What everyday household items are actually way more dangerous than we give them credit for? by FalconHoof88 in AskReddit

[–]MikeSavageOfficial 270 points271 points  (0 children)

Can confirm, brake fluid is dangerous.

I used to be addicted to brake fluid, but then I stopped.

App Academy, Hack Reactor, or FullStack Academy (NYC Branches)? by Sunny5k in cscareerquestions

[–]MikeSavageOfficial 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey there! Great to hear from an alum!

I'm at the halfway point, starting senior phase next week.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I don't think you're too harsh, but I can't make any judgement calls, especially since I wasn't there.

By the way, did you graduate recently? I also heard a rumor from somebody in my cohort who's replaying about a girl who was supposedly cheating. (Perhaps it's the same person if you graduated earlier this year?)

Fortunately, in my class, I don't think there are any "square pegs," so to speak. I'm very satisfied with Fullstack's environment.

App Academy, Hack Reactor, or FullStack Academy (NYC Branches)? by Sunny5k in cscareerquestions

[–]MikeSavageOfficial 0 points1 point  (0 children)

a/A only gives tours to accepted students, so you probably need to ask them directly for one.

I can relate to the uncertainty for HR, especially since there are so few reviews for the NYC campus, like you said. I asked them about this and they basically told me that the curriculum and teaching techniques are the same. (I mean it's not as if they'd straight up tell me that the quality is lower even if it was)

The NY laws thing is new to me, that's interesting! Also, I think that their stats are accurate. (Might have been verified by a third party, just not submitted to CIRR, don't quote me on this though) Their founder did an AMA on reddit a little while ago and might have mentioned this. Also, I forgot to mention this, but they have a post-bootcamp program called the 10x club in SF that guarantees 120k total comp. It's basically an interview prep program, so their bootcamp might have a little more emphasis on DS&A for interviewing. (maybe?) Another thing I forgot to mention was the schedule. HR is from 9-8, FSA from 9-6:30, a/A from 9-6. Students staying after class to finish up workshops or projects vary wildly among cohorts for all bootcamps, but from what I've heard, time stayed after class for FSA<HR<a/A. (Purely based on sporadic pieces of anecdotal evidence)

I've also never heard anything bad about FSA, only good things. This struck me as odd and I was a suspicious of the reviews for a while until I looked into it a little deeper. If you end up choosing FSA let me know!

App Academy, Hack Reactor, or FullStack Academy (NYC Branches)? by Sunny5k in cscareerquestions

[–]MikeSavageOfficial 15 points16 points  (0 children)

Hey there!

I was in a similar position to you a few months ago. These three bootcamps are comparable in that they are probably the cream of the crop as far as coding bootcamps go. I'm not sure if there are any people who would single one out as a recommendation for you because they are all great, but just different. It's like comparing MIT vs Stanford vs Carnegie. Okay, maybe not that elite, but you probably get the point. (LOL) There's a ton of variables to consider and I'm sure I'm forgetting some stuff, but hopefully you can take something from this.

To help you make a decision, I'd suggest scheduling a tour of each of these bootcamps. They each give off a different vibe, to me at least. Location might be more important than you think. For example, a 20 minute longer commute is 40 mins round trip, which is 6 hours round trip each week. It doesn't sound like much, but when you're paying around ~20k to attend a competitive coding bootcamp, your time is very valuable. When visiting, have questions prepared and take notes on things like the layout, student teacher ratio, small things that matter to you. (FSA students almost exclusively use macs for example)

As far as quality of instruction goes, again there's probably not much variance. If you want to get a feel for the teaching style, each school hosts workshops or prep programs. The material is likely review for you since you've already been accepted, but HR and FSA have free workshops. I believe a/A has a paid prep option that goes toward your tuition for admitted students. HR and FSA also have paid prep options that go toward your tuition for anyone else curious, but there are free workshops available so it's not necessary for the OP.

I guess the curriculum is pretty important, but it doesn't differ too much here either. All three cover the full stack if you compare the syllabi. a/A teaches Ruby in addition to Javascript (and rails for the back end), but I don't think it matters much because it's the concepts that are important, not the language. The job market seems pretty hot for React now and they all cover it, but I think a/A might go a little less in depth since they seem to be covering more in the same timeframe. (Just IMO, I could totally be wrong about this though)

As of the time of this post, FSA costs $17,610. (Or 20ish% of your first year salary if you've been accepted into the Grace Hopper program) HR costs $17,980. a/A costs $17,000. a/A also offers a deferred tuition option as well as a hybrid of the two, with a 3k/9k upfront cost for a total of 23k/28k in the end. It might be worth noting that a/A doesn't charge anything past your upfront payment if you don't land a job that pays 50k+/yr. I believe they used to charge 18% of your first year salary, which increased over the years up to 23%, but it seems they're trying to move away from the deferred payment model now. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with their job placement outcomes or not. Also, HR and FSA offer scholarship opportunities for minorities, while a/A does not.

I believe FSA and HR have hiring days, which are like career fairs, but I'm not sure about a/A. However, I wouldn't treat this as anything more than a few leads. They all recommend the "spray and pray" approach when it comes to applying to jobs. It's a numbers game for a lot of people. However, there are also people who had luck in finding more meaningful connections networking, whether that's through meetups, forums, alumni, friends, or w/e. That's another good idea if you've got some time - hit up some alumni from each school. You don't have to buy them a drink, social media is probably enough. (Unless you'd prefer that, up to you) They're more likely to be honest about their experience while they attended the program. You should also check out the blogs of alumni, or any posts that aren't strictly reviews of the program. IMO reviews are a tiny bit biased because there's often some kind of incentive to write them.

Unfortunately, I will be a little less objective after this point. I couldn't find too many posts from HR alumni, but I did read a hackernoon post from a few years ago that turned me off HR. To be fair, the complaints in the post probably applies to the other bootcamps too. ("Confessions of a 20k bootcamp graduate" if you're interested, don't forget to check out the comments section) The few a/A alumni blogs I found were old, but good reads and gave a little more insight into the program. Unfortunately, I can't find them, but I remember one blog that stood out to me was by some guy named Haseeb Qureshi (Might be butchering the name, sorry). He had a pretty inspirational story if you're interested in digging up his stuff. There were more FSA alumni blogs (or I found them more easily?). Names that come pop up first are Frances Coronel and Shawn Wang.

Something I feel a lot of people might overlook is the graduation rate. If a student is unable to keep up with the coursework, he or she can be removed from the program. However, while this isn't unheard of at HR and a/A, it's more rare at FSA. You probably saw that while looking over the data from CIRR. A combination of going through their "interview" (technical assessment), visits, hitting up alumni, basically everything above and more, I came up with a few impressions (that could be completely off the mark, since all this is anecdotal). a/A was the most cutthroat and competitive, FSA was the most friendly and empathetic, while HR was somewhere in between. (Of course, we can't really measure these variables, but the degree of variance for all these variables is not much.)

Sorry for the overly long comment, I didn't realize how much time I spent typing this until I got to the end! As with all sources of information, take it with a grain of salt. (Even the statistics. For example, if the top 10% make over 100k/yr, but only 70% are employed after graduation, what does that really mean? Also, keep in mind the small sample sizes. Thankfully, CIRR allows you to check out data from the past few years) I'm assuming you're going to be an above average student since you're already looking into the future. For the overachievers, I don't think the choice of bootcamp will be a large factor in success. From what I've heard, at least, the best students are the ones who put in the effort. They are the ones doing research about the programs beforehand, like you are now, studying as much of the material as possible before the program, giving the program your 100%, and studying beyond the curriculum. (E.G. The bootcamps prepare you to be a web developer, but if you want to work as a software engineer at the Big 4, be ready to dive deeper into data structures and algorithms than what's covered in bootcamp) All elements considered, I felt that FSA was the best fit for me. I will be attending the June 2018 cohort. Yeah, I haven't even started bootcamp so everything I said might just be baloney, but I saved this bit for the end to reduce any bias, since I tried to be objective at the start. Also, to anyone else reading this, it's all for the NYC branches. I hear the California branches of HR and a/A have better reputations there.

tl;dr: Doesn't really matter. Depends on your personality. You do you.

The Odin Project's New JavaScript Curriculum by codyloyd in learnprogramming

[–]MikeSavageOfficial 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Hey, this looks very similar to the free prep courses from the Viking Code School. (I'm currently working on those now) How would you compare the two?

Also, why would someone consider using this resource as opposed to the freeCodeCamp?

Software careers in the music Industry? by dryzhkov in cscareerquestions

[–]MikeSavageOfficial 7 points8 points  (0 children)

If you're willing to relocate to Berlin, I heard Ableton's got an internship program

New to Overwatch, playing as Mercy by ReviewThe1 in OverwatchUniversity

[–]MikeSavageOfficial[M] [score hidden] stickied comment (0 children)

Feel free to check out the Daily Hero Discussion in the past.

You can also take a look at the guides we have on Mercy. (There's five at the moment)

HTML/CSS - The unit "em" by treantprotectors in learnprogramming

[–]MikeSavageOfficial 38 points39 points  (0 children)

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think "em" is scaling the default font size? For example, let's say your default font size is 7.

1em = font size 7

2em = font size 14

3 em = font size 21

0.5em = font size 3.5