What do you think of coding bootcamps?

[Brownie82]

I went to a coding camp. At the time, every camp was teaching Ruby and I didn't care for it. I picked the camp that taught ASP.NET, offered online only option (as opposed to in-person for 9 weeks), since I had 2 small children at the time. I returned to the camp recently to learn the JavaScript stack (MEAN). I learned a lot, but it was based on template and scaffolding generators. I bombed my interviewers and all of them told me "I love your passion. Just take a few programming courses, then re-apply".

I noticed that a out of all the people in my class, the ones who got jobs (at least according to their LinkedIn profiles) where the people who were already programming unofficially: as a hoppy on the side, or a few projects at their job, etc and just needed an extra push. The people coming from complete scratch (me included), struggled and returned for retraining, if at all.

I would advise people who want to take this route, head over to Freecodecamp.com. It's basically the same thing that I was learning, but its self paced and has a great community. Computer science classes are also built into the curriculum. If I remember correctly, you'll be taking CS50X - Intro to CompSci and an algorithm course. I'm actually working through it now. The only reason I took the actual bootcamp was for the job placement and that my ex-husband was paying for it. He skipped out on the bill though -- so lucky me, haha.

Anyway, I think the FCC is a great way to go. You get your a Front End Certification and you can practice building things to pad your portfolio and possibly land a job. According to a lot of the places that I've read (including talking to my darn ex, as well) some companies will take you and train you up in the technologies that they want. That's what I'm doing, working on my GitHub portfolio and trying to get a part-time or something.