I'm considering going to a front-end coding school and trust the people here more than other forums. I'm curious if those who attended, or know someone who attended, enjoyed or disliked the experience and why. Is it worth saving 10-20K and just subscribe to Lynda or Pluralsight? Thanks in advanced.
I went to the "graduation ceremony" of a NY school's 10 week program about a year and a half ago. (It wasn't GA) A few observations:
* The quality of the "graduates" varied immensely. Some graduates had been programmers before starting the course, and those students were just there to sharpen their skills. Others had no background in programming.
* All of the projects were group projects, so weaker students were able to hide behind stronger students and couldn't actually point at any code that they had been solely responsible for.
* All of the projects had been conceived of by the school, and so were very very limited in ambition and scope. (It took some digging to find this out, the groups were presenting their projects as if they had conceived of them)
* One of the student told me nearly verbatim: "We learned more in 10 weeks than we would have in our first 2 years of a traditional C.S. degree." I told this student that that was preposterous and to please never repeat that sentence again.
* The students had obviously been well prepped on their interviewing techniques and showed alot of enthusiasm and (over)confidence. But the average proficiency level was way below junior programmer status, and for 2/3 of the students I didn't see how they could work without active mentoring.
* I kept in touch with one of the students after graduation, and he said that virtually all of the students received offers . So hey, the demand for programmers is really that high regardless of quality. I couldn't see hiring one of these devs for what seemed (at the time) to be a 70-80k starting salary range, when another 20k would get me a legitimate junior developer. Of course, as I said before there were some quality candidates coming out of the program, but those were only the students who were programmers before embarking on the course.
I didn't go to one of those 3-Month programs, but I've interviewed some people who have.
Just like any other education program, you're going to get out what you put in. There is only so much that can be covered in a 3 month period of time. When starting from, essentially, nothing the instructors have to really push on the gas to get through a lot of material to get their students to a place where they can start being productive.
Unfortunately this means that a lot of fundamental programming concepts are glazed over, or skipped all together. That's not inherently bad, but the onus falls on the student to really research more, and apply lessons taught in different ways. A lot of people don't have the motivation to do this - and that really shows through when interview time comes around. It's very easy to spot the graduates who followed the program and haven't put in the extra time to understand all the information they've been given.
I think the key is to really evaluate what your expectations are. No one here can tell you which course to take, or which is best for you. It really depends on the style of learner that you are, how much work you're going to put in, and what you expect to come out the other side of the process with.
TL;DNR: don't ask whether or not a bootcamp is worth it; ask whether not you're considering the RIGHT ONE. Bootcamp > online courses.
I went through Fullstack Academy in NYC and received five job offers. (Full disclosure--worked as a teaching fellow at Fullstack shortly afterward, so I was on the payroll.) Had one of the best learning experiences of my life there. Absolutely worth the cost of tuition--there are real tangible pedagogical differences between distance/online learning like One Month Rails or Lynda and a physical classroom. You'll be a stronger coder, by an order of magnitude, from an in-person bootcamp.
The signal-to-noise ratio in the bootcamp space is currently EXTREMELY low. Currently, there are really only two data points prospective students can act on 1) the name-brand value of the first-to-market bootcamps, like App Academy and Hacker School, and 2) testimonials and hiring experiences of former students.
Neither of these data points are reliable. Plenty of students fall through the cracks at the oldest, most well-established bootcamps, and anecdotes (like this one, incidentally) can't represent the average experience.
Even though I had a wonderful, incredibly-high-leverage experience at Fullstack, I've known students who have gone through other bootcamps and have had HORRIBLE experiences--lackadaisical instructors working on side projects, courses exclusively by recent grads of the bootcamp with no industry experience, etc.
If you're considering bootcamps, COLLECT AS MANY SIGNALS ABOUT INSTRUCTION QUALITY AS POSSIBLE. This means speaking to former students, speaking to instructors and co-founders (if they're a bootcamp of any quality, they'll allow prospective students to chat with co-founders), sitting in on classes, visiting the school.
The bootcamp space is lucrative, and becoming increasingly crowded. Before someone comes along with a method of ranking them, DO YOUR RESEARCH.
I did Hacker School, which is free to attend, because it's funded by recruiting. It was life-changing, and provided me with a great network that I still talk to on a day-to-day basis with a very, very wide range of experience and interests, and it also landed me a great job, and I'm confident that in the future I can reach out to the Hacker School community again when I'm looking for a new opportunity.
If you're considering any of these "bootcamps" send Hacker School an application. It's not a traditional school, or even a traditional bootcamp, but you'll learn buckets and at the end there's a job fair with many respected companies represented, and a support network to help you find a job that will be a good fit and will pay you fairly.
I was also able to squeeze by on a budget of about $5k for living expenses in NY when I did it, so this would be more expensive (but much better) than online courses, but much cheaper than pay-to-play bootcamps.
Hackerschool is a bit different than what the OP is asking for though.
"I don't know how to program. Can I do Hacker School?
No, sorry. Hacker School is currently only for people who already know how to code. Think of it like a writers workshop. We're here to help people become great novelists, but you have to already know English and be comfortable writing essays." - https://www.hackerschool.com/faq
Sounds like the op doesn't have any experience and wants to learn to code for the first time.
Yeah, I read his/her post a few times to try to figure out if (s)he had any experience and wasn't sure, and not seeing anyone mentioning Hacker School, I thought it'd add to the discussion.
Since (s)he doesn't specify his/her level of experience, I thought it'd be worth bringing up.
I haven't gone to a coding school, but the ones that teach Ruby on Rails (yes, I now know you're asking about front-end specifically, but that's not the case in the question's title) claim a very high placement rate, certainly higher than what you'd expect for a newbie of 10 weeks of training at home.
I think regardless of the quality of the instruction, the fact is that when you pay $10K+ for anything, you aren't going to schlub it off...in fact, these schools are pretty much run with the expectation that you're treating it as a full-time job during session, learning/working 6-8 hours a day at minimum. As great as the opportunities there are for learn-it-yourself, nothing beats the financial/social pressure of a structured class...and at the very least, employers have some validation that you can handle a structured pace (and part of this validation comes from the reputation of the school).
In fact, I'd argue much of the value of a traditional college degree is simply a signal that says, "Hey, I'm a relatively safe hire because I'm an adult who has figured out how to raise/access $50K-$150K, legally, have passed a battery of competency and social tests, and have managed to get along with hundreds/thousands of other students/faculty for four years without committing an egregious felony"
I did General Assembly's Web Development Immersive program, which emphasized back end a little more. I had no coding experience going in and got my first dev job 3 weeks after I graduated.
I wouldn't have been able to teach myself nearly as much using online resources. I learn much better being accountable to a group for my work, and there were so many times I got stuck and needed to just ask another person for help. I also learned how to work on a dev team, not just in my app-building silo. So, GA was worth it for me.
That being said, it depends on your background and your goals. Learning front end to change careers is different than learning it to be able to better communicate with front end devs at your work.
I personally wouldn't get $10k worth of knowledge from online resources, but your motivation may vary.
I get the sense that not all programs are created equally. I personally attended Hacker School in NYC. I made the decision because I discovered my interest in programming after I had already graduated from college, and at the time I knew very few programmers. A workshop like Hacker School seemed like a great place to go where I could focus on improving my abilities and surround myself with other people who had similar interests. It worked out great. I'm currently employed as a rails developer at a small company and I love what I do. I can honestly say that going to Hacker School was the best decision I ever made.
That being said, in my current position I've interviewed a number of applicants who graduated from rails specific bootcamps and I've been less than impressed. A lot of them seem to be able to build rails applications but have limited or no ability to write ruby code. We had one applicant with an impressive looking portfolio who couldn't tell us how to reverse an array, despite coaching from us.
I get the sense that a lot of the technology specific boot camps do a lot of hand holding and have the students follow a pretty rigidly designed curriculum. The result being that you have a bunch of graduates who technically built some applications, but have little understanding of how they did it.
So what I would ultimately say, is that the value of attending a 3 month program depends almost entirely on which program it is you're thinking of attending. My rule of thumb would be to stay away from technology specific programs and try to find one that focuses more on concepts and principles.
Of course, this is all based on my personal experience, other people here might disagree, and naturally YMMV.
I was the lead instructor for MakerSquare's first cohort, and I've also taught shorter, on-site courses for clients like Comcast (Lord forgive me), Huffington Post, and LinkedIn. I'm also exclusively self-taught, no CS degree. Here's my take.
You need to know your own learning style to make the decision on the investment. I'm pretty obsessive and learn things better on my own working towards a goal than I do in a classroom environment. (I was homeschooled, so whether I thrived in a homeschool environment because my brain works this way, or my brain works this way because I was homeschooled, or some of both, I'm not sure.) This plays out into my real life, too—my wife has found if she sends me follow-up emails on some things, I'm better able to act on it, as I have a lot of trouble retaining auditory information. (She is very gracious.)
But many people thrive in a classroom environment, and for them, a coding school and the energy of being in a room with 30 people driven towards a common goal makes starting the journey a lot easier. So, analyze your own learning style from the past, and weigh this into your decision.
Another angle to consider is that being in a program with MakerSquare is like getting into YC: it buys you access to a lot of wicked intelligent people who you might not get to rub shoulders with otherwise. I know some really, really smart developers in Austin. Many of them mentor MakerSquare students, and the students are privileged to have access to their time and expertise. If I could go back to when I first started learning and pay $20K to have these guys mentor me, I would do it in a heartbeat. But if you go this route, make a conscious effort to seek out their help and learn from them.
Finally, if cost is a major concern, I would look at Austin's MakerSquare program. Cost of living is lower than say SF, tuition is lower (I think, haven't cost compared in a while), and our community is very welcoming to motivated beginner developers.
Good luck! I'm nj@third.io if you want to ask me more questions offline. :)
I attended MakerSquare this past spring with 20 other people and it was well worth it. The program was intense, but it taught software engineering principles and everyone that graduated was able to build a full RoR application at graduation. It did not "teach to the test", but instead Almost everyone that I graduated with 4 months ago have found jobs with a better pay than they had been making previously. A couple things to keep in mind:
Pick a school that has a good reputation. The reputation of the school will help you a lot during your job search.
Get ready to work hard! My class worked 6-7 days a week for 9+ hours/day. Cram as much information into your head as you can during the 12 weeks.
Pick a school that has a career services section! This was invaluable for everyone that graduated from MakerSquare. The career services team sets up connections with companies that are hiring and lets them know what to expect from the school's graduates.
So why go to a bootcamp? Yes, you can learn how to code on your own, but you will learn a lot more in the 3 month program than you can on your own in 3 months. The other benefits? Bounce questions off of teachers for a full 3 months (and more). Work with the other students that are there for the same reasons you are. Network with your classmates, other school alumni and professionals in the industry that know about your school. Have a team at your school working to get you hired whenever you need a job. The benefits greatly outweigh the costs if you work hard.
I was part of App Academy's inaugural class, summer 2012, when they taught iOS in 9 weeks instead of RoR in 12. I found them on HN and applied. I didn't enjoy my work anymore and had nothing to lose.
I took it as a summer sabbatical of sorts from my marketing job. When I got back I interviewed for an iOS position at the same company, got it, and spend just under two years learning from an amazing mobile team.
Almost two months ago I left and joined a startup, ironically founded by someone who briefly did App Academy while I was there.
Not only was it incredibly rigorous and tons of fun, it was by far the best career decision I've ever made.
I'm an App Academy graduate from the January 2014 class.
To answer your questions:
I enjoyed the experience. This is by far the easiest question. I had zero prior experience in software engineering or computer science, but I've always been a puzzle-solving sort of person. To go from a life of dishwashing / retail to all-day high-speed learning was absolutely a positive experience.
Is it worth saving money, and just learning on your own? Maybe. In order to get the same result as I would have at a/A, I would have spent a lot more time hunting down answers to questions online, googling naive things like "what does this error mean? why is it still here, I solved the problem!" I also would have needed the self-discipline and insight to understand what exercises would best teach me core concepts, and pad my github with visible work. Finally, I doubt I could have stuck to the timeline. Ruby in two weeks was hard, I don't think I could have done it 100% on my own. For me, it was worth it.
*Did it work? I got two offers in the 85k-90k range. If I'd wanted to look longer, I could have gone higher.
Back in fall 2012, I attended Starter League in Chicago for their 3 months Rails bootcamp. Prior to joining the bootcamp, I had experienced with Rails through Michael Hartl tutorial and by participating in different hackathons. Taking part in SL required an appreciable upfront investment from my part: moving from Montreal to Chicago for three months, $6K tuition fee (at the time), leaving my job and not working for the duration of the program. I am extremely happy with the results and I am now working as a lead data analyst and I am coding in different languages (python, javascript) as part of my daily job. One of the upside of a great bootcamp is the streamlined learning process. Jeff Cohen, the instructor at the time at SL, built an incredible curriculum for students, enabling deep understanding of the underlying mechanics of Rails. Furthermore, the immersion is a very interesting aspect of a bootcamp. Every day, you are surrounded by people who left their job and family to learn to code. These people want to change careers, start a tech business etc. This can be very motivating. Tips: Prior to joining a bootcamp, know exactly what you want from it. Do a bunch of tutorials, read books about coding, participate in hackathons and get to a level where you can build stuff with code. Too many people haven't tried much before joining a bootcamp and expect to get miraculously good at coding. It's not the case. Learning to code is hard, know what you are getting into. Also, if you expect to have a dream job on a silver plater at the end of the bootcamp, this probably won't be the case. You'll have to work hard for it and chances you'll have a few more months of learnings necessary prior to a full-time gig that interests you. You can learn to code online. A bootcamp can speed up the learning process and is a great learning experience and good for networking but it is not required to learn to code. Know exactly what you want from a bootcamp.
I recently talked at length with someone who had just finished one of these programs, and learned that they do an incredible amount of "teaching to the test". That is to say, they very specifically and intentionally designed the program to teach people the things that are typically discussed during interviews. The number one goal didn't seem to be teaching programming or software engineering so much as teaching you how to pass the interview to get a job as a developer.
That said, the person I spoke to had created a project similar in scope and quality to what I'd expect a CS undergrad to do as a class project, and clearly had the ability to get things done. I'd guess someone from such a program could be a good developer, but with big gaps in understanding beneath the surface ability to do Rails or Node.JS or whatever the bootcamp used. If you're only doing html/css/javascript then the coding school is probably a sufficient education to get a web dev/design job.
This is what almost every undergrad comes out of college as. Someone who has the basics of programming but no real idea of what to do. (as expected). But it also shows someone who is 1) trainable, 2) wants to learn, 3) can learn quickly. Hiring managers see these as good qualities to have, and hopefully the camp also provided some connections too.
Went to a 3 month code school. Had multiple, full-time job offers after the program was done. Took one of them. My company has gone back and hired 5 more people from the same program.
Worked out well for me, and I learned much more attending in person than I would have just doing the online stuff (many of which I had pounded through before going to the bootcamp)
If I found the correct twitter account, it looks like he went through the DevPoint Labs program (which seems to have a broken site now) in Utah. Then hired by https://www.masteryconnect.com/
I've been a hiring partner at one of these "schools" run by a former colleague. The quality of hires was abysmal overall, and gave me a bad taste for these sorts of places in the future. My fear would be that after attending such a place, you may come out and be hit with a negative opinion of your skills just because of where you learned them.
Even if you can't say which school specifically, can you give more detail about the city or tech stack? I'd imagine Utah + Ruby has different outcomes than San Francisco + Ruby.
Sorry, just saw your question. I don't want to say specifically, but the school is an ASP.NET MVC (mostly) shop in Houston. They teach some front end UI also using various frameworks (jQuery, Backbone, etc) and backend is all C# (using Razor in the CSHTML). Lots of folks in the program have never coded in their life, so it's mostly exposure to what programming for the web is like, but the folks have difficulty putting it into practice.
In our experience, recent grads usually come from a CS or engineering background, so they at least have a strong familiarity with algorithmic thinking, and a much stronger exposure to various programming languages, and comprehend what a data structure is.
The folks from the school we've interviewed with are people who, mostly, have never even seen a programming language before they went to the "school"/program. Most of them had zero background in anything abstract enough to really grok programming, and it was painfully obvious (to us, and to most of the candidates we interviewed as well).
Is it something specialized which requires at least some base knowledge and currently in high demand and low supply, such as "angularjs development"?
Is there enough trusted positive feedback from former attendees?
Can you afford it? (20K is comparable to what I make in a year, so not a choice for me, unless I want to live out of tuna sandwiches the rest of the year. And I don't think any summer school is worth that. But if that's pocket money for you, why not?)
Have you considered an internship? Like, learning by hard work among more experienced partners and maybe even get paid for it if you prove yourself useful? Then, after you've finished, you can prove you can code by simply showing the things you've coded. Just like the school, but in a professional environment.
In many companies you just need to be willing to work hard and show a sincere great enthusiasm for the position in order to get an internship. A guy (a foreign student) just finished a 200-hour internship (about four weeks) in the company where I've just started working. He definitely has something to add to his CV, and he got paid for it. When he goes to a job interview he can say something like: "I learned how to do it with the help of my mentor and then I did this simple but useful app, all by myself. Plus I got paid for doing it, so I know my current skills are worth something".
I am not saying a coding school is a bad choice, only that there may be a few other options more suitable for you...
Disclaimer: I'm going to be as honest as possible.
I went to MakerSquare in Austin, TX and while it was one of the best decisions for me I can see how it is not for everyone. I got the incredible chance to work at MKS as a fellow after my program was done, so I got a behind the scenes look at how it all comes together. Although they (and most schools) do a lot of vetting to find the truly driven individuals who are perfect for this format of learning, it is certainly an imperfect science and inevitably some people attend who would have been better off going it alone.
My advice is to start small, go to the free lessons on codeacademy, codeschool or treehouse and learn enough to build a simple front-end app (such as a number guessing game or a comment system). After that you should have a better idea as to if you want to plunk down the chunk of change to take it to the next step and attend one of these programs.
Although a lot of programs market themselves as career changing opportunities I would advise you to not pay this much money on your education just for a better job (some see it as a purely financial investment with their future salaries being the return.) The reason I say this is because even though you might make more money, and even if you are good at programming that doesn't necessarily mean you will love doing it day in and day out. And that has more impact on you being a consistently great developer than most would think.
All in all This is an investment in your future self, and as such you have to ask yourself if you really want to be in front of a computer half slinging half slogging code every single day for it to pay off.
$10k + is a lot of money. But really there is no better investment you can make.
I attended MakerSquare in Austin when their program was 9 weeks long, not 12. A week after graduation I had 3 job offers that promised substantial returns.
Part of MakerSquare's prep is going through some prework on codeschool and codeacademy. I hated CodeSchool. The sound effects were annoying and I felt the video went too quickly for an intro. I found I rather read something, tinker with it until I understand and then move on. So why not read a whole bunch of blogs and learn stuff. Well you can but you're missing the entire point of a school. Interactions with others.
The biggest part you're missing out on is the problems and solutions other people have come across or invented. Given a problem you and I will come up with two different solutions and if we share our solutions we would come up with a even better solution. You see things differently than I do and we both will learn from the experience. Hence why a ton of people love pair programming ( which is something you will miss out on on your own ).
It is very likely that you will work with others. In fact coding is very social. Working with others in code is a valuable skill to have because it teaches you how to separate your personal feelings from your code.
Yeah you can save a bunch of money by not going to school. Yeah you can probably learn and get a job as a developer if you read a bunch of free stuff. But then ask yourself why does a society spend billions upon billions of dollars every year on free public education when really we should be spending all that money on books and tutorials.
I finished a 2-month full-stack JS class here in Seattle in June and really enjoyed it. I am/was primarily a LAMP stack/WordPress developer and wanted to expand my mind and skill set a bit. I was one of 2 or 3 people in the class who had more than a couple of months of programming experience (~ 6 years in my case), the rest were very new to the discipline.
I really enjoyed the process but it's very much a "get out what you put in" process. It was 6 hours per day, 5 days a week with homework. I could easily have doubled that time outside of class with additional reading, assignments, and projects. Still, I attended every lecture and finished all the assignments and now feel much more comfortable with the landscape in general.
The advantages a class has over self-directed learning are myriad:
- Paying for a class provides internal motivation to stay focused
- Someone helps you decide what to learn and in what order
- Most provide job-application assistance (my program in particular did an excellent job with this)
- You have someone being paid to answer all of your questions
- You have specific assignments to complete and are held accountable
- Teaching those around you is the highest form of learning
- You get a dedicated space to work and learn
From the other comments here, I fully agree that:
- 'The quality of the "graduates" varied immensely'
- 'All of the projects were group projects, so weaker students were able to hide behind stronger students' - you get out what you put in
- 'COLLECT AS MANY SIGNALS ABOUT INSTRUCTION QUALITY AS POSSIBLE'
- 'I also learned how to work on a dev team, not just in my app-building silo'
If you're passionate and willing to put in the effort and the hours, you'll learn more in a (good) 3 month intensive than in 12 months of trying to teach yourself online. That's my experience anyway.
Not a direct answer to your question, since I graduated from a traditional university with a degree in computer engineering and have been doing contract work for over a decade, but I frequently take classes through Coursera and have been pleasantly surprised with how well they are put together and how much I have learned. Also, it's free.
Are you just looking for a job in the industry, or switching careers? If this is a career switch I would strongly consider a bachelors degree in CS if possible--perhaps a little further down the line if it isn't feasible now. You'll learn a lot more and be exposed to stuff outside just front-end development.
Just realize that 3 months might be long enough to teach you how to take a boilerplate and slap some logic in it, but it will take much, much longer to really feel proficient at anything. I have a bachelors and have been a professional developer for almost 10 years and only now really feel the confidence of knowing how to tackle most problems that come my way. There's really no shortcut around the 10,000 hour rule, especially for software development.
I'm going to buck the trend and say that going to a 2 or 4 year college gives you a lot more than just the skills to program. It gives you social connections. It teaches you to do things you don't want to do (electives at times). It gives a deeper knowledge of your field. It exposes you to seasoned experts (professors). It also helps you branch out and learn things you never thought that you'd have interest in. Oh and intramurals and relationships and friendships and shared events and more.
If you want to just work for the rest of your life, by all means, learn to program on specific thing and get a job to pay for something or live in the cube for the rest of your life.
I love programming and I love learning new things, but I value a lot more too.
What about doing both? I've spent about 5 years in college, including 3 years of time-wasting on an economics/applied communications/English degree, then a 2 year diploma in Computer Systems Technology, which covered programming and hardware as well as other useful stuff such as technical writing and public speaking. I did co-ops and got my current job through the college job board. So I think I've had the full college experience. I also have on the job experience as a programmer. However, I want to learn more, get out of web development and into business software, learn some new programming languages. I do best in a classroom environment, but all the "hacker boot camps" and the like that I've seen seem much too basic for where I'm at right now. What route should I take?
In my experience (I'm an instructor at one of these schools), the vast majority of incoming students already have a 4-year degree in a different area. I think for many people who may already be at a point in their life where they are paying off student loan debt, starting a family, etc., going without a significant income for another 2- or 4-years would be completely out of the question whereas a 3-month program is something they may be able to weather.
I think this is a good option for those folks that have an unrelated 4-year degree and are looking for a change of scenery in their professional lives.
Even at an entry level I would have a hard time considering someone with only ~500 hours (60 days/8 hour classes) of programming experience. If you want to get into something new make sure you put time and effort into it no matter what you do.
It totally depends on your learning style and also on the school. The quality of schools vary a lot (see http://www.switchup.org for reviews) so it's important to do your research.
The purpose of these schools is to force you to immerse in a learning environment for about 10 weeks - which will help you go up the learning curve. There are also some cheaper schools you should consider, also on www.switchup.org. Talk to alums, instructors, and read as much online before committing to anything!
Happy to chat more if you want to shoot me an email at jonathan@switchup.org.
I know a close friend who went to coding school. She basically wanted to change her career and this was a good way of going about it. Coding schools are usually worth it if you are
1. Motivated enough to make it work - There will be a lot of long hours and toil. You will be trying to cram in a 4 year degree in a 3 month course so be prepared.
2. Question the logic - Programming languages came from humans and not the other way around. So there will be a distinct train of thought to how a system works. Never shy away from asking this. Never shy away from asking the seemingly dumb questions. You will be much more comfortable with a scenario if you know the mechanics of how something works
3. Focus on system design instead of UI - UI and UX experience correlates strongly with experience. System design experience (how do i code this particular component?, Design patterns etc) is contingent on you having strong fundamentals. So focus on that. It will make you a good engineer and not just a coder.
Lynda etc is very self driven and you dont get to have the same immersive experience a la General Assembly. If you do go the Lynda route, try out something like AirPair to complement the experience.
> You will be trying to cram in a 4 year degree in a 3 month course so be prepared.
Sorry, but this is ridiculous. What you learn at a typical "coding school" and what you learn at university is almost completely orthogonal. Coding schools are focused on teaching practical skills, while academic courses are focused on teaching theoretical foundations.
The former usually makes more employable than the latter. Many university graduates are missing the practical knowledge/experience with technologies that are used in the industry. Not having the theoretical foundations is fine for 80% of the jobs out there, which involve "applying" some kind of web framework.
However, there are many jobs (often with higher pay) that require theoretical knowledge (algorithms, low-level architecture, statistics and machine learning, distributed system) that are not taught at coding schools, but part of a standard university curriculum.
Where are you getting 10k-20k from? Is that dollars or rupees?
That said, I personally signed up for PluralSight a couple of years ago on their "Individual" $29/month plan. I found it useful for the things I wanted to quickly on-ramp with.
I also used Lynda and didn't have many complaints about the quality of the material there (I was struggling with HTML/CSS layouts :) ).
I went to www.thisismetis.com and yep, it worked. Got a sweet job. I know lots of others that went to other schools that were successful. The trick is to love web development. You have to really be a geek about it. If you love it and passionate about it, itll work. If youre doing it for money or other reasons, it won't.
I graduated from Dev Bootcamp in San Francisco a couple months ago, and have since been working at SaaS startup in the city. My background prior to the bootcamp was in business and finance, so it was a big career jump.
The variety of backgrounds and skill levels are enormous so it's honestly hard to say if a bootcamp is better for you vs. just learning on your own. There were people in the program who really could have just learned all the material by themselves - they were very quick learners and even had experience in programming. There were other people who couldn't fully grasp the subject matter even after going through the whole program.
Also the people who got the jobs they wanted after the program had to take a lot of initiative and put a ton of effort to overcome the 'Imposter Syndrome' of feeling like we weren't ACTUALLY coders and couldn't compete with some of the more traditional programmers in the workforce who had majors in Computer Science.
More than the material itself, Dev Bootcamp's big takeaway for me was helping us be comfortable with confusion and having the confidence to fight through and try to understand things that we had never seen before. 9 weeks doesn't sound like a long time, but when you are faced with something brand new and confusing every single day, surrounded by others in the same boat as you, and have the resources around you (teachers, coaches and Google) to fight through and understand the material, you come out of it really having the confidence that you can learn anything with some effort and time.
As an example, the entire length of Dev Bootcamp was focused on Ruby on Rails, but for our final projects my group made a client-side web application completely in JavaScript and HTML5 using technology we didn't learn in the bootcamp at all. The bootcamp had drilled a level of confidence into us that we could pick up any technology (something common in the actual workplace), and that was a level I couldn't seem to get to on my own using online resources.
$10k-$20k for a coding school? That's way too much. Try Treehouse[0] before you do that and if you feel you still need a classroom experience take a class at an adult vocational school or city college.
I haven't done a code bootcamp myself but we did hire a junior developer for our startup who had done a such a program in SF and had very minor previous coding experience & education. He has learnt well and fast and is now a valuable member of our team.
I completed thecodepath.com iOS course (not a fulltime course though) and it helped me alot. Some of my friends who completed Android successfully moved from their current jobs to Android dev related jobs.
Thank you all so much for the responses. Very much appreciated. I want to take the time to read through each of them and understand them so I may take a while to respond. Thank you so much again! I hope this will also help others :)
TL;DR: I graduated from Hack Reactor last year and received four job offers, the one I accepted was close to the average salary Hack Reactor advertises, and the 99.XX% hiring rate is actually true. I credit the program's success to their selectivity, the resources they pour into hiring instructors from the industry, and choosing to focus on JavaScript. You can read my review of HR on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Reviews-of-Hack-Reactor/review/Jake-McG...
I graduated from Yale with a history degree, then taught high school science in Mississippi, then stayed on for an extra year to lobby for charter school legalization in Mississippi. Given that background, I'd like to think I'm someone who can be thrown into new situations and learn quickly, so the bootcamp format was attractive to me. I agree that it's not for everyone though.
I found Hack Reactor through the Twitter account of a graduate in their second class. I was pretty skeptical about giving $17000 to some strangers in San Francisco, but I asked a lot of questions and was impressed with their answers: they didn't ask students to repeat sections like Dev Bootcamp, they've only asked students to leave for extreme failures to act appropriately towards students and staff, and the instructors (especially Marcus Phillips) have bonkers credentials. I decided to take the plunge.
The program is intense (6 days/week, 11 hours/day minimum) but if I was going to be unemployed for three months I would rather put all my efforts into learning than having free time. The first six weeks were instruction with two-day sprints, progressing from algorithms and data structures on to the front-end and ending with back-end (Ruby/Sinatra briefly, then a deeper dive into Node, then SQL and NoSQL databases). The second six weeks I did paid contract work through the program and worked on an open-source government transparency app using Angular and Node. When I went to interview it was great having a fully-functional Angular/Node app to discuss, and it seemed like employers felt a little better being able to inspect an actual product I had built.
Throughout the program we did practice interview problems every morning, several of which I got as whiteboard questions during my on-site interviews! (It's pretty cool to tell an enterprise interviewer "I'm happy to do that problem, but I just want you to know I've seen it before.")
Maybe the biggest surprise was that after the program was over, I picked up books like "Cracking the Coding Interview" and realized how much of it the program had already addressed without me knowing it. (I recently bought "High Performance JavaScript" and was genuinely surprised how much of it was just the way Hack Reactor taught me to write JavaScript.)
I was sort of worried the entire time I was in the program that it was all a big scam, like we'd show up one day and the office would be empty with wires dangling out of the walls and these guys had made off with $17000. I kept waiting for it to fall apart... and then it didn't. I got four job offers within a week of graduating and the final salary was well within the band advertised by Hack Reactor. I took on about $15000 in debt to do it and I'm on track to pay it all off within a year of graduating. It was definitely worth it financially.
I ended up at a startup (Ziploop) using the MEAN stack and I really love it. I wanted to be humble about my post-bootcamp professional development: I know that I have a lot to learn and so I want to collaborate with supportive senior engineers -- especially about CompSci fundamentals I missed out on in college -- while also building more expertise in JavaScript that a lot of CS grads don't have. I felt like I was able to contribute value to my employer my first week on the job without any hand-holding. We ended up hiring two more engineers from Hack Reactor as the company has grown and we're pretty impressed with the skills new Hack Reactor graduates are leaving with.
At least in terms of starting salary and job prospects, Hack Reactor grads are significantly ahead of typical 4 year CS grads, even those from great schools. That said I think there's a huge difference in variance in CS degree holders.
Somehow, a lot of people graduate with CS degrees from respected programs without actually being able to solve typical software engineering problems. I don't know if this is due to cramming and forgetting, leaning on stronger classmates or something else. Nobody gets through Hack Reactor without doing a lot of problem solving and a lot of jumping into unfamiliar code bases and frameworks. Don't forget that due it its extremely intense schedule, Hack Reactor is actually 900+ hours of instruction.
Some CS undergrads go far beyond their course assignments. Much like Hack Reactor students, they regularly stay up until late into the night learning new things, working on open source and building projects. After four years of that kind of student life, these students have truly impressive technical skills.
I had joined the 2nd cohort at MakerSquare in fall of 2013. Prior to MakerSquare, I had tried learning Ruby and JS on my own, through countless books and online tutorials. Having completed a few guides, I realized that my ability to learn "how to code" was hindered simply by my style of learning. Moreover, while I had a good understanding of the basics, I had no idea what the 'best practices' of coding were. After all, if you're going to spend countless hours writing code, you might as well do it the right way, right?
Of the different programs out there, the one thing I would urge others to consider is that MakerSquare places a heavy amount of weight onto prework completed (how much work you've done ahead of time) and community-fit. If you're a solo worker and not a fan of collaborative environments, you may want to consider other programs.
On a regular basis, we worked in teams of 2-5 ppl. The small groups were great for focused learning, and it turns out, the larger groups were great for learning how to collaborate on code with version control (github). Would I have had this opportunity through a self-learn environment? Definitely not.
Long story short, I would 100% recommend this program. As classmates, I had former programmers, retail store workers, a professional photographer and even a former elementary teacher. Out of the program, each of the students were working as professional front-end engineers (junior developers) within a few months of graduating. MakerSquare has a great professional network for helping with placement (96%), and they know how to teach software development.
The classroom environment (the location on Congress ave) was a bit cramped at times. But from what I've heard the class size is now capped at 20, vs. 30 or so when I went through.
All the 'issues' I had (space constraints, less than ideal student:instructor ratio, and focus on advanced concepts (algorithms and data structures) has been completely addressed. According to the instructors, Cohort 7 is operating on a night/day difference of curriculum than what I had. As an example, we didn't really touch data structures and algorithms until week 7 of the program. Today, those two themes are introduced on day 3 of the program.
The biggest difference now is that MakerSquare focuses on making sure you understand the fundamentals of software development. Before you even get to use a framework, (Rails, BackboneJS, AngularJS), you build your own version first. This is so you understand what goes into a framework, how to troubleshoot, and how to customize it to fit your needs.
If you want more perspective of the program, these are their Quora, Google and Yelp links.
I did MakerSquare last fall, with a couple of the other commenters here.
I had worked on learning by myself with all the usual free online resources, and it wasn't enough for me. I learn best when I can have a conversation with another human about WHY something works the way it does after I read the tutorial and practice the syntax.
Lacking funding and other resources I'd have needed to go to school full time for 2-4 years, I chose to sink what funding and resources I did have into MakerSquare. I graduated in November and have been working fulltime as a front end developer since the start of December.
Some points to consider:
- A good bootcamp comes with teachers and mentors who teach in multiple styles depending on the lesson and student. I was able to seek out the mentorship I needed for my learning style. This is something that is difficult to do in my experience of normal college, and nearly impossible to do while learning on one's own.
- In addition to being a sort of "education accelerator," as another commenter has mentioned, MakerSquare was also a "networking accelerator." I left the program with a robust network of professional contacts, all in different stages of their career and parts of the local tech scene.
- I also made a fair-sized handful of new best friends, and we continue to provide both educational and emotional support for each other on a regular basis. Going through a bootcamp-style education experience, no matter how good a programmer you become, has a pretty profound effect on one's life and worldview, and sometimes the only people who really get it are the ones who've gone through it with you.
- I definitely learned far more quickly than I would have had I continued to self-tech in spurts between work, life, and my financially unsustainable attempts at traditional education.
- I didn't learn everything I needed to know to work at my job. In fact, since MKS teaches Ruby/Rails and I work in a PHP shop, I learned very little. What I did learn at MKS was enough to figure the rest out. No bootcamp OR school will teach you everything. Without MKS, there is flat out no way I would have been able to have this job that I have maintained for going on a year now, while some others in my office with more experience than I've got have been fired for sucking at their jobs. I may not be a great programmer (yet), but I at least don't suck at it and I know how to learn and get better.
- Yes, the quality of graduates is inconsistent. Some people go in with some programming knowledge, and are going to get more out of any program than most people who start at nothing. Some people simply don't get as much out of their chosen program as others, regardless of their starting points. I'm sure this is just as true for a traditional CS program, and I'm equally sure that the difference in skills levels between graduates of the same group is more stark than that of a CS cohort's.
- Quality of programs varies so much. Hell, the quality of one program can vary based on how developed their curriculum is at a given time, who's teaching that curriculum, and who a student works with to learn it. But hey, see my above comment about CS degrees.
- We chose our own projects, by the way. I would say at that least most of my cohort could point to a bit of code that we personally wrote and are proud of.
- Yes, we had interview coaching, and the teachers and founders did their best to boost our confidence levels. Impostor Syndrome is a known thing for programmers who've been programming for a long time. Can you imagine what it must be like to feel years behind other programmers your age because you really actually ARE years behind a large group of people who've been programming since childhood? Even the best of us sometimes need a "you can do it, buddy!" from someone they respect.
* The quality of the "graduates" varied immensely. Some graduates had been programmers before starting the course, and those students were just there to sharpen their skills. Others had no background in programming.
* All of the projects were group projects, so weaker students were able to hide behind stronger students and couldn't actually point at any code that they had been solely responsible for.
* All of the projects had been conceived of by the school, and so were very very limited in ambition and scope. (It took some digging to find this out, the groups were presenting their projects as if they had conceived of them)
* One of the student told me nearly verbatim: "We learned more in 10 weeks than we would have in our first 2 years of a traditional C.S. degree." I told this student that that was preposterous and to please never repeat that sentence again.
* The students had obviously been well prepped on their interviewing techniques and showed alot of enthusiasm and (over)confidence. But the average proficiency level was way below junior programmer status, and for 2/3 of the students I didn't see how they could work without active mentoring.
* I kept in touch with one of the students after graduation, and he said that virtually all of the students received offers . So hey, the demand for programmers is really that high regardless of quality. I couldn't see hiring one of these devs for what seemed (at the time) to be a 70-80k starting salary range, when another 20k would get me a legitimate junior developer. Of course, as I said before there were some quality candidates coming out of the program, but those were only the students who were programmers before embarking on the course.