Posted on 06/25/2016 6:29:33 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The bootcamps promise 12-week immersive training programs, but critics say high job placement numbers may not be credible. Will federal loans help or undermine credibility and costs?
To many students and career-changers hoping to gain programming skills and break into the lucrative tech world, coding bootcamps can seem like a promising option.
Since 2012, such bootcamps have offered hands-on, intensive technical training in as little as 12 weeks, boasting job placements as high as 98 or 99 percent once students complete the program.
But while advocates pitch them as an alternative to a traditional degree program, critics point to their high tuition — often as much as $14,000 — noting that they aren’t overseen by traditional third-party accreditors, unlike many other institutions, including for-profit colleges....
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
High placement rates, for H1B VISA holders.
I get intimidated looking at all the packages and development environments. I don’t know which one to pick to learn. I’ve intermediate skills, but lack any gui programming ability and would like to learn a multi-platform development environment, but mainly focus on Windows.
I have no idea if it’s credible or not — certainly you can learn a [programming] language with 12 weeks of an intense course, but there’s also the real-world experiential knowledge that often doesn’t come quickly. The high placement rates could certainly be plausible if companies were sponsoring these boot-camps to train people in exactly the set-ups that they’re looking for, on the other hand if all they’re doing is trying to get new/young/inexperienced people to replace experienced ones that could blow-up in their faces big-time. (A long-time employee should have insights into the architecture, history, and business-logic that would be inscrutable to a new hire.)
12 weeks of coding makes you an expert in nothing
I know what you are saying. However if you are good at programming really the language does not matter. I am retired now, but I found that I was always having to program in a different environment depending upon what I was trying to do. You either are a good programmer or you become an IT manager who thinks you know everything that you were no good at.
> I’ve intermediate skills, but lack any gui programming ability and would like to learn a multi-platform development environment, but mainly focus on Windows.
You might want to check out the latest versions of Delphi then; it’s now cross-platform and has a solid GUI-designer (introduced in Delphi 1 [1995] for Win 3.11; updated through present).
Well, the point was. I’m a hardware programmer. Device drivers, embedded test code, specialty programming for process control.
I puke when.I.look.at.java.sample.code or GUI interfaced application programming.
Oh....so the third party accreditors aren’t getting their cut?
Nope it doesn’t. But it might make a beginner hireable as they begin years of gaining expertise.
I know someone who did the Hack Reactor 3-month course in San Francisco about a year and a half ago. His background wasn’t computer science or programming, though he had been designing websites since high school. He has a liberal arts BA and MA. He was impressed with the teaching skills of the instructors at HR. He got a job (one he’s very happy in and is still at) within about 4 weeks. His entire cohort ended up with jobs, though it took some people a couple of months to land one.
Having a BS degree in Computer Science doesn’t say much either. Some kids are good and know more than their professors. Others graduate without being able to program their way out of a paper bag. All it indicates is aptitude. The real training occurs On the Job.
Maybe
You are correct in that
All too often....or in the gamers and hackers domain
In 1998 I graduated from Berklee Music School after 3 years prior (entering junior year) making the decision to blow off Duke at a very very drunk Paul Simon concert. I knew a year before finishing at Berklee I absolutely did not want any part of music as a career. So, I was screwed. I knew nothing about computers other than a couple music mixing courses from Berklee.
12 week program to the rescue.
NO it doesn't make you a good programmer. But if you're smart and committed, it's a very cheap ticket in the door as a junior programmer. Most programmers are senior in 4 or 5 years.
That program was at BU, 12 weeks, 40 hours a week, I think it was about 12K, in 1998. At that time it was 'Client Servicer Software and Database Programming' ... nowadays everything is the same but usually the browser is the client. Still though, front end code, then manipulating data, then sticking it in a database ... and of course a bunch of other things.
Programming is not easy -> it's very humbling even for the smartest -> but it's a fun job - like playing with legos all day. But if you're good and work hard, it pays well, you'll almost never be out of a job. No matter how automated things become, businesses move so quickly now they will always need someone to get something into their product or out on their website immediately.
These programs can't do it all for you -> you have to have the normal dedication and good attitude that life always demands (if you're not a liberal), and you have to be reasonably above average intelligence but not a genius, but it can be done, and spending 4 years at college for a CS degree - my question is ... why? (Unless you're going off to college now, and that's what you already know you want to do.)
In 10 years colleges will have moved significantly to vocational-technical stuff.
In summary: no it won't make you a great programmer. But it will make you a programmer, and if you can suck it up as a junior programmer long enough and stick it 4 or 5 years and you love it (or even just like it) ... you have a career you can frankly practice until you're on your deathbed ... and one that pays pretty well.
Interesting that you went from music to programming. About 20 years ago I was talking with a guy who had a national company that provided customized software for businesses. The H1B visa issue was a topic back then. I asked him if he was able to find enough US programmers. He said he hired from three areas: computer science, math, and music. Computer science is obvious. Math makes sense. But music? He said that music majors were great at pattern recognition, which was very useful in coding.
At least one of the following must be true:
1) There are employers sponsoring these bootcamps, which would explain why almost all the trainees are getting hired;
2) The employment rate claims are a fraud; or
3) Comp Sci programs in US universities, with the 50% rate of employment in the field for recent graduates, have a LOT to answer for.
Both are invisible moving architecture - and music IS pure math looked at one way ... any hook in any song can be reduced to the math that torques your brain in the right way ... it's like legos ... but the legos must move ... and ... you can't see the legos ... but there is a language to represent the legos. Bach would have loved loved loved it. Courtney Love or the Dixie Chicks probably not so much.
For anyone who already knows they find it programmy-stuff interesting ... like people who like playing with excel spreadsheets ... I say go for it.
Any of you who have poor starving Jazz musician sons ... is 14K too much to pay to get them permanently out of your house? It's a no brainer given the cost of a degree. It's just that you have to actually find it interesting.
Four years of woman studies may you less of an expert than 12 weeks of coding.
Maybe they teach the students in-demand skills, rather than theoretical algorithms.
Maybe they limit their student body to those they think are very, very smart.
Maybe the students most highly motivated to get jobs self-select.
Before I retired, I used to interview job candidates. There are a lot of people with degrees, some of whom have had jobs in the field, who are not very good. There are a lot of H1Bs and green card holders from India who don’t know much either. Many people get drawn in for various reasons who simply don’t have the mental horsepower to do the work.
Back in the 80s, I used to recruit dropouts from liberal arts PhD programs and train them, since I was one myself. You pick the right guys, and they will do well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.