I'm considering going to a front-end coding school and trust the people here more than other forums. I'm curious if those who attended, or know someone who attended, enjoyed or disliked the experience and why. Is it worth saving 10-20K and just subscribe to Lynda or Pluralsight? Thanks in advanced.
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?
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Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?
#3I went to www.thisismetis.com and yep, it worked. Got a sweet job. I know lots of others that went to other schools that were successful. The trick is to love web development. You have to really be a geek about it. If you love it and passionate about it, itll work. If youre doing it for money or other reasons, it won't.
Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?
#4$10k-$20k for a coding school? That's way too much. Try Treehouse[0] before you do that and if you feel you still need a classroom experience take a class at an adult vocational school or city college.
Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?
#5I'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.
Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?
#6I did General Assembly's Web Development Immersive program, which emphasized back end a little more. I had no coding experience going in and got my first dev job 3 weeks after I graduated.
I wouldn't have been able to teach myself nearly as much using online resources. I learn much better being accountable to a group for my work, and there were so many times I got stuck and needed to just ask another person for help. I also learned how to work on a dev team, not just in my app-building silo. So, GA was worth it for me.
That being said, it depends on your background and your goals. Learning front end to change careers is different than learning it to be able to better communicate with front end devs at your work.
I personally wouldn't get $10k worth of knowledge from online resources, but your motivation may vary.
Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?
#7Not a direct answer to your question, since I graduated from a traditional university with a degree in computer engineering and have been doing contract work for over a decade, but I frequently take classes through Coursera and have been pleasantly surprised with how well they are put together and how much I have learned. Also, it's free.
Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?
#8I haven't gone to a coding school, but the ones that teach Ruby on Rails (yes, I now know you're asking about front-end specifically, but that's not the case in the question's title) claim a very high placement rate, certainly higher than what you'd expect for a newbie of 10 weeks of training at home.
I think regardless of the quality of the instruction, the fact is that when you pay $10K+ for anything, you aren't going to schlub it off...in fact, these schools are pretty much run with the expectation that you're treating it as a full-time job during session, learning/working 6-8 hours a day at minimum. As great as the opportunities there are for learn-it-yourself, nothing beats the financial/social pressure of a structured class...and at the very least, employers have some validation that you can handle a structured pace (and part of this validation comes from the reputation of the school).
In fact, I'd argue much of the value of a traditional college degree is simply a signal that says, "Hey, I'm a relatively safe hire because I'm an adult who has figured out how to raise/access $50K-$150K, legally, have passed a battery of competency and social tests, and have managed to get along with hundreds/thousands of other students/faculty for four years without committing an egregious felony"
Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?
#9If you're passionate and willing to put in the effort and the hours, you'll learn more in a (good) 3 month intensive than in 12 months of trying to teach yourself online. That's my experience anyway.
Re: Ask HN: Did you go to a 3 month coding school? Did it work?
#10Went to a 3 month code school. Had multiple, full-time job offers after the program was done. Took one of them. My company has gone back and hired 5 more people from the same program.
Worked out well for me, and I learned much more attending in person than I would have just doing the online stuff (many of which I had pounded through before going to the bootcamp)