Academia de Codigo offers an intense, full-time course for those committed to becoming a full-stack software developer. The school offers many financing options and promises to work with students to find the best fit. A bonus of this school is the instructors’ attitude of creating a demanding and challenging course infused with humor to keep the student going.
Academia de Código imagines itself as a trendy, high-energy coding school. After all, how many other coding schools accept payment in cryptocurrency? João Magalhães, Domingos Guimarães, and Rui Ferrão co-founded the school in 2015 in Lisbon, Portugal. The three combined their experience in entrepreneurship, engineering, and management to create a coding education program at a time when Portugal’s unemployment rate was at crisis levels. Academia de Código (literally, “Academy of Code”) successfully established itself as a career-launching center in Portugal, expanding across mainland Portugal as well as establishing an offshore location in the Azores by 2017. The school has also expanded virtually, acquiring their Portuguese competitor Codeplace in 2018 to launch online and hybrid programs. Today, Academia de Código continues to be responsive to the needs of the Portuguese economy. In fall 2021, the school offered free tuition and housing for its Azores cohort to get more unemployed workers into the tech workforce at no cost to them.
Academia de Código operates three campuses. Its first and flagship location is in Lisbon. The campus features airy and modern facilities inside a historic tiled-roof building on the winding cobbled streets of the central Bairro Alto district of the nation’s capital. The school has a second location in Porto, as well as a third location in the Azores, on Ilha Terceira, just a few blocks from the sandy Praia Grande beach.
Academia de Código offers students career-oriented instruction in web development. For prospective students interested in exploring their options before making a decision about where to study coding, Noble Desktop offers the Classes Near Me tool. Students can use the tool to research and compare web development classes and bootcamps from tech education centers located around the world.
Academia de Código runs one course exclusively: their signature full-stack web development bootcamp. The school does not publicly share much about the content of the course, but it does promise that the course delivers content designed to help students work on both front-end and back-end programming with Java and JavaScript. The school also says that their curriculum is up-to-date with current industry practices, and that their students learn the languages, environments, and tools of the trade. The bootcamp structure aims to future-proof graduates of the program, as well, by teaching students how to learn.
The Academia de Código bootcamp is a 14-week full-time program that runs in-person at each of the school’s three locations. The regular hours of in-class instruction and work are Monday through Friday, from 9 am until 6 pm. However, the program is highly intensive, and the school advises students to expect to spend most of their time coding during the 14 weeks of the bootcamp. Courses are capped at 20–30 students, depending on the campus location, and students work on multiple group projects throughout the course in a simulation of real coding work environments.
To apply for admission into Academia de Código, students must participate in a two-part process. Applicants begin by applying online and competing in several skills assessments. Those who successfully pass the first stage participate in a daylong coding workshop simulating the intensity of the full-length course. The school does not charge any application fees. Students are not required to have a college degree or to have previous coding experience. However, they are required to be 18 or older and to have advanced English-speaking skills, in deference to the fact that major coding languages are built in English. Admission to the bootcamp on Ilha Terceira is limited to European Union citizens with residency in the Azores, as all students in this program are funded through the Regional Secretariat for Youth, Professional Qualification and Employment. Admission at all locations is highly competitive.
Tuition for the bootcamps at Lisbon and Porto costs €7,000. The school offers a €500 discount for early registration. Qualifying Portuguese citizens also have the option of financing their tuition through the Portuguese Banco Montepio or working through an Income Share Agreement (ISA) through Fundação José Neves, which allows students to repay their tuition once they start working full-time. Tuition and housing for the bootcamp on Ilha Terceira is covered by the Regional Secretariat for Youth, Professional Qualification and Employment. Students who drop out of the Terceira program, however, will have to reimburse the school €6,000 for the investment made in them. The school also allows students to pay in cryptocurrency.
The school provides mentorship to students during their career search after finishing their bootcamp and until they find a job. Students in the Terceira program are obligated to work in the Azores for at least 12 months. If, even with a good-faith effort, students are unable to land a job in the Azores by the end of the six months post-graduation, they are released from their obligation and may seek employment elsewhere.
Academia de Código reports a 97% job placement rate for its students after graduation, a figure which the school says is independently verified by an external auditor. Its graduates have found careers at global companies such as Deloitte and Volkswagen Digital Solutions as well as Portuguese businesses including Bliss Applications and Twistag.
Alumni of Academia de Código have left very positive reviews of the time they spent in their bootcamp programs. Graduates describe supportive instructors and staff and cohorts that are assembled with care to produce a collaborative community. One student “experienced such a tight bond between everyone in this institution, ” from admission through graduation, saying that “[t]he sense of [belonging] is unlike anything else.” Several students report learning a great deal over the short few months of the bootcamp, which one graduate attributes to the “extremely well-thought-out and focused curriculum, ” saying, “The intense work rhythm, allied with the ‘learn to learn’ mentality, was the perfect way to fully dive into the programming world.” Academia de Código makes it very clear that their bootcamps are very intensive, and graduates of the program corroborate this fact. As one student quipped, “It will be tough and challenging, but hey, nothing that’s easy in life would really be worth it in the end.”
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Learn more at academiadecodigo.org
These beginner-friendly bootcamps teach both front and back end development, enabling students to become full stack developers. This school offers courses both in person globally and live online.
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