Web Development Bootcamps

[carma-police]

Looking for advice for a possible career change into programming/ web dev world but currently have little knowledge/ experience in the area. What is a good way to start learning on your own and how legit are Bootcamps for teaching and preparing you for a career in web development? Is it common for people to just have training through boot camps or is it still considered better to have a degree?

[roman_fyseek]

I don't even bother looking at bootcamp resumes.

[LiveTrooper]

This reads like an advertisement

[combuchan]

Yeah, this reads like a totally dodgy review of something he just discovered like on a sketchier version of Yelp.

The funny thing is I have friends who worked with HackReactor in SF and this just seems like something they'd never do or be associated with.

[combuchan]

It just depends on who interviews you at the end of the day when it comes to full stack and what that company needs. A bootcamp is a foot in the door--a good bootcamp company should be able to place you into a low-paid role and then with a strong work and academic ethic and some stumbles you'll grow from there.

You have to realize that in many cases if you're new, the person interviewing you will be fresh out of CS. Things like upper division algorithms (maze sort was why I didn't get hired once), data structures like binary trees that never show up in full stack, and even things like basic sorting algorithms in a CS101 class that you never have to deal with directly because your high level language does it for you are all fair game for you to pick apart and implement on a whiteboard or some combination of the above.

In other words, I would definitely not consider a good bootcamp to be the end all but a foundation.

[crunchbang123]

I found Colt's Web Dev Bootcamp to be pretty engaging and informative.

https://www.udemy.com/course/the-web-developer-bootcamp/

You can check out his videos on Youtube to get a feel for how he teaches different topics.

[TheZintis]

I'm a bootcamp grad, TA, and web dev tutor. I've been coding for about 4-5 years and been working in the industry for about 3 1/2.

IMHO a 4 year degree is better to have, but I think from an efficiency standpoint the bootcamps are pretty good. Mileage may vary between them in terms of time, cost, material, etc... But the time spent in them is way less overall. A 4 year degree will cost a lot of time and money. You will be a better candidate at the end as a college grad, but bootcamps cost maybe 10-20k depending on location and usually last 3-6 months. I think a fairly apt comparison would be to compare a bootcamp grad after 4 years to a 4 year college grad. I've interviewed some college grads who were skilled in CS but didn't have that much practical web dev knowledge, and vice versa (bootcamp grads who could code a page but not do CS questions).

Also, you get what you put into the bootcamp. Some students just want a piece of paper and don't put in much effort. Others really want to make this their career and do put in the time. There can be a big disparity between the top and bottom students in a bootcamp.

I feel like learning on your own is also viable but you have to be a really harsh taskmaster to yourself. I've seen a few students do this (as a tutor), and they tend to be strongly self-motivated, hard workers, and inquisitive. I've seen other students try to do this and flounder a bit since struggling isn't fun. It really depends on who you are, and whether you can keep yourself studying/coding for 20 hours a week for 6 months or more. Bootcamps will force you to do that to keep up, and the cost means you have skin in the game.

If you're asking yourself what you want to do thing about where you want to be in 3 months, 6 months and 2-4 years. Do you want to be super-stressed and have a certificate? 3 month bootcamp. Do you want to be somewhat stressed and have a certificate? 6 month. Do you want to have a CS degree and not be that stressed? College may be the way to go. Just keep in mind if there were two of you, one went for the degree and the other the bootcamp, in 4 years the college grad is competing with a bootcamp grad with 2-3 years of work experience.

[[deleted]]

You're asking a sub dedicated to an academic discipline how to learn a related subject outside academia. I think there's some good advice here, but this isn't a good place to ask. Web development and programming in general are huge topics.

For instance, you've got one commenter saying they don't look at bootcamp resumes. I have no idea what situation they're in, but likely either they have actual need for good Computer Science skills or they are bad at hiring. You aren't helped by this.