Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people wouldn't be able to cut it in software dev, whether they did the 3 month bootcamp or even if they managed to pass a 4-year university program. 99% of the time, Little Jimmy's 4th grade English teacher would have a snowball's chance in hell as a professional developer.
This might have been true 20 years ago when software development meant everything from a fundamental understanding of hardware (including how pixels are laid out, how to manage gamma, etc for the front end) to knowing a lot of theory (because you had to implement your collections in house, manage the code base by hand, etc) but nowadays I'm pretty sure at least half of everyone could be pointed at a web framework and…
By the same token, if you want an app that will still be maintainable in 5 years, you need a professional. An amateur can build most requirements, but the architecture will seize up if it’s just layers of hacks.
It’s sort of an interesting situation for startups, because their business requirements for newly acquired users are often changing on The problem is previously acquired customers, who won’t generally deal well if you tell them half of your products features are going away for 18 months, or maybe forever.
You can sometimes hack around this by basically ditching all of your old customers and taking a high turnover strategy. That can work well for the middle of your growth curve. You burn a chunk of your addressable market in the long term. Also most companies don’t have the nerve to do it.
And it can cause cash problems.
But there are viable strategies that way.