Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

The first two CS courses at my top university are enough to be qualified for your entry-level junior engineer: the intro course "Programming with Java" (recently changed to Python now), followed by the second course, Data "Structures & Algorithms."

All the bootcamp would have to do is be similarly very selective and do the same exact curriculum, and the people who "survive" these two weed-out courses (you needed to score higher than half your classmates in each course to receive a passing grade, otherwise you had to keep re-taking it) would be the ones able to get hired with nearly 100% placement.

I'd tell her to do some work on her own before signing up. The internet is jam packed with courses, guides, tutorials and references for all the skills needed for web dev, for free. Pick a tutorial and work through it. Then dream up a really simple project—todo app, pet store, tick-tack-toe or whatever—and build it from scratch, using the same stack.

Then with that under her belt, sign up for the boot camp. The advantages of this approach are:

  - she'll find out if this is something she really wants to do before plunking down thousands of dollars
  - with a bit of background knowledge, she'll be better able to absorb what's being taught at the bootcamp
  - she'll have a better idea of what she wants to specialize in and can select the right boot camp for her

Also, find the community she wants to join. There are a gazillion places where web devs hang out online and talk shop. While doing her prep work she should seek out the places appropriate to the stack she's chosen and lurk. Stay engaged through the bootcamp and during her job search afterward.

Finally, pay attention to open source. Not a lot of professions do their work out in the open like that, so take the opportunity to see how the sausage is made! Find the open source projects that these communities contribute to, and watch them do it. Follow the discussions on mailing lists, Github issues and pull requests. Look at the code and try to understand the criticism arguments. Ask questions. People are shockingly willing to help newbies who are trying to understand.

The bottom line is, there is real value in getting an expert to teach her how to code, but the more work she puts in herself, before, during and after the bootcamp the more she'll get out of it. If she's looking to pay $15K and get a high-paying job in exchange, she'll just waste the money.

Maybe the women just hustled harder. I know that was the case in the program I went through. 30 of us passed; 3 were women. All 3 women and about 20% of the men got good industry jobs. However, I and the other two women were hustling for jobs, sending resumes, networking and going to interviews 6 months before graduation. Most of the men, assuming they were telling the truth when I casually asked them about it, didn't even start to write their resumes until the resume-writing workshop during the last week of school. Of the men who got jobs, one was given a position by his brother who had a hip startup; 3 showed up to a FAST consulting recruiting event and all three got hired there; one already had a degree in software engineering and a job waiting for him at his old employer; and several others went back to their old jobs as well.

I hear you on that -- I've been looking for a path that starts with the best-structured languages, as vehicles for learning the more powerful concepts: static vs dynamic typing et al. So, Golang, Python, or Typescript. School in question is a bit behind the curve -- "PHP/MySQL".

I wouldn't be discouraging here or 'looking for alternatives'. I'd be congratulating her on entering a field with a low supply and high demand for talent. This industry pays very well and we need more female developers. So why would this be a bad choice? (rhetorical question - actually this may be a horrible choice, but keep reading)

I completed an online coding bootcamp about 5 years ago and got a job almost immediately afterwards. I've since become a Lead Dev for a local SaaS company, a mentor at that same school I graduated from, and a part time curriculum contributor.

This level of skepticism towards coding bootcamps is fair. I've seen some horror stories. But here is the thing: All failures involving more than 2 parties are usually the fault of both parties. Here is what I mean:

I'm currently mentoring about 5 students. Out of those 5, 4 are doing incredibly well. They are picking up the concepts, putting them into practice, and showing true growth. 1 of them is struggling hard. What is the difference? Well, in my opinion the difference is motivation. The 1 that is struggling did well his first few months, but when it got hard, he just wanted to start applying for jobs with what little he had learned. He didn't want to put in the work to finish his education. He was solely focused on the $$$ and not the thrill of solving problems with code.

So how could she decide if she will actually enjoy learning to code vs become someone that is only excited b/c of the money? Easy - try the free/cheap stuff first:

1. Codecademy.com 2. Codeschool.com 3. Lynda.com 4. Learn_____TheHardWay.com

The list goes on for a while. Tell her to sign up for one or two of the courses here and build something from start to finish. Nothing major. A todo list webapp, simple blog, or the like will do.

Then ask here: "Can you see yourself doing this 8 hours per day/5 days per week? If she can give you an honest 'yes', then offer her all the support you can give. If she hesitates, have her do more of the cheap/free stuff till it is clear. If it is a no, then it is a no.

Hope this helps. Sorry for the wall of text.