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I agree... it does seem a little like deja-vu to me. I am comingat it from a different perspective however.

I worked as a “computer lab assistant” in the late 1980s. I was a computer “hobbiest” for many years prior to that. I worked on my first “radio shack digital computer IC chip kit when I was in the 5th grade in the early 1970s. I owned several “home computers” and put together a few XT and AT clones. I had also dabbled in programming and actually did have a small amount of formal training.

I had a very easy time helping students with their homework. So by the mid 1980s I had a good understanding of small computers from that time period. The main thing that I helped students with were Word Perfect, Lotus 123, DOS, Basic programming, and a couple of other introductory macro and programming languages. Graphical interfaces had been introduced but were still more of a curiosity to the business community so the community college didn’t really cover them.

I saw a lot of people with good jobs that they didn’t like who decided that they wanted to learn about “computers” and start a new career. Many of them had no understanding and worse... little aptitude for what they thought that they wanted to get into. What is different these days is that computers have become so ingrained in everything that we do that most people have an idea of whether or not they have an interest or aptitude for digging deeper into programming, web design, data entry or any other computer related field.

One of the students that I tried to help was a plumber with a god paying but unfulfilling job. He just wanted to get into “compuuters” and make more money. The poor guy had zero understanding and seemed to be unteachable but then he went on to a highly successful career at Microsoft... just kidding... he failed miserably. There are some people who simply have no aptitude for certain fields and others who can excell with almost no training at all.

I would imagine that most of the people who take these “boot camp” classes have already got some background and know a little about what they are getting into. It is hard to imagine someone spending $10,000 without cracking open a few books or watching a few instructional videos ahead of time.

MMMMmmmmmm. Hardcore PC geek. My story is much the same. I cut my teeth on a TI99/4A that was plugged into the families' B&W TV in the living room. The rest is history.

What I've seen of people who do the bootcamps is that they're "Get rich quick" types. They see "yada yada yada yada 100 Thousand a year yada yada". No commitment (cliche, but true), no concept of what's involved in IT.

Any fool can plug in a PC and make it work...and get paid a fool's wage. To pull down six figures designing million dollar systems that run corporations takes some aptitude, experience, and more knowledge than you'd get out of a 10-week crash course, I think.