V/A Kyslík
5/5
The same like Andrei Bartov here in reviews, whom I had in my cohort, I have spent recently 5 months at CAB and got a Full-Stack Web Dev certification. It was well worth it and I can clearly recommend this company for these reasons:
- Stack:
MERN stack is very useful stack. Most companies in web dev work with JavaScript / TypeScript and these tools are widely used, and it's a great starting point.
- Learning schedule:
Officially 9:30 - 16:30, but you can come earlier or stay longer till about 18:00 if you feel like you need to work longer on your project, but there's no pressure you can leave after standup (daily updates) at 16:30.
- Size of the cohorts:
In our cohort for Web Dev, we had 7 students and that was labelled as a "big group", the previous ones had up to 5 students and after us just 3 and the freshest one has only 2. That is amazing because you have basically two teachers available to help you out.
- Teachers:
You will have 1 teacher attached to your cohort as a mentor and who will be doing "spikes" with you (presentations) which are also recorded and available retrospectively. You can book him in 30 min slots to help out and explain stuff anytime. If he's busy with someone, the second teacher from different cohort is usually available as well (if both of them are not booked).This is a great ratio between teachers and students and they are ready to help out. Other companies have roughly 20+ students per cohort (Ironhack, Spiced etc) with basically the same amount of teachers, good luck with that. Always ask the bootcamps for these things.
The teachers are nice, friendly and are there for you, so don't be afraid to ask for help. For example Raul (my mentor) and Emily often stayed with me and other students till about 18:00 ish closing time, awesome.
- The study environment:
The bootcamp feels good, soon you'll feel familiar and cosy with the environment, it's spacious enough and there's few standing desks available in the hallway as well (for everybody).
Everyone has an extra monitor available, which is a standard ofc.
In summer months it can get pretty warm (top floor), but with provided fans and their window filters it's doable.
recommendations:
- They teach you HTML / CSS / JavaScript from scratch, but If I would do the course as a code newbie, I would learn many weeks in advance the basics of HTML, CSS and mainly JavaScript.
- You should get the taste of JS before you decide to be web developer for sure and it would make your learning process much easier and less of a shock.
- Focus a lot on JS logic exercises in the beginning, the sooner you understand the JS syntax and logics, the better and quicker you'll perform in the projects.
- Altho it's 5 months, the pace of learning is still fast and to digest all the spikes you better know some basics or be a natural talent ^^. Otherwise, you can review the lessons and your projects after bootcamp, but it's much better for you to prepare yourself in advance, so you know what to expect and would make your progress smoother.
- Don't be afraid to ask for explaining anything if you wonder for too long, use the resources while you have them.
- Do not rely on AI, the projects get more and more complex, the work with ChatGPT 4o / Copilot etc gets more difficult and it gives you mostly old code, not the recent best practices, that the teachers teach you. But it's a good tool for explaining the code and its context.
! Your goal in bootcamp -> learn THE PROBLEM SOLVING SKILLS / METHODS / TOOLS that the teachers show you, so you can continue learning alone after bootcamp without being stuck too often. Also you should become completely autonomous in finding solutions. So learning how to learn is important. It's just a start of a long learning path as a web dev. !
That said I am happy I have chosen CAB, it's staff is definitely dedicated to help you grow, it's cosy and it doesn't feel like those "money making machine bootcamps". 4.5* from me!
Give it a go 🙂
Thanks CAB team!
(on the picture - my mentor Raul and me, during the ceremony after the final projects)
