I recently took the 5 day challenge for Full Stack Developer along with a handful of others from around Europe. The following is my assessment of this experience, of Code Institute, and the way forward as I see it.We had a shared slack group with a host and the challenge itself was delivered in daily pieces by way of slack introduction and a browser based interface. It's then a mixture of instructional videos followed by hands on activities closely based on the videos, and the code itself is provided but with gaps for you to complete. Buttons to Test then Submit, with AI deciding if you're good. Each day is meant to be roughly an hour of work depending on your previous experience. Code Institute promotes absolute coding beginners do the course. It would take them longer and one or two of the group struggled although eventually got the idea and completed the course. I myself have previous other coding experience and found it fun but very easy. But it's a taster and I can't say I didn't learn anything though. It made me more likely to continue with this provider and I gained confidence with this tech.Code Institute appears to be a reasonable provider and although the provider themselves may or may not impress a potential employer, they will know what Ofsted Outstanding means, links to BCS, and accreditation by a Scots University defines the course (as EQF level 5 which apparently is equivalent to a 2nd year degree module). The next step would be to talk to their advisory and sales staff about doing the full course and they offer links to arrange this. Having looked at their course content and looked at many of the full stack jobs available, the contents looks appropriate for an entry level job, with many of the buzz words reflected as long as you don't want Microsoft training. Your portfolio looks to be critical and the organised hackathons will probably help further if you do these.My conclusion is that the challenge is a really good introduction, the provider has done a lot to qualify themselves and their course to employers that I could put in a CV, and course content is in line with other providers, their conversion of graduates to jobs is very high (98% within a year of graduation we're told) and their delivery looks pleasant.So far so good then.However, given that I have previous experience, it's likely I won't make full use of the careers support, I'd take the learning without too much need for mentoring or tutoring from a human (Google is your friend), there is no actual guarantee of a job (no job placement, just support with CVs and suggestions, and events), and the costs are very high.So then, it's a nice soft landing but I think for me personally, I'll approach this another way.For an actual beginner who will need more support, assuming Code Institute do actually provide it as they say, you might consider the cost as a good price to pay to get into a high paying industry with plenty of headroom as your experience grows.
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