I've never been to one, but they do tend to flood the industry with people who think they're the next Bill Gates, but everything they write sucks...

...wait, was that redundant? I can't tell...

Boot? I prefer GRUB 🙃

Don't need no bootcamps, I already know how to boot.

Their intent is great but if they are over saturating the market with mediocre developers then that is a bad thing.

The reason i say that is because they are often cheaper and more eager than skilled individuals that want the job done properly.

So I'm coming out of one that has a focus on this stack (JS [JQuery after weeks of Vanilla JS drilling in our heads, React], Java, MySQL, Python [Django, Bottle], HTML/CSS, and a few web security concepts (XSS, SQL injections).

The whole course has been 4 months learning, 3 weeks working on a final project. Next week is the presentation, so I think I can safely comment on the course.

We moved fast, but that's to be expected. Lecture in the mornings, exercises in the afternoons, assignments due at the beginning of each week. Constantly working towards it and improving. I have been working pretty hard. We were given some help, but had to get a lot of answers online (based God StackOverflow), but that's part of it.

We touched on some concepts like inheritance in JS, Python and Java, OOP and to be open to concepts we don't know so we should be thirsty for that knowledge.

In my off time, I've begun texting myself Node and really trying to double down on React because it seems useful. I realized I was more drawn to the backend, but I was comfortable in front end as well. (Just don't ask me to design anything, my eye for aesthetics/CSS sorcery is terrible.)

The overall experience has been pretty mixed, but we were mostly unsatisfied. We weren't given then help we were promised. The explanations weren't exactly crystal clear, so we would have to teach ourselves and each other quite a bit. We worked together a lot. Some people really fell behind, some caught up, some flew ahead and thrived. (I'm somewhere between caught up and thrived, I recognize where I stand.)

I'm happy I did a bootcamp, they aren't miracle programs, but they at least kick you into place that you are learning and need to continue to learn. (Just kinda wish I had done a different one.)

Feel free to ask about anything concerning it!

I worked with guy who was a teacher at bootcamp for 2 years already. He was fired after 2 months of juniorship at software house, because he couldn't do anything properly. I think it tells everything.

I took two years of CS then switched degrees. I've been working in technology since 2007 with those two years, a bunch of O'Reilly books, and some awesome mentors. I guess that is a dev bootcamp. We didn't have those in my day.

While I do have a degree, I don't recommend people to get one unless you are legally bound to get one; barber, hairdresser, doctor, lawyer.

I'm loving the bootcamp I'm in so far. I know I won't be a whiz kid once I'm done, but it gives me a great start for my career change! You'll only be as successful as the work you put into coding. Practice makes better as time goes on!

How do you feel about meetings?

I think one point that people often forget is that bootcamps are more of a learning accelerator than a one-stop shop, and the few reputable camps around do quite a good job.

Its good and practical but those who aim to fill gaps in the programming industry by trying to produce "programmers on demand" via a several month long bootcamp are complete idiots. Nobody can learn to develop a well structured application that's easy to maintain in a couple of months, either that is frontend or back end. We are trying to be engineers , not just solve problems.

I'm a self taught android/Java developer, I have never been to any boot camps. But I have worked with someone who been to one.

It is good for developers who already know the concept of programming and want to improve their skills.

I mean the beauty in our industry is that you can learn almost everything online and for free. You learn some basics and then you build upon that knowledge to build something more complex. So why the hell should I pay so much money just to listen to someone who tells you the same stuff that you would've read online and for free anyway?

I'm torn on dev bootcamps.

On one hand, I learn the most in hands-on direct tinkering and bootcamps tend to exude this with well-trained instructors following best practices.

On the other hand, the short timeline means corners are cut and an overwhelming amount of material is dropped all at once leading to a leaky retention vessel at the end.

I prefer ramping up learning over a period of time to gain experience than a fire hose approach.

I've just recently finished a front-end, online one. As an experience it was awesome, I had contact not only with my mentor (great guy), but also with a lot of like-minded people. As a finishing touch we had a week of classes with an HR specialist to polish up our portfolio, CVs and to guide is through recruitment process. I can't really say much, as I'm still looking for a job, but I have a good feeling 'bout it all :)

It could either turn out really well or most of the day will be wasted on setting up one's development environment

Dev bootcamps? I went to one! Probably the best decision I ever made.

They aren't perfect, they're pricey, and they won't make you an expert, but it's a good way to expedite a new career, gives a good base knowledge to start out.

I started my career at a company that ran boot camps 24/7. I learned a lot but they did some shady shit. The company changed their name often so they couldn't be tracked and posed as a regular subcontracting agency and gave trainees fake backgrounds with an extensive resumes so people could get hired. I mean how else would Joe out of college with no experience get a job requiring 5 years minimum.

Don't know a lot about them, but I have heard of the 'dev' summer 'workshops' that are basically 5 minutes of some guy telling them how to use scratch, and usually result in a bunch of pompous 5 year olds who "know everything about programming". The problem I see here is that they do simple things with a simple language, and when in life it comes to doing things, they have to bang their head against the wall because they really never learned the frustration of programming.

It is good for someone who wants to learn. Someone who want to know what the benefit, pros and cons of the tech that they are not familiar with.

It is not good for someone who think they can get a job after they finished.

In this industry, you never stop learning.

I personally hate coding bootcamps or their equivalent. They tend to produce poor developers who I have to clean up after or hold the hand of. Business people love them because they are cheap.

Hi,I'm Shawn

I love them it is a great place to see new programmers, learn a new technology or just drink beer.

I think it really depends on the person attending (why they want to be a developer, how they learn, their ability to apply what they learn etc) I think these bootcamps serve a good purpose by making helping people achieve their goals. I will say that pop culture has set some pretty unrealistic standards for what it is like being a developer, and a lot of the bootcamps are propagating that misconception

The only bootcamps I have seen are the ones in companies that hire virtually everybody and think they can all train them on their own. Most of these companies do not exist anymore. So: I don't like bootcamps. The name alone is misleading and makes me wanna ....

I'd like to build my own, I've helped many friends complete them, not because the teaching was bad, but because I helped them apply for the bootcamp.

I enjoy teaching what I know and I didn't really learn how to program until my final few months of university anyway, so if these had existed prior to me going to university... I might have gone to one of those instead and saved me some money. Admittedly no degree, but I've never been asked to produce my degree and many people who graduated couldn't program anyway...

There isn't many Dev bootcamps where i am from but i think they are a great idea for anyone that codes as you can get new ideas and learn new skills no matter what your ability

I wish there were local boot camps. Sucks to travel to SF or some major city and pay for flight, car, etc, when others can attend since they're right there.

I would attend more of these if cities within a 2 hr drive could host them.

Do bootcamps include online sites like Coursera and Treehouse? Cause when I graduated from a CS degree I still couldn't code properly. I learnt from sites like these and got my first job. But the thing is what they teach you isn't even the tip of the iceberg let alone helping you master the technology. For that you gotta go out on your own.

Haven't been to one and by reading other rants. thank God I haven't!!!!

Great to learn the basics but anything more advanced is a waste of time. The team projects were always fun tho so atleast there is that

Garbage; learn with research and a good project or something.
..although so far, the bootcamps I've attended have been under a big corp and labelled as "training"..

Bootcamps? They make sense, but only for highly specialized topics for which there's barely a good tutorial. Otherwise I'll just stick to Google "mytopic tutorial"

Never been to one.. but I think I should.. if I don't find one near me, there's always websites like pluralsight

I find them mostly useless. It's good for novices mostly. I normally prefer you use some docs or watch a tutorial to learn things. Much more fun. If there is good interaction with speakers it can be useful.