Thinking about switching to coding/programming. I currently reside in Europe and my head is exploding with questions. To avoid a wall of text I'll illustrate my situation in a list (if you need more information just ask):

27 years old. Have a young family with a kid. Currently living in Latvia.
High-school education. Empty Resume.
Been supporting myself, my mom and now my family solely from poker.
Small BR, Very low 5 figs.

Currently I am looking for schools/bootcamps that might accelerate my transition and what is most important - get to know like minded people and develop potentially valuable connections. After a bit of searching I ended up with these options (more ideas are welcomed):

42.us.org (42.fr) - I passed the initial test on their site and were invited for an interview to Paris, which will be followed by a month long test-period (selection).

Pros

Free
Very diverse curriculum (or a con?)
Obligatory internship 1st year, optional during 2nd year, obligatory 3rd year

Cons

~3-5 years course
No graduates yet, unknown educational quality
Not a lot of reliable reviews
Only Paris available for me

codaisseur.com - amsterdam based coding bootcamp

Pros

€750 admission fee
2 months training (1st stage)
Guaranteed Junior Web Developer job
Focused on Web Dev
Chance to build up a resume

Cons

Couldn't find reliable reviews
Tied to a job in Netherlands

LeWagon.com

Pros

9 weeks (360 hours)
Variety of cities to choose
A lot of good reviews
Focused on Web Dev
Active community
2 weeks for personal project

Cons

No internship, no guaranteed job.
Very expensive. London (my 1st choice) - ~€7650, Copenhagen - €4200.

I'm strongly leaning towards LeWagon. Due to reputation, no constraints, a chance to set foot in UK and 2 weeks for a personal project (I have quite a few ideas, would love to realize one of them).

What do you think of these options? Do you have experience with any of them, or maybe you know someone who does? Any other options, opinions or words of wisdom?

Do you have idea of possible prospects after finishing one of these schools/bootcamps?

Ok, lets change the topic a bit, I'm still trying to decide where to study.

Would you recommend any coding boot-camps in Canada? From what I saw on coursereport I like CodeCore, whom I already contacted with a few questions...

Can't speak to Canadian bootcamps, but there's Viking School and Hack Reactor Remote for distance learning. Dunno if these are open to outside the us/London. Ok sure there's others too

Check out the odin project. It's free and by the guys who do Viking School. Also Epicodus has their curriculum online for free.

Thanks for reminding about "Odin Project"! It's a really cool thing they're making, but I was looking for something on the spot, because I'd also like to develop personal relationships and try to put myself out there in the real world.

Maybe you'd argue it's not worth $10-20k, but I've been siting behind the screen for too damn long and wasting my social skills. Plus this might give me a better opportunity to relocate, even if only for a few years. I'll finally get a chance to live in the western world and actually speak English, while my kid will be able to learn it (like a first language!). So when I take all this into account $10-20k might just be the price I'm willing to pay.

This is also why I'm reluctant to study in Amsterdam or Copenhagen, while I'd love to go to Canada and be ok with UK (London prices, ouch! Might have to learn about other cities.).

...But still that Odin Project sounds so sweet. Damn! Any comments about their online community?

I've been reading on those two schools you've mentioned and they too sound really good. Will continue reading. Thank you!

Edit: Hack reactor tuition, lol.

Edit: Viking School Flex sounds interesting.

also check out European Maker Camp. I feel like i've heard about it, but i'm not 100% clear on what exactly they do.

could have fooled me. You're damn good at typing it (more so than many Americans born in America, at least ), can't imagine you'd have problems speaking it

I can comment a bit on a couple of the Canadian bootcamps. I have visited CodeCore and Lighthouse Labs multiple times for their demo days, free lectures, etc. I know a few people who did the CodeCore bootcamp and ended up finding work; freelance/contract-based work seems to be more common than traditional employment for many of the grads, though maybe this would be different if the graduate also had a STEM degree to go along with their bootcamp certificate. In general, pay is much lower than what you will find in many US cities, especially considering the ridiculous cost of living in Vancouver area. I don't think either of the aforementioned bootcamps are very selective when it comes to accepting applicants. The entrance exam at CodeCore is a very basic 10 question coding test.

Overall, I doubt that it is worth the cost you will incur to come all the way to Canada for a bootcamp. I'm sure you can find something on par (or better) than either of these bootcamps much closer to home, and probably with better prospective starting pay relative to local living costs.

I'm going to go against the grain here and suggest something else. Find someone that is willing to mentor you [raises hand]. People that are actually employed in your target field should have a much better idea of everything you need to know vs nice to haves. Odinproject definitely has some good stuff but I think they kind of lack 'capstone' projects. Capstone project should encompass *everything* you know. Odinproject can only make assumptions based on what material they teach. I believe their capstone project in javascript is to make a snake game (something that can be done in < 100 lines of js... hardly a real capstone project).

Their capstone is to recreate Twitter or Facebook or some other site you love. To date, only one person appears to have submitted anything. And it may be someone who works for the site.

I'm (still) in a similar boat, main difference is that I'm already 31 but on the other hand I'm already studying Java for a year on my own.

I'm at a proficiency level in Java where I'm confident I can build pretty much anything that comes to my mind (currently working on a server based android multiplayer game) - but I can also guarantee it will take a long time and be ****ty

I wouldn't call myself employable yet but I think I could get on the level pretty fast so my absolute main concern looking at any bootcamp is how / if they can help me land that elusive first job - as I'm confident that once anyone lets me in, I'll be able to make my mark and keep up.

Some of the pricier ones seem to be a waste of money to me; not being able to help Euros getting a job plus a third or so of their curriculum being stuff I already know.

In a similar vein, online bootcamps / courses, while fun and probably providing more education per dollar spend, have the big disadvantage that companies in Euroland give even less of a **** about online certificates and portfolios created for those.

Just started big nerd ranch's android book. Curious where you learned so much in a year. I've got almost two years of Java and I'm not sure I'd be able to do that.

I've read some of your posts over the last years and you're much more of a jack of all trades than me - I couldn't put together a hello world html site without looking it up.

As for how I'm learning Java, I took one beginner course at udacity:
https://www.udacity.com/course/intro...ramming--cs046

which I really liked, having tried a bunch of similar courses on Java and C# before but they were all too easy or not interactive enough. I destroyed their final exam (a connect 4 bot) and hung around in their community for a couple of weeks, helping other "students", which helped me a lot, too.

After that I started their android developer course, which has a 1 year Java requirement, after talking with some coaches I decided to give it a try but realized pretty soon I was in over my head - I would have still been able to complete it, but it was a slow battle, having to stop and learn a completely new concept for a day, every other 10 minute lesson.

Skill-wise, I felt I was in a spot where beginner tutorials and books wouldn't teach me anything new but I wasn't good enough for intermediate stuff so from then on I build my own small projects (rhyme generator, tiny game prototypes) which I obv never finished but I learned a lot along the way.

The game I'm working on right now I'm sure you could do yourself, it uses:

libgdx for the android (and pc) client, graphics, sound, input
kryonet for networking
MongoDB to, well, save and stuff

Server and client are written in simple Java and being a turn-based game helps a lot (It's like a roguelike party-based jrpg).

Like I said, I'm still pretty bad at everything I do, but I feel it wouldn't take long for me to get competent in a specific domain if I had the guidance, structure etc, which a bootcamp or trainee-ship can hopefully provide - but I'm less sure about my prospects of getting hired, due to my age and lack of experience.

I haven't really checked out their online community tbh. I went on their slack channel and there wasn't too much activity. Freecodecamp is supposed to have a pretty active community. I forgot to mention them earlier.

As far as meeting people goes, there are sites like meetup where you can network with all sorts of people. Just start googling whatever tech you're interested in learning and find local groups, conventions, etc.

Finding a mentor is also a great suggestion. The amount of information and different choices you have can be pretty daunting. Someone who has gone through the process before can save a lot of time and headaches.

Start here: web development might be a good podcast to check out. They take you through a lot of what to expect, how to learn, resources, etc. Think maybe starthere.fm is their website.

That's a very nice way to phrase how I really feel: aimless.

Another thing my java professor said was that it's not a good idea to learn a little java and then try to learn android. There's too much stuff you'll have to be familiar with for it to be a quick transition.

I've been doing okay so far. I've forgotten a fair amount but seeing it come up in tutorials refreshes my memory pretty quick.

Is there anything in particular you can think of that was an issue for you? Like, the first thing I came upon that I was like, Oh yeah, I remember that, was how one of the anonymous inner classes you create must have a method defined in it due to how the inherited parent is set up. I could see that being a little confusing if one wasn't too familiar with that aspect of Java

I'm several years older than you are, so don't feel too bad. Unless you're trying to get hired on in Silicon Valley, I doubt you'll face too much age discrimination.

Your Java prof is right for sure, my issues weren't little things like what you mentioned but more general, bigger things, for example simple SQL commands - wasn't hard per se, but I hadn't seen anything about it in my life before, so instead of breezing through the course I had to take an excursion and learn about SQL for a bit.

Same with git, json, multi-threading and so on, I'd guess I spent only about 50% of my time learning Android and the rest chasing skills that were more or less expected to have already.

Now, a year later, taking the same course it would be more like 85% - but I find native Android programming pretty boring tbh

Little update. Maybe someone will find this useful.

42.fr - it takes too long, don't think it's suitable for my case. Maybe if I was 18-19...

codaisseur.com - on the fence about this one. Might be ok if you NEED a job.

codecore.ca - wrote them two emails. No reply for almost a week.

And then I found this gem:

thefirehoseproject.com - online coding school with an in-depth curriculum (they teach algorithms!), with flexible payment plans and founders/mentors who are willing to go an extra mile, judging by reviews. Also most of the mentors have good credentials.

Talked with one of the founders. He seemed genuinely enthusiastic.

LeWagon - oh yeah, this one... almost got hooked. Watched a couple of their demo days, got the impression of a cult or one of those "self improvement seminars" where you get more of an emotional boost, rather than knowledge.

Besides that their mentor credentials fall short compared to other schools and their extremely rapid expansion shows accent on the business side, rather than educational. Not a good sign if you ask me.

I think I've read some of firehose's blogs, they had some pretty good stuff, but it was also kind of along the lines of motivational speech/rationale for bootcamps that you'd expect someone selling bootcamps to make.

firehoseproject looks cool, but I'd imagine that someone in your position would benefit more (in terms of career development) from a live school/bootcamp experience rather than something that is entirely online.

I completely agree. But I can't find a good live school in Europe and at the moment I can't travel to USA/Canada, due to Visa and severely increased budget requirements.

I've asked one of the Firehose founders this question:

Either my question was too vague or something else, but this was his reply:

Though on Quora I've read that he helped a guy during his job hunt even after the paid period was over. (By code reviewing, advice, pointing to study materials) Thats got to count for something, right?

It also gives me hope that if I bust my ass off studying and make one or two impressive projects on my own I'll have a chance of getting a recommendation and/or introduction by one of the established coders in the industry.

But yeah, the fear of keeping my resume empty is frightening. I've got to decide if I want to get what I think is the best education and prove myself the classic way or go to one of the live bootcamps, that guarantee a job or at least have hiring partners, and get one of those low paying jobs and spend a year or two working there.

On the other hand the value of an online school gets significantly lower if I come out of it with no connections. If I'll be one of many students just passing through...

Maybe I should try those two weeks that FireHose is offering and at the end try to talk about what worries me? I just don't want to seem like I'm bargaining before I even prove myself. (thats why my initial question was vague).

If someone paid you the cost of tuition to go out and network, as well as find a proper curriculum for yourself, would you do it? If you answer yes to that question, save your money and do it yourself. From what I've seen, these bootcamps don't offer anything you couldn't do on your own.

That isn't the problem in the end. The real problem from a newbies perspective is not knowing the fluff from the important stuff. Bootcamps are the guide that tell you exactly what you need to go from zero to hero. You can spend 4 intensive months at a bootcamp focused on everything you need to know or a year+ playing around with lots of stuff that ends up being mostly irrelevant.

That's true, but also "just go out and do the networking yourself" is way easier said than done to someone living in a country with a much more rigid job market than the US, especially if they have no "working" (and I'll half-heartedly count brick&mortar bootcamps as "work" here) experience and no contacts in the industry at all.

So yeah, I'd pay considerable money for someone else to "do the networking" on my behalf.

That's also the reason I don't think a ~5k online course is worth its money for a European; they might or might not make you an employable junior developer but if I show my online certificate to the average German employer, they'll just look at me blankly and ask for my university credentials.

It is tough to find the proper path on your own. Fortunately, the bootcamps have already done this for us. Some bootcamps post their curriculum online. Others have students that blog what theyve been doing throughout the course. You can figure out the curriculum from that.

I don't think there are bootcamps that have any reach where op is. He will have to do the networking himself regardless, or move to somewhere that has a bigger community. There are good reasons bootcamps are able to get jobs for many junior devs. Most live bootcamps are in areas where the market is typically strong, and/or there is a demand to be satisfied. This means op could go out and network if he relocated to these areas.

I seriously doubt an online bootcamp will be able to help with anything besides resume coaching and interview prep. You can get these done elsewhere for less than 6k or whatever their tuition is or figure it out for free.