Code Institute Reviews 4,847

Just took part in my first ever hackathon, and what an experience it was! This month’s theme was CodeHer: Women in Tech, run by Code Institute – and it was genuinely brilliant. All the teams brought their A-game, with loads of creativity and some seriously impressive projects on show.

Best bit? My team came 3rd place! Not too shabby for a first go, if I do say so myself.

I also made some great connections along the way – it was such a welcoming and inspiring community to be part of. A really enjoyable event all round – can’t wait for the next one

I did the 6-week AI-Augmented Full-Stack Bootcamp course. The remote and self-paced nature of the course worked well for me. We covered everything from HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Agile Project Management, DBMS, JavaScript, Python Django and Git...everything you need to build a full-stack web app. The course material provided enough foundation for us to explore further and self-learn after the course. The course included two individual projects and two hackathons, which were challenging but we learnt so much through them.

The tutors were incredibly helpful, and went above and beyond to ensure all of us got a good grounding in the diverse range of topics. We were in a cohort of about twenty students, and we got to know each other and supported each other through the daily standups and groupwork. We continue to support each other through job-search and exploring other learning beyond the course.

Code Institute also provides incredible support after the course through the careers support, 1-2-1 coaching, recruiter webinars, etc. The Careers Hub was a source of great tips for setting up my CV and LinkedIn, effective job search and interview skills.

The CI community includes all students from the various courses across the UK and Europe. I have just taken part in the monthly cross-community hackathon, where students can meet other coders at various stages of their course and alumni who can share their expertise and experience. We had a tough brief but it was great fun learning new things. I can't wait to show off my hackathon badge on LinkedIn.

On the whole, my learning experience has been intensive but life-changing...thoroughly enjoyable and definitely worthwhile.

Code Institute's hackathons (all three of them I've done so far) have been extremely valuable to me in terms of learning to become fluent in the technologies I've been trained in (and in other technologies that are new to me).

I've also learnt a lot about working under time pressure in a small collaborative team, with all the coordination and diplomacy that requires.

On top of that, I have made some very interesting connections that I hope will be both pleasant and useful in the future.

Lastly, I genuinely had a ball!

It's a good intro into web development but i feel like the content was being reused from previous years, some of the video tutorials looked like they were from a previous versipn of the code space. And yes it helps to nurse people by telling em exactly what to do in the challenges, they could of have left it up to us to figure out how to achieve the goal with the option of taking hints. It just felt like I was being told what to write without me using my brain at all, how am I suppose to learn like that??

I enjoyed this. It was easier than I expected, but if you want to know if you're even remotely likely to succeed as a software developer, the five day coding challenge is worth doing.

The Level 3: Very poorly organised nothingness. It won't help you get a job and there is little too no support. Do NOT pay for this course, we had a change of lecturer at the end of the course, I have now been on the course for 1 year and 3 months, it was meant to be a 6 month course, no sign of a certificate. I did well in all of the units and passed everything first time and even helped other students with some issues they had. Really poor course delivered by Runshaw.

My learning experience at Code Institute has been outstanding. The structured curriculum, hands-on projects, and excellent mentorship made the learning process both engaging and effective. The platform is well-organized, and the support from tutors and the student community helped me stay motivated throughout the course. I particularly appreciated the real-world applications of the projects, which helped me build a strong portfolio. The career support team also provided valuable guidance for job preparation, making the transition into the tech industry much smoother.

However, I would love to see Code Institute expand its learning support in the future to include additional programming languages such as C++ and other low-level languages. Adding courses focused on low-level programming, embedded systems, and system-level development would be a great enhancement for those interested in a broader range of technical fields.

Starting the last project at Code Institute has been an amazing capstone of my journey in full-stack software development. I have really honed my technical expertise by working extensively with HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and Python and have been able to produce solutions that amaze me every time. Every line of code has been an opportunity to learn, grow, and deliver something useful.
Bittersweet it is to part with a fantastic community, but I know we will carry this forward. Every challenge I have faced and every lesson learned has indeed prepared me for the next chapter as a confident and capable software developer.

I recently graduated with my diploma in Full-Stack Software Development, and I am incredibly grateful to the Code Institute.

Initially, I was skeptical about the program being 100% remote. However, after completing the five-day coding challenge, I decided to take the plunge and fully commit to this opportunity.

The first modules were relatively straightforward, but they became progressively more challenging quite quickly. Fortunately, the support network, along with the entire Slack community, is incredible and very supportive. Whenever I faced challenges, I could always count on another student who had gone through similar issues and had great solutions to share.

Each student is assigned a mentor to assist with projects, which proved extremely useful since all learning is done independently. It felt like having a guardian angel during tough times. Additionally, a tutor support team is available throughout the day to help with any bugs or problems students may encounter.

The Slack community also tirelessly organizes events, webinars, and video calls to prepare students for the tech industry. Top recruiters host live sessions, and there is a dedicated careers team that works closely with students to help them secure their first tech role, offering one-on-one support.

What mattered most to me was that I never felt alone during my coding journey. Even though I graduated over a month ago, I am still actively involved in the Slack community.

This diploma is excellent, and I highly recommend the Code Institute to anyone with a passion for technology, IT, or development!

Big thanks to the Code Institute team, mentors, tutors, assessors, and career coaches for making this journey smooth and beginner-friendly.

I loved the 5 Day Coding Challenge!
I already had some experience in programming, but I was able to refresh and also learn a lot.
I wouldn't have done all the challenges if code institute hadn't extended my access, so thanks.
In my opinion, there could have been more space for the leaner to explore and experiment, e.g. by not saying directly which tag to use but a tag for a paragraph et cetera.
Furthermore, JavaScript has also been somewhat shortened. I would have loved working with it in an additional task.
Altogether a great experience that makes you want to discover the world of programming.

I can absolutely recommend the Code Institute for anyone who is thinking about studying for a diploma in software programming.

I had zero coding experience before the course so it was very challenging. But the course is well-structured and the material is clearly explained; I particularly appreciated the walk-through tasks that set you up for your main projects.

If you take this course you'll need to devote a fair bit of time and energy to it, but it's 100% worth it.

I took part in the 5 day coding challenge and found it very informative and enjoyable and a great introduction to HTML, CSS, JavaScript and website design.

I took the level 5 diploma in web application development. The structure of the course it great to follow - If, like me, you can get a bit bogged down with reading a lot of text they also have playgrounds where you can practice the code and see how it all connects and works visually as well as challenges that keep testing your knowledge to make sure it sinks in.

The support is incredible. You will be assigned a mentor who will go through your main projects with you, they are also open to slack messages but you also have a tutor support team, a community with thousands of people and a cohort helping you through the course so you will always find someone who can help or pier review your work.

The hackathons each months are also a great way to collaborate, meet new people and get some experience working in an agile environment.

Couldn't recommend Code Institute enough - a great place to start your career in development

The 5 day challenge was very fun, I had never coded before so this was a quick look to see if I would like it and I loved it. The course is very informative and well structured.

A good course with a good culture

FYI code institute have multiple courses now, I did remote 5 project with advanced frontend

a quick overview of pros and area to improve:

pros:
- Wonderful hackathon idea for students and alumni. It is quite hard to find friendly hackathons in the general public on platforms like Devpost
- project-orientated approach was good
- supportive slack community with regular online events
- the general culture is positive, professional and inclusive. Special shout out to the community engagement leads for being available to answer Questions and support students
- tutor support team were ever so helpful, I did my homework before approaching them and I could rely on tutors to help me along with junior-level bugs and get over the finish line
- this kind of part time/ remote/ 12 months is a far more effective approach to career changing than 12 week bootcamps.
- the course regularly listen to student's feedback and do their best to adapt

areas to improve:
- I have finished this course with more reservations about the overall value of follow-along video tutorials. I found them helpful in moderation, especially at the beginning, but by the time I reached project 5 specialisation advanced frontend module it felt overkill and could have done without 70% of it in the grand scheme of things - by this point I knew how to set up a project and use Node Package Manager. This is quite a difficult balance to get right to be fair, as all learners are different. For context, CI do not make video tutorials compulsory and provide alot of support for meeting project deadlines on time.
- considering AWS is the largest share of cloud services worldwide it would be nice to include more of their free tier. The curriculum I took did not include AWS.
- I would have traded project mentoring for more career support mentoring sessions personally. For context CI offer 1 halfway through the course and I believe there is support for when you secure an interview.

I still maintain a positive relationship with this course and look forward to attending more hackathons!

I aim to update this review once I have landed my first full-time job in the Tech industry.

Just about to hand in my 4th and final Project. Didn’t know a line of HTML a year ago and I’m submitting a fully working e-commerce site with AWS hosting and payment processing.

Sometimes two steps forward and one step backwards. Yes, some of the content is out of date and has caused delays or problems - but hey, that’s how the real world works. Whatever problem you hit, someone on YouTube or stack overflow has also hit it before.

My mentor was superb. Just enough guidance and pointing in the right direction with no hand holding.
Only used the tutor support on a couple of issues but they delivered. They can be brusque as they are very busy.

I generally tried to sort problems myself as that’s where a lot of the learning takes place, so could be a bit of a rollercoaster - but that’s why I like software development. It works or it doesn’t and when it does it’s amazing feedback.
Although some online content could do with updating, it’s comprehensive and well structured. The walkthroughs at the end of each project are particularly instructive.

There’s a lot of free content on the web but it’s difficult to sort the good from the bad if your knowledge of the subject is limited. I can’t imagine my comprehension of the subject matter would be where it is if I’d relied on YouTube alone - and I would have picked up a lot of bad habits and inaccurate advice along the way.

If you want to sit back and be spoonfed the content and given all the answers then this isn’t the course for you. But then, neither is a career in software development.

The way the challenge content is organized is very enjoyable and consistent. So I had finished it with a good mood/feeling. Your daily follow up and encouragement is also helping to accomplish the challenge. Thank you very much!

As someone who did some programming in the past, I was positively surprised about the progress. The first day was super basic, but they managed to include quite some nice tricks over the next days.
You cannot *do* much with that knowledge, but I think it's a good little trip to understand the way of thinking and If you enjoy this or not. (HTML and CSS give amazing instant gratification and motivate to experiment - reality is much more lengthy, unfortunately) But yes, I enjoyed it a lot.

It was a great experience! Thanks for the opportunity 🙏🏻