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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?

#11
I recently talked at length with someone who had just finished one of these programs, and learned that they do an incredible amount of "teaching to the test". That is to say, they very specifically and intentionally designed the program to teach people the things that are typically discussed during interviews. The number one goal didn't seem to be teaching programming or software engineering so much as teaching you how to pass the interview to get a job as a developer.

That said, the person I spoke to had created a project similar in scope and quality to what I'd expect a CS undergrad to do as a class project, and clearly had the ability to get things done. I'd guess someone from such a program could be a good developer, but with big gaps in understanding beneath the surface ability to do Rails or Node.JS or whatever the bootcamp used. If you're only doing html/css/javascript then the coding school is probably a sufficient education to get a web dev/design job.

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

#12
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.

But how does it compare to recent grads from a state college?

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

#13
post #10

Went 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)

What program did you go through?

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

#15

I recently talked at length with someone who had just finished one of these programs, and learned that they do an incredible amount of "teaching to the test". That is to say, they very specifically and intentionally designed the program to teach people the things that are typically discussed during interviews. The number one goal didn't seem to be teaching programming or software engineering so much as teaching you h…

This is what almost every undergrad comes out of college as. Someone who has the basics of programming but no real idea of what to do. (as expected). But it also shows someone who is 1) trainable, 2) wants to learn, 3) can learn quickly. Hiring managers see these as good qualities to have, and hopefully the camp also provided some connections too.

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

#18
I'm and instructor at MakerSquare in Austin, TX. I'd be happy to talk to you about our program and coding schools in general if you're interested. I can even put you in touch with some of our alumni if you'd really like to speak to a student. Let me know. nick [at] makersquare [dot] com
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