After attending and teaching at coding bootcamps, here’s why I say they’re worth it

I recently saw a question on Quora asking about coding bootcamps. Every answer was either slightly or overwhelmingly negative. I wrote a response which I’d like to flesh out here.

My experience

I attended a three-month intensive full-stack engineering program. I went from knowing very basic Javascript to building entire websites. Two months after graduation, I got a full-stack engineering job. I now also teach part-time at another coding bootcamp.

The problem

As a developer these days, you can no longer just learn HTML, CSS, and Javascript and call it a day. A full-stack developer is expected to have working competency with at least one item from most of the categories in these flowcharts:

Photo credit: Kamran Ahmed.

Photo credit: Kamran Ahmed.

If you’re just starting out in your web development journey, this can be a little intimidating to say the least. With no direction aside from opinions on the internet, you have to get yourself from where you are now to the end of both of these flowcharts. This includes going down to the ends of many of the branches.

While learning, you’ll spend time scouring the internet, unsure of what to learn or where to learn it from. Problems and bugs you run into will be on you to fix. You won’t have an expert available to help when you need them. You won’t have access to a group of people learning the exact same technologies you are. You won’t have progress checks ensuring adequate mastery of concepts. You won’t have feedback.

It doesn’t have to be this daunting.

What bootcamps provide

A coding bootcamp can make this journey an order of magnitude easier. Your instructors are industry professionals who are focused on teaching the concepts used by tech companies today and will pick the most in-demand items from those stacks. You’ll learn to put these all together through full-stack group projects and will come out able to build complex websites.

Other factors

Beyond direction, bootcamps provide several other factors that make them extremely valuable:

• Useful materials and resources
• A learning-focused environment
• A network of motivated peers
• Constant support
• Feedback and progress checkpoints
• Access to professionals for technical help and mentorship
• Career services

Learning by yourself

Yes, it’s possible to learn this all by yourself. You can even get together with some people to build projects, all without paying a dime. Thousands have done this using sites such as FreeCodeCamp.

Financial consideration

Teaching a bootcamp

TL;DR