Bootcamp Bubble?

Aaron,

I was considering a bootcamp too, but haven't heard about the bubble you are mentioning. Quite eye-opening! I'll stay tuned to this thread. It's hard to believe that something like RoR (which to me seems like a rising star) is falling out of the trend already. I was even considering sticking with PHP because, in the grand scheme of things, only a tiny portion of websites are made with new frameworks. They didn't quite prove their worth yet. Could it be that these schools are trying to justify their big tuition by covering new technologies which have no low-cost alternative?

Regarding the usefulness of bootcamp, I've always been fascinated though by the idea of "total immersion" type of learning. Seems to fit my extremist learning style. I think that's the key to the success of bootcamp (well, and also their connections with employers). I wonder if I can simulate that at home. But without a mentor, it'd take incredible willpower to keep fighting the unknowns on my own.

So what's your plan after discovering that a bootcamp might not be as whimsical as it seems? Are you still thinking about attending one anyway?

Hi,

so here in Europe I have a different view at bootcamps. Normally a bootcamp is called a kind of training, 1 or 2 weeks, preparing for a certification, e.g. Microsoft. First of all I think it is a question what kind of learning you prefer. If you enjoy learning with others, in a kind of classroom it's fine to choose the bootcamp. Especially if you're looking for a job and you have the chance to get in touch with potential employers. On the other if you like learning at home, by your own and you're happy with online communities, online support and at the end with an online job, treehouse could be the better choice. I got a lot of classroom trainings at the beginning of my IT career and the most out of them I didn't learn that much. Mostly it was driven by the Tech companies, they want you to show your engagement and take the certifications. You had to learn the stuff, because they think it matters. The really important things I learned in real live projects and not at those bootcamps or classroom trainings. I know a couple of people who had the same experience. So I'm very glad that there are now much more opportunities to choose from, for me the online learning is the best I ever had. I enjoy it every day. Of course there is still room for improvement, especially in the area of linking with the biz world. Not even with companies searching permanent employees, but with companies which are looking for project based cooperations. The search for a permanent job is maybe still better at the bootcamp, because you can get in touch with people who offer jobs. So it's not only a question what kind of learning you prefer, but also which kind of job you're looking for.

I think there are a lot of opportunities so that everyone can choose a learning adventure which is best for her/his individual learning behavior. And then decide which kind of job environment you love.

I wonder that there are more and more online learning places, online capabilities for all kind of business stuff, everything is online, but there are still only a very poor number of online or remote jobs. Do you think this number will rise up within the near future?

Hi Aaron! interesting post!

I don't have much of a reply for you right at this moment in time but I have just been accepted onto BitMaker Labs' program starting in October! Hopefully I will be able to give an inside-out perspective for you soon!

I'm planning to blog my experiences through-out although it does sound like I'll be loosing the luxury of free time from day 1 so might struggle to keep it consistent!

For now, although heavily biased by excitement and optimistic-ness, my reply would be along these lines:

The language learnt is not so important: RoR is great but does get a lot of bad press for being difficult to scale with compared to others. Portland CS have changed up their curriculum to focus on JS frameworks and that's probably a good move to stand out from the other bootcamps, most of which do teach RoR.

At the end of the day, any language that a developer works with is likely to be replaced/changed/updated at some point, which ever one is currently hot is sort of just the flavour of the week - something new will eventually take over as the hot topic.

I hope and expect that the syntax that I'll be learning will be much less important than the actual programming concepts etc.

That's just my opinion though :)

Here's my "blog" (no posts just yet!)

Hi there! I teach Epicodus, another code school here in Portland. I'm just over halfway through our first class, and I have a lot of interest from local employers who say that it is very hard to find good developers. I also run a software company, and I just paid a recruiter a lot of money to help me find a good developer, who I also pay a lot of money to. I don't know anything about that LA Times article, but it definitely doesn't match my experience.

I think Treehouse is an awesome site and it's one I used when I was learning how to code (way back before it was called Treehouse!). And I also think that being in a class, with other people and with guidance from a teacher, is really valuable, too. It takes a LOT of time and energy to learn how to code at a professional level.

I'd be more than happy to answer any other questions about learning to code at a school like Epicodus.

Hello there,

I think there are a few things missing from this conversation.

First, I am going to generously presume that no one running or attending one of these bootcamps believes that after $x weeks, everyone who goes in with zero knowledge of programming is magically transformed into a senior-level full-stack developer making $100K+. I also hope most will agree that it is shortsighted to use this delusional promise?/expectation as the measure for the potential value of attending an intensive bootcamp.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I will share my thoughts. :)

One thing that is really important to me when deciding what and where and how and from whom I want to learn is their teaching philosophy. Not all schools are created equal, nor will they ever be, so for anyone seriously considering a bootcamp, I recommend digging a little deeper. Take the time to learn as much about the people who run and teach at these bootcamps, as you do about trying to figure out "what you'll get out of them". There are worlds of difference between the aims and motivations of these alternative-edu, mostly for-profit models. I recently listened to this interview on the Big Web Show with Avi Flombaum, the founder of the Flatiron School, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to understand why motivations and teaching philosophy matters.

Two. Talk to people who attended some of these programs and ask them (or read) about their experiences. The FOSS Outreach Program for Women does an awesome job of documenting their program and the experiences of their participants, most of who keep very detailed blogs about their experiences with the program. Since January 2013, the blog posts of all participants are aggregated on Women in Free Software Planet.

Three. Different people with different degrees of programming knowledge and learning styles are going to get varying results from attending any of these programs. And different programs are geared towards different levels of leveling-up. i.e. some are for beginner-beginners, some have a bunch of pre-work to complete before you can even step foot in the door. I would be skeptical of any program that promises employability and doesn't require some degree of knowledge before your 12-week-orgy-with-code. For a nuanced look at how all these things have played out for some, for real, so far, check out Alice Troung's super in-depth article, "The Truth About Hack Schools" in Fast Company .

Last, I do not work for any of these schools, nor have I attended one myself. But I do have a zillion years of learning and teaching experience via traditional education models, alternative models, and the d.i.y. / self-learn-till-I-die model. I also did my homework. :)

Anyway, I hope this is helpful to someone out there!

Great points, Emily! Just to address a couple of them for Epicodus:

Teaching philosophy: Don't take our word for how we teach: instead, go to learnhowtoprogram.com and see our entire course curriculum, online, for free.

Past attendees: Follow @epicodus on Twitter; we regularly re-tweet our students tweets and share their blog posts. We also let the public drop in every Wednesday evening.

Pre-work: learnhowtoprogram.com includes all our pre-work, and starts out assuming no programming knowledge. You need to complete the first chapter before being accepted at Epicodus.

I only responded because the thread started with somebody who was specifically interested in code schools in Portland. I did Treehouse back when it was Think Vitamin :)

Michael Kaiser-Nyman -

I've looked at a lot of guides on learning to program and most of them quite frankly and poorly organized and have major gaps to such an extent I would consider them to be pedagogically compromised.

I'm impressed with organization of learnhowtoprogam.com.

James Barnett , My experience was incredible! I have no regrets in making the decision or spending the money that I had originally been saving for a masters in ocean-science. My life has changed for the better and I only see it getting more and more interesting (as opposed to the more and more boring it would have been had I stuck with the original plan!).

I had an amazing time in a new, exiting city & made some great friends. I now earn twice as much as I did before attending Bitmaker and have been told that, at my skill level, if I was to start contracting in 6 months time I'd likely double that again - so the course will have paid for itself in no time at all - compare that with the student debt I racked up whilst studying a near-worthless degree and it's obvious which had more value!

And, as I'm sure a lot of people would agree, it's not about the money! I love my job, I get to sit around doing something that I've essentially spent the last year doing for free!

Of cause not all this can be attributed to Bitmaker alone. Treehouse was a huge help, CodeSchool, CodeAccademy, Learnstreet et al and the bunch of books and articles I've read in the past year have also been a big help.

And that brings me to quite an important point for anybody who reads this and is thinking of attending one of these immersive schools...

They are a Catalyst. They will speed up your learning for 9-10-12 weeks or however long that particular course is. You'll be putting in 12-14 hours a day if you're doing it right, with mentors on hand to take you through any problems you might have, right there and then. It makes sense then, to use this resource at the right time and I'd say that the right time is once you have exhausted the more accessible resources like Treehouse and the rest that I mentioned earlier.

As James mentioned in an earlier post - these schools are largely for profit (As a lot of schools are on some level). This has some good to it, as well as some bad.

The good: Their profits go down if their students have a crappy time and tell the internet about it - so there is a great deal of pressure to see that students have a good time, learn loads and place in a job afterwards.

The Bad: In the case of my cohort of Bitmaker, they brought on a few guys who hadn't wrote a lick of code - because there was only 2 weeks left before the course was due to start. One guy ended up living with myself and another student for the duration. We all moved in about a week before the course and this guy was doing the pre-work in that week and was panicking about his ability to get the stuff done. He didn't get it done as he really didn't have the time to learn it all. This continued throughout the courses duration and I noticed a few big problems that came about from this... Firstly, he compared himself to others, he was an older guy surrounded by ~20 year olds who seemed to be flying along with the assignments and projects while he was stuck on the basics. He took up a lot on mentor time, asking questions that didn't benefit others. In short, the few guys who were brought on late just to fill up spots should have been told to wait for the next cohort and learn as much as they can in the mean-time. I actually talked with staff at Bitmaker who agree with this and will avoid the same thing happening in the future.

Like most things in life, the more you put in, the more you get out. If you want to fast track your learning and really make the leap then these schools are great but be 110% sure that it is something you want to do first!

That site was built, ironically, by the guy who runs the dev bootcamp Epicodus in Portland, OR.

I started Epicodus and I built learnhowtoprogram.com :)