Was Bloc the stepping stone that prepared me to be become developer I am today?
This is a question at least once a week and I usually answer via email in great depth, but thanks to the recent Code Newbie podcast and Scott Hanselman I am going to share my response with everyone.
I graduated out of the Bloc Apprenticeship officially March 17th 2014, and for those wondering my mentor was Adam Louis, for more details about my Bloc can be found on their site, I have my own experience page.
But lets get back to the originally question; for a quick answer, yes is the answer. I work developer in Rails the same technology I learned while learning with my mentor. I not only followed the unique Bloc curriculum, but I also tried things outside of the curriculum. Bloc gave me the ability to try new and different things to set apart from others. I got into testing very early, which is something I think too many Code Newbies avoid.
One of the first things discuss my thrice-weekly Bloc session was, I was going to "learn how to learn." All these bootcamps out there now are not really teaching you how to write code, but they are really teaching you how to learn how to write code and how to look things up for yourself.
I have only ever gone through Bloc and can't really speak to the experiences in live in person bootcamps, but what I can say Bloc is a one-on-one intensive mentorship, where you can learn as much or as little as you want. You are able to ask your craziest questions and really go on tangental learning experiences.
How about another question:
Did Bloc give you the ability to write functional applications?
That answer is another yes, I spent a lot of time... specifically 30-40 hours a week building sudo-client ready applications, based on feature wish-list provided.
All the apps I created were in the Minimal Viable Product state, but they perform the minimum functions required and with a little more help on the design side they could be pretty presentable apps.
I completed the Rails/Fullstack curriculum, but there are also Design and Front-End curriculums, as well as Android and iOS.
Now with Javascript Frameworks becoming bigger and would I opt to go through the Front-End course instead of the Fullstack/Rails course?
It's crazy to think that when I started all of this Angular/Ember/Meteor...etc were barely on the radar. I haven't even heard of Node and when I did, it was about people complaining about how it wasn't Ruby.
Even though I am now excited about Node/Ember/Express. I would still go through the FullStack curriculum. I fell in love with Ruby and got really excited about Rails before I knew that Bloc was a thing. The community surrounded by Rails is still great and very instrumental in me continually advancing in my knowledge.
Ruby is hands down a great language to learn for new programmers.
For someone who has zero programming and design experience, I still recommend the Ruby/Rails path. I also do not think Rails is going away anytime soon and even this newly indoctrinated "Javascript all the things" world there will still be a place for Rails.
*Seriously if I hear another person tell me how the MEAN stack is the Messiah to web development and Javascript should be written everywhere and on all things - those people are crazy.
Does Bloc help with finding you a job?
Bloc announce to a new Job Prep portion back in November, which I have not gone through, for obvious reason ( I already have a job) and did not offer anything like this during my time with them, but from what I hear its pretty .
Bloc does connect you with alum and lets you in their alumni network you can network for next job, but at the end of the day, getting job is the continuation of your hard while in the apprenticeship.
I personally hit the street and networked at local meetups and conferences to get where I am today.
*If anyone who has tried the Bloc Job Prep section wants to chime, please let us know your experiences.
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I think that about covers the most common questions I get, but feel free to send email and I can answers anything that wasn't covered in the blog post.
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