DevMountain to Launch iOS Development Course

We don’t want to be a program that forces you to take out a loan, quit your job, and lose two–three months of income.

DevMountain will be launching its first-ever iOS development course in May 2014. The Utah coding school will officially announce the new course at its Demo Night event, which starts tonight at 7:00 p.m. at the Startup Building in Provo, Utah.

In an interview with Beehive Startups, DevMountain CEO and founder Cahlan Sharp said the new course will take students 12 weeks to complete and cost $4,500. The class will be held in the evenings, and is initially only available at the school’s Provo location.

“iOS development is quite a nuanced skill and set of tools, so whereas our web development curriculum covers a lot of ground in a lot of areas, iOS will be much more focused,” said Sharp.

The coding school is willing to accept up to 20–25 students for the inaugural iOS course, but they want to make sure the students who enroll are up to the challenge.

“We’re going to be a little more selective than we might in the core / web class,” said Sharp. “It’s just going to require more aptitude and ability to succeed, and we’d rather have 15 students we know we can help be successful than 25 where we aren’t so confident.”

For its new course, DevMountain is looking for students who have a solid understanding and experience with at least one programming language.

“I’d like to think that our current graduates would be well-equipped, but really anyone who has spent a substantial amount of time coding I think can succeed. Some of our current instructors have expressed interest in taking the class, which I think is awesome,” said Sharp.

Sharp says DevMountain is focused on being accessible and affordable to its students.

“We don’t want to be a program that forces you to take out a loan, quit your job, and lose two–three months of income,” said Sharp. “While schools who do that can do a lot of good (and we respect them a lot), they run full-time classes and cost a lot of money to operate. We think there are a lot of people out there who can’t afford that cost, so we try to leverage great professionals as instructors and mentors, but only part-time rather than meeting their high salary needs. Our “after hours” model has been a key to our success so far.”

For those who would like to learn more about DevMountain and its new iOS program, Beehive Startups has invited Sharp to participate in our “Startup Spotlight” series today at 3:30 p.m. The interview will take place through a Google Hangout On Air. Our readers are invited to ask Sharp questions and participate in the discussion. RSVP here.

Published 4/1/2014