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Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

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Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#41

Post by randomstep »

otterpro wrote: post #13

Big Nerd's Ranch ( https://www.bignerdranch.com/ ) especialy for mobile app development. Their bootcamp is called "retreat", and they also work as developers and publish books.

disclaimer: I am an instructor for Big Nerd Ranch, teaching our various iOS courses. That said, I came to BNR after being blown away by the quality of their Mac programming book, years ago. I believe deeply in what we do.

tl;dr: Big Nerd Ranch offers short retreats for intermediate and advanced instructors. They are not cheap but they are thorough and powerful, as long as you're willing to put in the work.

Details: We have short (typically 5 day), intensive courses. The instructor leads the class through a series of lectures and intense labs, building out real applications throughout the week. The instructor works with each student to help them maximize what they can learn and achieve during the week.

There is no magic for scaling across different ability levels, but there are ways to do this better or worse. Our courses target intermediate to advanced level learners. We intentionally build our chapters, demonstrations, and lectures to be very dense with material. For the advanced students, they're able to glean API gotchas and sharp corners, as well as real world tips (pretty much all our instructors are also active consulting developers), and lots of looks at different working practices. Seeing another developer work is a great way to learn new techniques.

For intermediate or closer to beginner students, they won't that level of detail as much, as they're still absorbing all the new APIs, design patterns, and details necessary to just get apps building and shipping.

Our courses allow you to get out what you put in. In other words, there's not any particular magic to leveling up. You have to put in the hard work yourself. But I believe our retreat-style approach - where we remove or take care of all possible distractions, and provide expert aid at your call - gives you the best chance to maximize how much you can learn in a week. Food and lodging is included. You'll spend the week learning, programming, and going for hikes every day. It's sort of my ideal world. :D

We don't call them bootcamps half-heartedly. You'll be exhausted by Friday. But if we've done our job right, you'll feel like you've just shortcut several months of work in leveling up as a developer.

Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#42

Post by ozanonay »

Hi! I'm one of the instructors at Bradfield: https://bradfieldcs.com . We teach computer science to strong programmers, typically those who were self taught, attended bootcamps or weren't quite satisfied with their conventional CS experience.

We teach in small classes, strictly in person in SF. I know this sucks for folk (like OP) who are outside SF, but honestly you can't teach this stuff to a high enough standard remotely. We do get plenty of interstate and international students who visit for a course or two.

We also maintain a self-teaching guide https://teachyourselfcs.com for those who don't need the full classroom experience.

Happy to answer any questions in person: oz@bradfieldcs.com

Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#43

Post by chriswoodford »

eorge_g wrote: post #12

This is heavy ruby/rails focused but has other content as well. Tagline is "Get the junior out of your title" https://thoughtbot.com/upcase/

I've been advocating Upcase to Junior Rails devs for a couple years now. Has a lot of great content around improving your testing skills, refactoring, and best practices for object oriented design.

although most of the content is ruby/rails based, the concepts are widely applicable to improving your skills as a software engineer.

Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#44

Post by xxSparkleSxx »

crispyambulance wrote: post #24

Advanced folks will have very specific needs that are hard to meet for any course with a pre-determined curriculum. Perhaps a better approach would be to hire an expert from a consultancy, negotiate a detailed custom curriculum together and go from there? It would certainly be expensive but perhaps within reach for a small group or for heavily motivated individuals?

I have had the same thought about college-courses. Why have 100+ people paying 2k+ for a course being taught by a grad student.

If you could cut out the middlemen (schools), we could probably get better "professors" (i.e. one of the best people in the field - im sure people in industry would love to pick up an extra 10-20k to teach 1 class a year) for cheaper and in smaller class room settings.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.........Just gotta figure out how to do the signaling properly so businesses will look at the classes you took and think 'I want to hire that person.'

Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#45

Post by hello_newman »

austenallred wrote: post #38
hello_newman wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in a similar boat to the person above (bootcamp grad working as software developer). I have been trying to do a comp-sci degree but that cost, degree requirements (classes unrelated to my major) and actually going to school after work is a major pain. I would definitely pay for a year long (or more) part time CS course if it was intense and online. I'm doing that already, but it would save me a lot of time/money…

Cool. Mind if I email you to ask a few questions?

that sounds great!

Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#46

Post by vikp »

I'm the founder of Dataquest (https://www.dataquest.io) -- we teach data science online from the basics, and have a comprehensive curriculum that includes machine learning, spark, and data visualization. You can skip the Python basics and start with more intermediate/advanced material (and build your own projects!).

We also have a data engineering path that teaches more CS fundamentals, and may be a good fit (this is still being developed, but has a few courses).

Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#47

Post by sixhobbits »

bogomipz wrote: post #34
sixhobbits wrote: post #27

I'm working with Hyperion Development[0] which has a wide variety of online bootcamps with 1:1 mentor support. We have courses targeting beginner, intermediate, and advanced. Currently we are just about to deploy a big update but have a look and you might find what you are looking for. [0] https://hyperiondev.com

Asking people for all of their contact details in order to simply read course descriptions seems pretty lame. I also can't imagine that's doing the business any favors.

I'll submit this as feedback to our team :)

Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#48

Post by ozanonay »

sosodaft wrote: post #26
austenallred wrote: post #22

Lambda Academy of Computer Science - a six month, full-time deep dive into software engineering and computer science. Closer to a CS degree than a one-month bootcamp. You need to know basic programming before enrolling. It's free up-front and takes a percentage of income after you get a job, or you can pay up-front. https://lambdaschool.com/computer-science (I'm a co-founder, happy to answer any questions)

I'm a currently-employed web developer (bootcamp grad) and I'd love to see a part-time (nights and/or weekends), cash up front offering to deepen my CS knowledge. Just throwing that out there in case part-time something you guys have thought about. I'm sure I'm not the only bootcamp grad that could use an in-depth CS program.

Hey there! We've been doing this at Bradfield for a couple of years, and do get quite a few bootcamp grads (maybe 100 to date) typically 1-3 years into their careers. Which bootcamp did you attend? Ask around there and I'm sure somebody has good things to say about us :)

Re: Ask HN: Any “bootcamps” or courses for intermediate/advanced people?

#49

Post by mailshanx »

soham wrote: post #17

[Disclaimer: Shameless self-promotion] We run something called Interview Kickstart: http://Interviewkickstart.com . It's a part-time bootcamp focused on preparing for technical interviews at (so-called) top-tier places i.e. places which interview heavily in DS/Algos and Large Scale Design for their core engineering roles, and also make staggeringly high offers. Think G/F/A/Netflix/Amazon/MS etc. It is intense and als…

>> "... and also make staggeringly high offer"

How high are we talking about? Let's say around ~5 yrs exp dev who would otherwise be considered intermediate level elsewhere spends the equivalent of 3-6 months of full time effort in preparation: what comp can such a candidate expect to negotiate in the big4/5?

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