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Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

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Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#41

Post by dennybritz »

ycskyspeak wrote: post #36

I know a close friend who went to coding school. She basically wanted to change her career and this was a good way of going about it. Coding schools are usually worth it if you are 1. Motivated enough to make it work - There will be a lot of long hours and toil. You will be trying to cram in a 4 year degree in a 3 month course so be prepared. 2. Question the logic - Programming languages came from humans and not the…

> You will be trying to cram in a 4 year degree in a 3 month course so be prepared.

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. What you learn at a typical "coding school" and what you learn at university is almost completely orthogonal. Coding schools are focused on teaching practical skills, while academic courses are focused on teaching theoretical foundations.

The former usually makes more employable than the latter. Many university graduates are missing the practical knowledge/experience with technologies that are used in the industry. Not having the theoretical foundations is fine for 80% of the jobs out there, which involve "applying" some kind of web framework.

However, there are many jobs (often with higher pay) that require theoretical knowledge (algorithms, low-level architecture, statistics and machine learning, distributed system) that are not taught at coding schools, but part of a standard university curriculum.

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#42

Post by teh_klev »

Where are you getting 10k-20k from? Is that dollars or rupees?

That said, I personally signed up for PluralSight a couple of years ago on their "Individual" $29/month plan. I found it useful for the things I wanted to quickly on-ramp with.

I also used Lynda and didn't have many complaints about the quality of the material there (I was struggling with HTML/CSS layouts :) ).

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#43

Post by eastbayjake »

superqd wrote: post #5

I've been a hiring partner at one of these "schools" run by a former colleague. The quality of hires was abysmal overall, and gave me a bad taste for these sorts of places in the future. My fear would be that after attending such a place, you may come out and be hit with a negative opinion of your skills just because of where you learned them.

Even if you can't say which school specifically, can you give more detail about the city or tech stack? I'd imagine Utah + Ruby has different outcomes than San Francisco + Ruby.

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#44

Post by nickhould »

Back in fall 2012, I attended Starter League in Chicago for their 3 months Rails bootcamp. Prior to joining the bootcamp, I had experienced with Rails through Michael Hartl tutorial and by participating in different hackathons. Taking part in SL required an appreciable upfront investment from my part: moving from Montreal to Chicago for three months, $6K tuition fee (at the time), leaving my job and not working for the duration of the program. I am extremely happy with the results and I am now working as a lead data analyst and I am coding in different languages (python, javascript) as part of my daily job. One of the upside of a great bootcamp is the streamlined learning process. Jeff Cohen, the instructor at the time at SL, built an incredible curriculum for students, enabling deep understanding of the underlying mechanics of Rails. Furthermore, the immersion is a very interesting aspect of a bootcamp. Every day, you are surrounded by people who left their job and family to learn to code. These people want to change careers, start a tech business etc. This can be very motivating. Tips: Prior to joining a bootcamp, know exactly what you want from it. Do a bunch of tutorials, read books about coding, participate in hackathons and get to a level where you can build stuff with code. Too many people haven't tried much before joining a bootcamp and expect to get miraculously good at coding. It's not the case. Learning to code is hard, know what you are getting into. Also, if you expect to have a dream job on a silver plater at the end of the bootcamp, this probably won't be the case. You'll have to work hard for it and chances you'll have a few more months of learnings necessary prior to a full-time gig that interests you. You can learn to code online. A bootcamp can speed up the learning process and is a great learning experience and good for networking but it is not required to learn to code. Know exactly what you want from a bootcamp.

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#45

Post by tdicola »

Are you just looking for a job in the industry, or switching careers? If this is a career switch I would strongly consider a bachelors degree in CS if possible--perhaps a little further down the line if it isn't feasible now. You'll learn a lot more and be exposed to stuff outside just front-end development.

Just realize that 3 months might be long enough to teach you how to take a boilerplate and slap some logic in it, but it will take much, much longer to really feel proficient at anything. I have a bachelors and have been a professional developer for almost 10 years and only now really feel the confidence of knowing how to tackle most problems that come my way. There's really no shortcut around the 10,000 hour rule, especially for software development.

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#46

Post by rholdy »

reustle wrote: post #23
wando wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What program did you go through?

If I found the correct twitter account, it looks like he went through the DevPoint Labs program (which seems to have a broken site now) in Utah. Then hired by https://www.masteryconnect.com/ google cache: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ErvVfYw...

Wow. Impressive sleuthing.

This is the program I went to, http://www.devpointlabs.com/ And I now work for MasteryConnect.

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#47

Post by tomasz207 »

salahxanadu wrote: post #22

I'm going to buck the trend and say that going to a 2 or 4 year college gives you a lot more than just the skills to program. It gives you social connections. It teaches you to do things you don't want to do (electives at times). It gives a deeper knowledge of your field. It exposes you to seasoned experts (professors). It also helps you branch out and learn things you never thought that you'd have interest in. Oh an…

I think this is a good option for those folks that have an unrelated 4-year degree and are looking for a change of scenery in their professional lives.

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#48

Post by zampano »

salahxanadu wrote: post #22

I'm going to buck the trend and say that going to a 2 or 4 year college gives you a lot more than just the skills to program. It gives you social connections. It teaches you to do things you don't want to do (electives at times). It gives a deeper knowledge of your field. It exposes you to seasoned experts (professors). It also helps you branch out and learn things you never thought that you'd have interest in. Oh an…

In my experience (I'm an instructor at one of these schools), the vast majority of incoming students already have a 4-year degree in a different area. I think for many people who may already be at a point in their life where they are paying off student loan debt, starting a family, etc., going without a significant income for another 2- or 4-years would be completely out of the question whereas a 3-month program is something they may be able to weather.

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#49

Post by gaelow »

Is it something specialized which requires at least some base knowledge and currently in high demand and low supply, such as "angularjs development"?

Is there enough trusted positive feedback from former attendees?

Can you afford it? (20K is comparable to what I make in a year, so not a choice for me, unless I want to live out of tuna sandwiches the rest of the year. And I don't think any summer school is worth that. But if that's pocket money for you, why not?)

Have you considered an internship? Like, learning by hard work among more experienced partners and maybe even get paid for it if you prove yourself useful? Then, after you've finished, you can prove you can code by simply showing the things you've coded. Just like the school, but in a professional environment.

In many companies you just need to be willing to work hard and show a sincere great enthusiasm for the position in order to get an internship. A guy (a foreign student) just finished a 200-hour internship (about four weeks) in the company where I've just started working. He definitely has something to add to his CV, and he got paid for it. When he goes to a job interview he can say something like: "I learned how to do it with the help of my mentor and then I did this simple but useful app, all by myself. Plus I got paid for doing it, so I know my current skills are worth something".

I am not saying a coding school is a bad choice, only that there may be a few other options more suitable for you...

Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?

#50

Post by devkaoru »

$10k + is a lot of money. But really there is no better investment you can make.

I attended MakerSquare in Austin when their program was 9 weeks long, not 12. A week after graduation I had 3 job offers that promised substantial returns.

Part of MakerSquare's prep is going through some prework on codeschool and codeacademy. I hated CodeSchool. The sound effects were annoying and I felt the video went too quickly for an intro. I found I rather read something, tinker with it until I understand and then move on. So why not read a whole bunch of blogs and learn stuff. Well you can but you're missing the entire point of a school. Interactions with others.

The biggest part you're missing out on is the problems and solutions other people have come across or invented. Given a problem you and I will come up with two different solutions and if we share our solutions we would come up with a even better solution. You see things differently than I do and we both will learn from the experience. Hence why a ton of people love pair programming ( which is something you will miss out on on your own ).

It is very likely that you will work with others. In fact coding is very social. Working with others in code is a valuable skill to have because it teaches you how to separate your personal feelings from your code.

Yeah you can save a bunch of money by not going to school. Yeah you can probably learn and get a job as a developer if you read a bunch of free stuff. But then ask yourself why does a society spend billions upon billions of dollars every year on free public education when really we should be spending all that money on books and tutorials.

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