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I'm quite surprised to see how a lot of these 3-month coding bootcamps are guaranteeing like 90% job placement rates... I've been to one in person and heard the promise with my own ears at a hackathon recently...
But I can't help but cringe a bit because I don't know, I just don't feel like 3 months of rushed education is truly enough to prepare someone for a software development or even moreso, a software engineering career.
I myself am a strange case... I happen to be super self-driven and I can read, so I've sorta put myself through my own education program which so far has included all sorts of C#/JavaScript learning, ASP.NET MVC/Web API, Entity Framework, SQL, Relational Database Design, I've also just finished up setting up my first from-scratch OAuth/Identity implementation. But more importantly, I enjoy reading titles like Code Complete by Steve McConnell, Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass, and taking software engineering courses on Pluralsight, sometimes for specific things such as security, other times for more generalized learning.
I recently went to a hackathon at the local "code academy"/bootcamp deal, and frankly... I thought they were going to blow me out of the water... Being a self-study myself, I was nervous going into there... Turns out, the 3 students who were in my group all pulled up chairs and wanted me to teach them and in fact their .NET Development instructor asked me if I would be a guest speaker at the school some time, which was flattering of course.
But this is not an ego-stroking post... The point is, I kinda felt bad for the students who have paid $12,500 for the course, when I've spent like maybe $500 on a couple online courses and a small library of nice books. And I could tell that they were not being taught thoroughly... That the education was ditching software engineering lessons in exchange for a speed primer on frameworks and coding. I just don't get how these code academies are lining people up with jobs... But at the same time, I sometimes feel like a weirdo because the two socially acceptable paths these days seems to be go to a code academy or get a CS degree. I'm in neither boat, but so far I'm having a blast, learning a ton, and working on fun projects.. But people seem to be freaked out when I tell them I have no CS degree and haven't attended a bootcamp.
Whats your opinion on these bootcamps? I have a feeling that they're going to inject a lot of lousy engineers into the workforce and it's going to backfire in some way or another... That said, there was ONE great programmer who was a student there, and it was obvious to me that she is a natural and also has done some study outside the curriculum.
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$12,500? 
Anyone who can waste that amount of money on something they can get for free from the web, low cost from books or online training sites like Pluralsight aren't potential developers, they're potential project managers.
See this site[^] for further information on the subject of project management.
I came into this game for the action, the excitement. Go anywhere, travel light, get in, get out, wherever there's trouble, a man alone. Now they got the whole country sectioned off, you can't make a move without a form.
modified 31-Aug-21 21:01pm.
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Coding bootcamps work because code monkeys are in demand. They will never make something awesome, but that doesn't matter, all their employers want from them is to work on the various stereotypical braindead projects and their maintenance.
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"Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance." -- Kurt Vonnegut
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TheOnlyRealTodd wrote: a lot of these 3-month coding bootcamps are guaranteeing like 90% job placement rates...
Tried to do a six-month version and dropped out. The job-guarantee is often a temporary placement.
Imagine you have 100k to invest; do you go for RentACoder, a bootcamper, or someone else? Programming is not just about learning a language, it is just as much about the environment and user-expectations. Did we not have enough people here trying to pass dates as strings?
I can only hope that brain-surgery camps are more succesfull. Anyone that can learn to code decent in a few months should be able to do brainsurgery as well.
Bastard Programmer from Hell 
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Interesting post.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: Tried to do a six-month version and dropped out.
Why did you end up dropping out? Cost? Time?
Just curious.
If these were marketed as "break into the industry" then they might be more valid.
However, the idea of learning to be a "Software Architect" in 6 mos or whatever is obviously false and gives people an idea that great practices, methodology, design, and the art of software creation can be picked up quickly.
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raddevus wrote:
Why did you end up dropping out?
Too many arguments with "the" professor 
raddevus wrote: be a "Software Architect" in 6 mos or whatever is obviously false
It doesn't say that in the advertisement.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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Eddy Vluggen wrote: It doesn't say that in the advertisement.
I was generalizing not saying you were taken in by bad marketing.
Eddy Vluggen wrote: Too many arguments with "the" professor
What were the "arguments" about? Come on! Dish!
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raddevus wrote: Come on! Dish!
No.
Bastard Programmer from Hell
If you can't read my code, try converting it here[^]
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If you want an interesting analogy out of the past, look up "Speed Reading[^]".
Yeah - perhaps you read Lord of the Rings trilogy in an hour . . . but why?
| Ravings en masse^ |
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| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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What they REALLY need is debugging bootcamps...
".45 ACP - because shooting twice is just silly" - JSOP, 2010
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You can never have too much ammo - unless you're swimming, or on fire. - JSOP, 2010
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When you pry the gun from my cold dead hands, be careful - the barrel will be very hot. - JSOP, 2013
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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: What they REALLY need is debugging bootcamps
So true. Crappy code is easy to write. You can google and paste together something.
But, what do you do when it don't work? 
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raddevus wrote: when it don't work?
You get someone in QA to fix it for you.
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Oh I don't know. It takes a lot of hard work to create my crappy code.
We're philosophical about power outages here. A.C. come, A.C. go.
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The job offer is temporary and wages less than the cost of the bootcamp. It's a scam, plain and simple.
GCS d--- s-/++ a- C++++ U+++ P- L- E-- W++ N++ o+ K- w+++ O? M-- V? PS+ PE- Y+ PGP t++ 5? X R++ tv-- b+ DI+++ D++ G e++>+++ h--- ++>+++ y+++* Weapons extension: ma- k++ F+2 X
If you think 'goto' is evil, try writing an Assembly program without JMP. -- TNCaver
When I was six, there were no ones and zeroes - only zeroes. And not all of them worked. -- Ravi Bhavnani
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My feeling is that it's a gimmick. In the U.S, the technical school ITT Tech shut their doors recently because the government would no longer allow students to use government loans to attend the school. I think these bootcamps are similar in that they unaccredited and make promises they cannot keep.
As for a degree, I think if someone is intelligent, then they should get a degree. It doesn't have to be in CS, but a lot of large companies don't touch people unless they have a B.S. To me, university is not about getting a job, it is becoming educated, educated about the world and becoming a problem solver; be it at work, finances, or family life.
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If hiring for a project and my choices are two people -- one graduated from college with a BS in CS (or similar degree) and one the graduate of a boot camp?
I'll probably pick the BS in CS.
This person has spent roughly 4 years taking a lot of courses in a wide variety of areas, both within CS and outside of it. Their base of training is likely wider, and they have had time (4 years) to internalize and reflect upon what they have learned. Sight unseen, I expect this person to be a better problem solver -- in general I want a problem solver, not a coder. I have business problems to solve and coding is simply a means to an end.
Why "probably"? Many moons ago I did a tech interview for a guy -- high school drop out, self-taught, had a year or two of IT experience (how, I don't recall). He was an internal referral and I was to interview him as a courtesy to the employee who referred him. There was no expectation that the interview would last more than 10 minutes.
I spent 2.5 hours on the phone with the guy. He taught me stuff I didn't know and I'd been working for nearly 15 years! My boss thought I was joking when I recommended hiring the guy and it took a bit to convince him I wasn't kidding. The guy turned out to be a fantastic find!
This taught me to evaluate each candidate on their own merits. There is no definitive answer to the boot camp question.
Look at the high price of a 4 year degree in the USA. It's not unusual for young people to come out with a BS and $50K+ in debt. I can see why people go for the boot camp with the idea of not being in debt at the end of 4 years.
If my team is large enough, I'd probably hire a boot camper for the diversity, the difference in experiences that provides a different POV. IF the person isn't as good a problem solver the team can absorb that while making good use of what talents are brought to the table.
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Thank you for a fair comment. You never know who you are going to get.
I have interviewed people with degrees that were horrible.
And I have met people who learned programming on their own because they loved it (Myself included).
I later went on to get a degree after having 2+yrs of professional experience.
Is a CS degree better? It depends on the school. Some of them are so watered down that the kids can't explain the conceptual difference between a rock sort and a bubble sort.
In the end, we find that the key is an ability to RELATE and SOLVE the problems at hand in a way that is better than patch work. If you can't relate to the customer, you are going to do the wrong thing. If you can't solve the problem correctly, you will get the wrong answer. And if you are hacking code to make it work, you will be covering the wrong set of inputs, or a limited set of outputs.
Experience is the final key. Having read lots of code, having written lots of code, and learning to debug someone elses code.
4 Years of University. There was probably 1.5 - 2yrs of FULL TIME programming courses in that degree. So 1yr of programming course work, online, pretty much full time is a great start! The is the beginning of me being interested, unless they are a rock star from the start.
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Many, many moons ago, I was one of Maggie's millions having lost my job at the local hospital. After 6 months of failing to find myself a McJob, I wound up on a government sponsored course in C.
The course was full time - 40 hours a week, I think - followed by 6 months of working for sweet F.A. but it did lead to a job working for the company that I'd spent 6 months working for nothing for (albeit on cr@p money because they knew that I couldn't get another job with only 6 month's experience so they knew that they had me over a barrel).
Did I learn a lot in the initial 6 months? Hell, yes! The course was actually really good. That may just be that I hit it lucky in getting a really good lecturer, though.
Did I learn anything in the next six months? Hell, yes! You can't eat well on promises of jam tomorrow.
Would I have been better off sitting at home (not that I really had one at the time) with a copy of Herb Schildt's Teach Yourself C? Well, possibly, had I been able to afford a computer, but would I have got a job at the end of it? Probably not - there really weren't many jobs around in any field back in those days and a CV that said "I haven't got any qualifications but I taught myself to code" probably wouldn't have got me too many interviews, so for me at the time it was the only viable route.
But a 3 month bootcamp? Well, yes, I think you can get a pretty good grounding in 3 months providing that it's full time and providing that you're taught by a good teacher. I think it's perfectly possible to learn more about coding in a 3 month bootcamp than you'd learn in a 3 year CS degree but ... and it's a really big but ... would it leave you in an employable position?
Add in the possibility that you're paying a whole load of cash and there's no guarantee that you will get a decent teacher and it all sounds like a very bad idea. It's not just a case of risking the X-thousand in fees, there's also the costs of living through a period of zero income to factor in along with all the sundry expenses - even with an A1 training provider, the potential losses are massive. Factor in the possibility (probability perhaps) that the provider could well turn out to be dodgy and/or substandard and it starts to sound like asking someone to sell their house to buy a lottery ticket.
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Bloody well said and good on ya for making something of it.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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I hear there is also a pill to make your d*** bigger too.
Jeremy Falcon
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The way I see it, having a certain level of intelligence isn't too much too ask. I don't mean knowledge, I mean intelligence: The abiltiy to think critically and to deduce new knowledge from existing facts. Everyone with that inelligence can see for himself that those camps are a rip-off. Sure, they can get one started in the world of software engineering, but there's no way they can be the one-stop jumppad into the (well-paid) job.
If someone doesn't see that, it's really is his own fault.
Yes, I am blaming the victim here, but hey, if someone walks alone into a dark alley in the Bronx (or Berlin East, pick your poison) at night, then the victim is clearly to blame for stupidity. Same goes with those boot camps. If someone falls for clearly false promises, well, one has to learn about life somewhere.
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Pretty much a scam.
Yes, there are _loads_ of people who learn better with a teacher than just reading textbooks and doing some tutorials and then coding a few small projects to learn.
Unfortunately, those same people don't make the best developers - because after they've got the job, coders need ongoing development and training, and I've only once come across companies who will pay for formal training for developers. We're expected to learn on the job or train in our own time.
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I've been learning much the same way (with a lot of help from Code Project of course ). My job is pretty secure where I'm at, but if something ever happens here, I don't think any other HR department would consider me for an equivalent position based on the fact that I don't have that piece of paper from an accredited source that says I can do what I do now.
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Code boot camps are part of the for-profit education business. It's a sleazy business which exists to part fools from their money, particularly to siphon off federally insured tuition grant money. This money is loaned to students and guaranteed by the government (in the US). The student is responsible to repay the loans, and to determine that they are getting a good education. But the young and the desperate are not in a good position to judge quality or understand how burdensome the student loan debt will become if the education does not lead to a job.
- $12,500 would pay for two years at a public university or 4 years at a community college, but only three months at a coding boot camp.
- A 4 year degree in the US is about 1,800 hours of instruction, and probably about an equal number of hours of homework. An AA degree in the US is 900 hours of instruction, and an equal amount of homework. A boot camp that runs 8 hours a day, five days a week for 3 months (the poster's parameters) is about 500 hours of instruction and labs, and maybe another 200 hours of homework.
- Any "guarantee" of employment has to be read very carefully or it is meaningless. Is it a full time job? Is it permanent? Is it a software developer job? What does it pay compared to the market rate? If any of these things are not spelled out, the guarantee is worthless.
- Not all software jobs are created equal. A front-end job slinging HTML and a little JavaScript doesn't pay the same as a core developer position using C++ or Java, and has limited growth potential.
Now you make the call. Which option is worth the money? Which option provides the most instruction? Which candidate would you hire if you were the hiring manager.
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