. There are no investors or outside interests. Turing is fully committed to students and their success. Second, the staff cares deeply about the students and enabling them to succeed. More so than I suspect anyone can reasonably expect them to. They believe in the mission, they believe in what they are doing, and most importantly, they believe that you can become a developer.

Turing was one of the best experiences of my life. I met a bunch of great people and got a pretty good job. I learned a bunch and am doing well at work because of it. It's also worth mentioning that I was in the third cohort, so they were just getting started. 

In my opinion, compared to other similar schools, I would have liked to have instructors with more professional experience, compared to teaching experience. But, I think they've done a lot to improve this by now.

I also think there should have been more JavaScript in the curriculum, or a different type of JavaScript curriculum. I thought their curriculum was lacking in this area at the time I attended. Once again, I think they have done a lot to improve this.

Even with those criticisms, I would still go here over most other programs. It was a great school for me as a beginner and I got a good job. They're constantly improving and the results speak for themselves.

Attending Turing is a privilege worth more than it's price. Simply put, the return on the investment to attend is reliable and lucrative.

This institution is sincere in its mission. While many schools are accredited, few are accountable to the students they serve. Turing is accountable, both in word and deed.

The instructors and staff are compassionate people. They are unified by the excitement of the educational revolution underway at Turing.

The curriculum is very realistic in its requirements on students; it reflects the demands of the professional world. Furthermore, it is a living curriculum that evolves out of the passion of the instructors. It is relevant.

Complaints? Certainly not in hindsight. 

This is an intense container both academically as well as interpersonally. The nature of Turing's endeavour to get you and your classmates where you all need to be under a compressed timeline is such that individual student needs cannot always be satisfied. It is best to be prepared to accept this when entering the program.

When I began Turing I had absolutely no prior experience with programming and that was almost exactly one year ago. Today I am in my sixth month working as a Software Developer for a company that has been rated #1 on Crain's best places to work in Chicago four years in a row. I believe that speaks volumes for Turing's ability to produce quality, hireable, Software Developers in such a short amount of time. I won't repeat all of the well written reviews here but will add a few comments on what stood out the most to me. 

The network Turing has built is very impressive and I did not expect going into it that I would be able to hear guest speakers of such high caliber or meet so many amazing members of the Rails community.

While I appreciate the focus on community and other soft skills and personal development I felt it was overkill. If you expect to go into Turing, put your head down and do your own work you will quickly find yourself dissapointed. Students are required to present a portfolio at the end of each Module that proves they have been helpful to their classmates, given back to the community (in ways such as teaching student-led electives or organizing activities for classmates) and participated (in events such as field days or meetups etc). As an introvert I felt this was a lot of added work/stress on top of learning to program.

As others have mentioned the program has outgrown the space it currently occupies but I did not feel it significantly impacted my abilty to learn.

Lastly, of course, it is hard. The amount of effort you are required to put in is extreme by any normal standard (the final assessment for my cohort required us to work 24 hours straight, for example). Make sure you are willing to give 7 months of your life to this experience and take the most from it you possibly can by working hard and utilizing all of the amazing resources Turing will provide. After that ridiculous final assesment when I hadn't slept in over 24 hours and was anxiously awaiting my final grade I received a phone call offering me my current job and I'd say that sums up my experience very well- the hardest and most rewarding thing I've done.

A year ago, I was an accountant with nearly a decade of experience.  I hated my job and was dreading doing it for the rest of my life.  I realized that life was too short to be miserable and decided to quit.  I had no idea what my future held, but I did know that I had an interest in programming.  I had done a few tutorials online and messed around with a few frameworks.  I stumbled across an article online about coding bootcamps and honestly couldn't believe the claims that were made.  I did my due diligence and discovered a substantially longer program that is the Turing School located in Denver.

The extremely intense 7 month program did deliver.  I was not only taught the programming fundamentals I would require but also how best to adapt these skills to new languages and frameworks.  My current job requires an entirely different javascript framework but I was able to pick it up quickly due to the foundation that was built by the Turing curriculum.  

Unfortunately, Turing isn't perfect.  While I attended, Fridays were not very structured. They were usually a mishmash of random teambuilding exercises and student led sessions.  I think that time could have been spent better by exploring new frameworks and languages that were not covered during normal classtime.  Most importantly, I would have liked to see those sessions led by instructors.  Also, be prepared for Turing to consume your life while attending.  

Nevertheless, In the course of just 1 year I went from hating my job to being employed in a completely different career. Turing absolutely delivered on their promise to create and support a new developer.

Turing was one of the best environments to learn how to program in. I had very little experience coming into the program, but I didn't feel left behind from the other students who came in with more experience. After the first six weeks, I felt that the levels of students evened out. I truly feel that after attending Turing I can go on to learn any other language/tool set out there. 

One of the biggest caveots I will say is that it is hard and a huge time commitment. I was lucky that my husband could support the both of us while attending and was able to stand my being away 50+ hours a week. The seven months of late nights and long hours is also draining. This is the hardest thing I have ever done and the most rewarding. 7 months at Turing was harder than my 4 years of undergrad but certainly more rewarding.