Anyone ever gone to a programming "bootcamp"? If so, please tell!

[Odesseiron]

Hey all.

So I'm getting to the age (34) where I need to decide what the fuck I'm going to do the rest of my life. My job right now is nothing spectacular. Fairly small company, not much room for growth. Pay is decent, nothing to brag about. I have a second job to supplement my income a bit. Most of all, I'm fairly unhappy with the place. I deal with the worst kinds of people and they just make you lose faith in the human race.I still can turn it around if I really bust my ass. I don't have a college degree or anything. Just a lot of experience on me CV.

So one of my work buddies and I were talking about programming boot camps. Essentially a 12-16 week intense crash course in programming (like 8-10 hour days). You don't get a degree or any kind of certifications, but you do get a portfolio and a good amount of knowledge to begin with. Some of these places even help get you job placement (supposedly). A couple of people he personally knows and calls friends have done it and been successful. I know this is not the case for everyone, otherwise anybody would do it.

My question is have any of you guys done one of these before? Or know somebody personally who has? Was it worth it?

Also, I know this might sound dumb, but I don't have a lick of programming knowledge. I can mostly assemble and disassemble a PC and take care of some low-mid level IT issues, but programming is another beast altogether. One of the guys who did it was a real estate broker, and he was in the same boat. I'm assuming they take you on knowing that you're learning from the ground up?

I've looked on reddit and such, just want some personal experience from people here.

[The Stig]

I've not been in a boot camp that is that long, but I've been on 5-day formal training courses.

A bg thread from 2011: http://www.bluegartr.com/threads/107...arning-to-code

Here's my opinion on it:

- It's worth it, if you're going to be working with similar code in a pratical (live) environment afterwards. The purpose of this boot camp I presume is to get you to program in general, rather than in a specific language (12-16 weeks is 1/4 of a year! That's quite crazy)
- Check the description for the prerequisites. I would presume you can do it from the ground up with basic PC skills
- You'll be in an environment with people who are probably in the same boat. You'll also have 1 or multiple instructors and you'll be contained in your own sandpit. It is absolutely the best opportunity to play, experiment and fuck up as much as you can and have the instructor correct you.
- Once you get in the programming mindset, other code in other languages becomes readable to you. From there it's just a matter of referring to the manual for syntax and stuff

But, the potential downsides are:

- There's 10000s of people in China/India that the job can be outsourced to to carry out the job
- It's an aggressive field (see below)
- Learning 1 language probably won't help. You'll probably need to learn multiple to truly come out strong, or become very specialist
- You'll also need to learn databases on the side, a lot of things come with some sort of database to be functional
- Here's an example job spec for a Web Engineer:
http://www.riotgames.com/careers/32894

Node.js, Python or Ruby, including frameworks such as Express
Client-side JavaScript, including libraries and frameworks such as Angular, Backbone, Ember, jQuery
HTML and CSS
Helpful: PHP, including frameworks and tools such as Symfony and Composer
Bonus points: Java, including web and service libraries such as Jackson, Jersey, Jetty, Spring
SQL data stores: MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.
NoSQL data stores: Riak, MongoDB, etc.
Apache, nginx, Varnish, CDNs
Cloud infrastructure, especially AWS
*nix command line, shell scripting
Unit, acceptance and integration testing tools
GitHub, git
Grunt / Gulp, SASS / LESS

With these kind of requirements, hopefully you can see what I mean by aggressive/specialist. They don't want to outsource their work to China/India, they want someone in house. At the other end of the spectrum you'll have these big corps who have outsourced their work to those countries.

- Is your 12-16 week course expensive? It sounds really expensive on paper. You may lose more than gain more.


Can't think of much else at the moment, but the points above spring to mind. Feel free to discuss.

EDIT: Was reading my own reply to that other thread where aurik professionally disagreed with my stuff lol. May be worth PMing some people in that thread!

[SephYuyX]

I did MCSE 2k back in the day that was actually MS sponsored.
It was paid for, it was brutal, it was informative, glad I got to go.
If I had to pay for it, I wouldnt, because it's pricey. The real deal for it was that you got certified from it.

Idk how it is today, and I dont know how it would be for programming.
I would bet from the things i've seen programmers say, is to go to a college intro course, get the basics, then watch youtube videos (or the reverse of that, depending on your style, and to find out what kind of language you want to get in to, etc) and then go from there. Maybe more college courses, maybe study groups, maybe more youtube videos, idk.

Depends how much it costs really.

[zoobernut]

I have not done a programming boot camp but I did do the 1 week Apple OSX and OSX Server support boot camp. It was great and it really taught me a lot. My work paid for it and my whole week stay in SF. Passing the two tests at the end was part of the hiring agreement. It seems like a boot camp would work best for someone who already has programming experience who wants to learn a new language but I am not sure how well it would work for someone who has no programming experience who wants to learn to program.

Also once you are done with the boot camp and you are familiar with one language what are you going to do if all the jobs require a different language? There are a lot of jobs that all use different languages out there.

[Odesseiron]

Yeah they are pretty pricey. From all the ones I have been looking at in NYC, anywhere from the range of $8,000-$14,000. Which is... a lot. But it's cheaper than getting a degree. But you wouldn't learn everything that you would from going to school for 4 years. I don't have 4 years to go to school full time, but I could probably get away with 3-4 months if I had to. Some of the places have job placement (or recommendations) and you don't need to pay anything until you get a position in your field. Which if true would be really nice, but I'd need to see that in writing with all the stipulations.

That would mean giving up some freedom and moving back home after I busted my ass to finally get out there on my own. Which I really don't want to have to do. So I have a lot of things to consider. My jobs aren't that awful, but between the two of them, I'm only bringing in about 56k gross if I'm lucky. Like I said, it's pretty dead end, so the chance to move up isn't really there.

Having gone thru some of the other thread that was posted above, it's kind of de-moralizing, but most things unless extremely niche are very cutthroat/competitive. That's anywhere you go. I feel like if I did something like this and was able to land a job I'd be alright, but there's probably going to be thousands if not tens of thousands more people qualified than me.

Still researching though. Something's got to change soon. I can't work where I am that much longer. I will go insane. I administer a housing subsidy for low income/elderly/disabled families. So, Section 8. I get to see the worst of the worst. It's privately run and not gov't. If it were gov't I probably wouldn't be moaning as I'd have a pension and such. Or be making more money. Or both.

I just feel like I need to do something to get to that next step to increase my income.

[avelle]

I do not have experience with boot camps but have looked at them from time to time. I do however have approximately 5 years of experience doing development (also 34).

If you truly want to make the switch to a development job, make sure you find it interesting / like it. It is tough but very rewarding after you get enough experience. Be prepared to continue learning the rest of your career. There is almost never a day when I don't have to learn something new. Like it was mentioned above, if you do the bootcamp thing make sure the programming you are learning is the programming you want to do. Web vs mobile vs desktop applications, etc. Aligning that with your goal will make your transition into your new role the easiest. Good luck!

One more thing, regarding the competitive / outsourcing nature of the job. The only time I've really been concerned about losing my job to outsourcing was as a junior. There are definitely senior level developers out there in China, etc (and my former consulting company used them extensively) but we spent more time fixing their fuckups more than anything. Companies may think they are getting better value for their money but in my experience you get what you pay for. It's not that they are bad developers (well some are) but a lot of it is language barrier stuff. Anyways, my point is not to say it's not out there, but there is huge demand in our field right now and I don't see why that would change any time soon.

Keep learning, strive to do the best you can, don't get too caught up in "best practices" just learn from your mistakes, best way to learn something new is by doing it.

[Soa]

I wouldn't even bother until you get a BS since it is a minimum job requirement for even the lowest IT jobs nowadays. I've been trying to find another job myself and every person I talk to says to try again when I finish my degree (which I will in September) even though I hit every other requirement. I tried to move into our main Networking department last month and they straight up told me no because I didn't have a degree yet, even though the manager there wanted to give me the job. It will be a great learning experience for sure, but don't expect to land a job out of it.

As for outsourcing to China or India, that trend has been in reverse for a couple of years now as companies find out that the vast majority of them are incompetent, and their overall turnover rate is nearly double the American fast food industry, so they are unreliable. My company and several more I am familiar with have actually been actively scaling back their outsourced jobs and hiring domestic workers because of this.

[avelle]

I wouldn't even bother until you get a BS since it is a minimum job requirement for even the lowest IT jobs nowadays. I've been trying to find another job myself and every person I talk to says to try again when I finish my degree (which I will in September) even though I hit every other requirement. I tried to move into our main Networking department last month and they straight up told me no because I didn't have a degree yet, even though the manager there wanted to give me the job. It will be a great learning experience for sure, but don't expect to land a job out of it.

I have a 2 year degree and I have experienced a few places turning me down because no 4 year degree but they are not very wide spread. I think the mindset that you have to have a BS is going away. If companies use that as their sole barometer on whether or not you are worthy of hiring I would question whether that place is worth working in the first place.

[Patriarch]

I wouldn't even bother until you get a BS since it is a minimum job requirement for even the lowest IT jobs nowadays. I've been trying to find another job myself and every person I talk to says to try again when I finish my degree (which I will in September) even though I hit every other requirement. I tried to move into our main Networking department last month and they straight up told me no because I didn't have a degree yet, even though the manager there wanted to give me the job. It will be a great learning experience for sure, but don't expect to land a job out of it.

As for outsourcing to China or India, that trend has been in reverse for a couple of years now as companies find out that the vast majority of them are incompetent, and their overall turnover rate is nearly double the American fast food industry, so they are unreliable. My company and several more I am familiar with have actually been actively scaling back their outsourced jobs and hiring domestic workers because of this.

I have to slightly disagree with the comment on his BS. Granted, I have mine now, I didn't when I first started off in the IT world. I started with the obligatory A+, then moved to my Net+, Sec+, Project+ and a few other minor certs. I was hired for entry level IT as a low level network admin. Luckily, the company offered to pay for my CCNA courses, and then i moved onto the more in depth training from Cisco and a few other vendors. I finished my BS several years later, also mainly paid for by the company I work for.

I won't deny that having a BS will increase your chances exponentially in terms of finding a job to match the salary in mind. Guess it depends on how low on the totem pole he wants to start off. I was doing pretty well even without the degree though. And to be perfectly honest, it really hasn't done a whole lot when it comes to knowledge of the area I work in lol

[Ragns]

Related-ish: http://www.theallium.com/engineering...stackoverflow/

[Stilzkin]

I'm currently in a programming bootcamp (iOS) and I am also a term away from a computer sciences degree (combined computer sciences and biology degree).

Honestly you don't necessarily learn a lot of programming from a university education. In my school, and I've heard it is like this in most others, they leave it to the students to learn it themselves.

The majority of the people in my bootcamp came in with previous programming knowledge. Some of them coming from university like myself, others had been taking multiple bootcamp programs, and one had been working as an android developer for the last year. I know that there are people that have taken this bootcamp without any previous experience.

The idea seems to be that we make one program/app a day centred on teaching us how to do a particular thing in that language. For example one day might be data persistence where we have to make an app that uses various forms of data persistence another might be about making animations. So that pace has been fairly quick.

From what I have seen most others have been challenged by the work, especially as we start to get into more complicated subjects. I personally have not found it too challenging. Most of the time everyone does manage to accomplish everything they are suppose to for that day. My understanding is that this isn't always true with every group that takes this bootcamp. I have met previous students of the course and they have told me that there were apps that they were simply unable to accomplish.

My thoughts so far:

- Everyone there is productive and engaged so I think it is easy to remain focused and motivated. Personally I would be unable to remain concentrated on programming 12 hours a day if I didn't have that environment around.

- It is a good chance to build a up a portfolio of works. In this bootcamp you are suppose to come out having made two apps that were your own personal ideas. I think I may be able to turn out something better than what I currently have from school or personal projects.

- The directed learning is kind of nice. It is a more rounded look at a language and platform than I am likely to have had if had taught myself. It is also a plus that you have various instructors to talk to about how they have, or are, currently doing things. A tutorial or textbook may not contain the "real" way things are done.

- The bootcamp offers a chance to make connections. Not only with the others in my group and the instructors but also with the revolving door of previous students who sometimes seem to show up work and hang out.

- The bootcamp offers job services and they more or less guarantee us internships. The quality of the internship is dependent on the individual though. The services, according to their claims and from what I have seen, remain open to you even after you leave. So if you don't get a job from the internship they will still offer you advice, help you send resumes, and invite you social events with employers.

[Zetanio]

- The bootcamp offers a chance to make connections. Not only with the others in my group and the instructors but also with the revolving door of previous students who sometimes seem to show up work and hang out.

- The bootcamp offers job services and they more or less guarantee us internships. The quality of the internship is dependent on the individual though. The services, according to their claims and from what I have seen, remain open to you even after you leave. So if you don't get a job from the internship they will still offer you advice, help you send resumes, and invite you social events with employers.

My friends in IT have said this is the only reason they did/do bootcamps. It's all about connections.

[Darus Grey]

If your intention is a career switch my professional opinion is that bootcamps are probably one of the best starting off points currently available.

If your intention is to do programming, 4 year degrees are mostly useless. As someone else said, their goal is not to teach programming, and they don't accomplish it accidentally either(and I'm a CS professor, so I say all this somewhat abashed).

The reality is that programming itself is just logical thinking mixed with hands-on tools knowledge and can be taught in a relatively short time to most people. People who build things for the general population generally don't need much if any CS knowledge. It's generally the people who build tools for other programmers who need that knowledge. You don't need to understand how a compiler, a CPU, instruction sets, memory and cache bandwidth, etc etc "works" in order to use them, but you do need that knowledge if your intention is to MAKE a compiler, with flags to optimize code for a certain CPU architecture, etc.

There's way more jobs for the former than the later, and that's fine. Tech has become a really wide industry where it's becoming ok to be a very abstract high level person. Well keeping in mind that the former pays a lot more for that very same reason, that knowledge is the difference between a 80-120k and a 200-400k tech job.

[SamanosukeShiva]

Make inquiries first to your local/in-state university. In-state tuition is not that bad, especially if you account for the pell grants. I'm actually going to a 4yr university for free pretty much. I don't have any scholarship, just the pell grant, and I'm taking 12 credit hours per semester and it's all paid for by the grant. Recent grads from my university told me that a lot of company nowadays don't even accept BA in CS, it has to be BS.

That being said, as you said yourself, IT and programming is two different beasts. You might have an easier time going into IT field with no degree. Certification is pretty easy to get, study and take exam, thats it pretty much.

[Jaxzer]

I'm trying to get a group from school together for Pycon 2016 in Portland, it looks phenomenal ($100 student entry for the entire week).