That sounds bad indeed.

The bootcamp I'm at covered CSS in an hour

Certain code boot camps are just $X thousand dollar training wheels with contacts for job placement. For CSS you can simply check-out the well known w3schools.com for free. It's really outrageous to spend that kind of money on CSS. Also, thenewboston YT account has excellent videos on everything for beginner to intermediate programmers. You can do it all yourself. You can start your own LLC and purchase some tools, make a website, and make an Android app for far less than $X thousand dollars. You can do that for less than $X. Start an Indie tech company... why the hell not. It's my current plan.

or pay $x thousand dollars and learn a ton and get a job

Mine was prospectively The Software Guild, which had you take an intelligence test, and after you pass wanted you to complete all kinds of rudimentary work, very rudimentary, intro to HTML, making a list, intro the CSS, all stuff that you could've done in the late 80's to mid 90's.

I mean, lets make a list. Okay, lets make an unsorted list. GOOD! Okay, lets make a sorted list. GOOD. Okay, lets make this text look blue. C'MON ON TILT NOW.

The problem is, we're on HTML5/CSS3 now! I can see spending some time on CSS3 and milking everything out of the new features, and making apps that fit regardless of the screen. But if the other poster is saying 4 weeks on just CSS! C'mon that has to be a type of some sort.

They have high job placement numbers though, but I don't see the reason for the most basic **** for everyone.

Being a self-learner has it's positives and negatives, and is certainly not for everyone.

CSS is like barely a marketable skill as you're basically just expected to know some.

But, if you're coming out of bootcamp able to make CSS3/HTML5 responsive apps, then that's definately marketable. Industry seems to be moving that way.

add: What is there in Software Bootcamp that you can't learn from the YT channel thenewboston?

I will find out if the 4 weeks include bootstrap or jquery or if it strictly CSS/HTML

Going to their career day soon.

Despite what people claim, jobs asking for two years seem to actually expect two years and especially if the ad was very specific on what you'll be doing.

What you're really looking for is HTML5/CSS3, imho. Otherwise you risk being one generation behind.

Web pages are going "responsive", meaning they fit on your phone, and can be resized, etc.

That's been my experience as well.

software guild has a great reputation in my area (northeast ohio). I work with quite a few of their grads. I considered attending there but it was bought by a large congomerate and some of their talent bolted (to the bootcamp that I went to actually). it may have fallen off since then but I know that my company still hired a few ppl from there recently.

anyway, I have posted a bunch about why I think boot camps are very worthwhile. certainly you can learn all of this stuff on your own but I think, broadly, bootcamps offer 3 important positives.

1. motivation. even if you are a self starter, being forced to work on coding all day, every day, for months just makes it so much easier to actually do the work to learn.

2. efficiency. the curriculum is designed to teach you the important concepts in such a way that they build on each other. when being self taught, it can be hard to figure out where to start or where to proceed after learning something.

by surrounding your self with other ppl learning and working on concepts and projects, it is much easier to learn.

3. job opportunities. most camps offer some sort of help with the job search. beyond that, by completing a bootcamp it gives companies a way to pre-vet you. anyone can claim they are self-taught but by completing the camp, a company can be reasonably sure that your skill and understanding is at a certain minimum level.

so yes, ofc it is certainly feasible to teach yourself on your own. I just think it will take a lot longer not just bc you dont have direct access to teachers and learners, but also bc it may be hard to motivate yourself and to understand the best order to learn things.

you also run the risk of neglecting certain concepts or design patterns that are important. are you going to learn dependency injection and functional techniques?

and surely you can understand that your visibility for companies will be much higher with a bootcamp completion on your resume rather than trying to convince them that you are self taught.

and I dont understand your objection with the pre-work for the guild. seems pretty standard. they dont want to waste class time teaching you html/css basics and want you to come in already understanding that stuff.

I enjoyed programming in college and thought that it would be a good career to switch to after poker died. for 2 years I messed around trying to teach myself and even taking some community college classes. I am fairly motivated and decently smart. I also had a ton of free time.

I got no where.

I interviewed for a bootcamp in november, started in january, and had a job by may 1st.

Victor,

I don't disagree with anything you said, but I may elaborate. Regarding TSG, I felt "Well if the intro work is this easy, how good can the classes be?" And even though I had experience in the IT field they didn't let me just skip it. Then I just fell out of love with the whole idea and played poker instead. Then while sitting at the felt, I feel like I have all these creative surges, and ideas, so I decide that it's possible to do both, at least that is what I am trying to find out. Also, while it is true you learn better in an environment, the internet itself is a vast environment. People at StackOverflow become your friends, etc., and if you do it from a business perspective (what products can I bring to market that people want), then you're always learning what you need to. Of course this is all good thinking, but I have not yet "made it" as a small business. But I will. And, I love programming.

I don't think you should not do the bootcamp or follow my path. I do think however you want to make sure you get your money's worth and stay updated on the newest frontier of technology. The bootcamp's have lots of connections, so they'll hook you up. The Software Guild has like 90% job placement.

Anyway, regardless of what you choose, do your research.

Regards,
leavesofliberty

Pushing back against this again: this is not the case in my experience and from people that I've talked to at the "top" bootcamps in SF. There's no help in terms of placement and referrals, other than maybe getting you in touch with alumni and general advice.

I also doubt bootcamp on the resume helps in the Bay Area, and may hurt at this point by putting you in the same bucket as thousands of other bootcamp grads.

It obviously was the case for Victor at an Ohio bootcamp though. So if you are looking for this type of help/placement, make sure you've thoroughly vetted the camp. It probably is not going to be true for the Bay Area, but may be true elsewhere.

they didnt even help you with stuff like writing a resume?

and you really dont think it gives companies a way to pre-vet? like, it would better to be self-taught?

Yea resume and general advice, but very little in the way of "placement".

Idk, I think it's possible that at this point in the Bay Area it's a negative on the resume.

I can imagine this being the case:

"DevBootcamp" - instant throwaway, they've seen thousands of them.

vs.

"ah cool coding projects and personal website...oh, wait, she only has a liberal arts degree? Guess she learned on her own? Shrug, let's set up a phone call."

I could be wrong. It might be like "Great CS degree - 100, mediocre CS degree - 70, bootcamp - 10". But I'm imagining it's possibly "Great CS degree - 100, mediocre CS degree - 70, self-taught/no explanation - 10, bootcamp - negative 5".

I'm almost through the first section in freecodecamp, which is (front-end) HTML. It's cool but not particularly interesting. Kinda boring tbh. I would hope for more in a career. Does development/software engineering get more interesting/stimulating, further down the road, or is the HTML section in these MOOCs a fair representation of what to expect in a career as a dev? Apologies if this seems like a silly question, but I have no idea what's further down the road.

Another point of concern for me is future co-workers. Here in the silicon valley I meet tons of douchey hipsters that work in the field. They typically are transplants and they think they are all that. The thought of working alongside these people everyday gives me hives. And on a similar note, are the majority of dev/sw eng jobs with tech companies, or are they at non-tech companies, such as Target, a medical group/hospital, etc? I think it would be cooler if I'm the "it guy" for IT needs, as opposed to working with a bunch of other tech drones. It's more appealing to me because you would stand out more and hence feel more useful, as opposed to being just another cog in the wheel. Pure speculation though, obviously. For all I know it could be a cooler experience the other way around. Some of you guys in this thread seem to have been around and tried a few different paths. I'm curious to hear things from your perspectives...

Almost no one does html/css for a living, it's just a given that anyone working on the web knows it and can do it.

Don't work in silicon valley (imo)

I don't know where "most" jobs are. I have worked for tech companies, and I have worked for non-tech companies that employed software devs. Each had it's ups and downs. I have worked exclusively for fairly small companies in the last 10 years - 100-200 head count (well, except, I guess, my small head count company got bought by a juggernaut and then I hated it and quit)

Early in my career I worked at giant internation corporations, and I hated it. But, thousands of programmers work at those places and like them fine.

well, I think the bootcamp resume should also have links to github with coding projects and possibly a personal website.

I guess its just a different world over here. I think companies are a bit more conservative and want hard evidence of achievement and there, likely more importantly, there seems to be a ton less bootcamp grads floating around.

currently, I hear about 3 that advertise on the radio so that gives a rough estimate of like 300 grads a year.

I went to the presentation for the grads where local companies looking to hire show up: there was 1 company.

Lots of friends and family though

HTML/CSS aren't considered "programming" really, keep going until you learn a real language or jump to a backend lesson and go back to frontend later.

I lived with the type of people you speak of and hated it. Do they all expect to be the next Elon Musk and worship the venture capitalists? I work with very few/none of those types at a large company. At a startup it may be more likely, but you'll probably adjust.

Working at a place like a Target it might not be so much that you'd stand out as that you'd be ignored or considered unimportant (even though you might be very important depending on what you're working on). I suppose it's possible that some of the data people have street cred at companies like that.

Yes it was different there when you got a job probably, and may still be. The radio advertisements indicate a red flag to me. When I think radio ads, I think the old trade schools or Trump University type things that got into trouble a few years back.

Lol, watch "The IT Crowd" for a totally accurate documentary studying life as "the "it guy" for IT needs" at a large non-tech company

they advertise on npr if that makes any difference. they are all pretty much the same. "learn how to program and start a new career. go to our website for more information and to take a test. come to our open house on xx/xx date and meet our staff and see our environment."

Is there a reason why the comment tags in HTML are not as simple as the ones used in JS? I find // far less tedious than <!-- ... -->. My only thought is that this sequence of characters will basically never be used in anything, thereby preventing any accidentally comment out issues.

On that point, suppose you actually want those characters to appear in your text, such as in an online tutorial. How do you get those characters (the HTML comment out tag) to appear in your text?

Because HTML tags are... just like that. They have an opening and a closing. Also it's very typical for a single HTML tag to span many lines, so it's simpler to have a "begin comment / end comment" syntax instead of "comment this line. Anyway, most editors will take care of it for you, i.e. have a command that will comment or uncomment selected text.

If you want to use html entities in an html document, you need to escape them.
&gt; = >
&lit; = <
&nbsp; = non breaking space
and so forth. You can find a list of them somewhere

This.

Do not pursue and IT career within QA. Automated testing is expected now and the fad of DevOps means that Developers are expected to do testing and operations stuff.

It makes sense from a high level view but when put in practice, you end up with teams of Ops and Testers without jobs.

Poker is more a grind for me as it doesn't really change that often. You're going to be playing online/casino/homegames always (unless we come up with some sick virtual reality stuff!). I play because it's a blast, but don't need the income to survive.

Tech is ever-evolving and thus there's always new skills to master to respond to the marketplace. Plus if you're building your own stuff/sites/apps the potential runs are much bigger and easier to maintain.

My goal is to increase passive (or semi-massive/low maintenace) income through the apps I've launched. With poker you'll always be trading time for money, with tech you can potentially multiply your efforts.



just my $.02