If you have been considering learning programming and boosting your career opportunities, you are already a full-time developer, or you have already got the fundamentals of coding and want to level up your education to land a job; chances are that you have heard about some coding camp.
There are a lot of opinions and reviews on coding bootcamp, some impressively positive, and some questioning their worth. As anything in life, they do have pros and cons, and are not necessarily the best for absolutely any learner.
But the percentage of bootcamp graduates who land a job within 2-4 months after the completion of their program is quite high, usually at least 90% of them can land jobs. And, with the right motivation, you can be one of those bootcamp graduates landing a tech job.
Who is a coding bootcamp for?
Coding bootcamps are a great response to the need of so many programming learners all over the world learning to code and pursuing a career in tech; and they want to get a structured coding curriculum, the help of teachers and mentors, and the interaction with others.
The personalities, goals and backgrounds of people getting graduate from a programming bootcamp cover quiet a wide range. That’s what really makes it a very viable option for almost anyone wanting to get a job as a web developer, software developer, programmer or data analyst scientist; as well as other titles, depending on the programs available.
Many bootcamps require people wanting to enroll to go through and application process, but not an overwhelming one as for universities, a simpler one, to determine whether each person is really motivated to learn to code and to ensure her/his success during and after the bootcamp.
So, if you:
- Love or are very interested in learning code
- Are keen on practising constantly and staying focused
- Want to get a programming job
Then, a coding bootcamp might be a good fit for you. But, if you are really motivated to learn code, and you don’t feel you quite love it, but you like it and are willing to learn; or you just think you want to go through the experience, then by all means do so, you’ll probably be surprised on how good it went!
Advantages and disadvantages of a coding bootcamp
Coding bootcamps are worth it, especially those with a proven curriculum, a great learning methodology, and good references from their graduates. But it’s still valid to wonder what are the advantages and the disadvantages of attending a coding bootcamp.
Advantages of going to a coding bootcamp:
- Coding will become your full-time job from the first day
- You’ll learn the most in-demand technologies and how to easily integrate them
- Having a curriculum allows you to focus. Forget abou that overwhelming feeling of not knowing what to learn
- You’ll complete real-world projects
- Mentors are there for you to orientate and help you, but not to force you
- You’ll start making a portfolio
- No grading or uncomfortable tests
- You won’t have a lack of practice, high exposure to coding
- Motivation lives on when learning with others
Lots of advantages! Let’s now find some possible disadvantages of attending a coding bootcamp:
- You can’t learn everything within 3-5 months
- Some computer science fundamentals could not be learned in depth
- orientation towards future jobs is too present
- Some people cannot afford not having a job for the time of the program
- Students could get too used to the technologies learned in the program
These are quite some disadvantages as well. However, while the advantages are for pretty much anyone attending a coding bootcamp, the disadvantages would highly depend on the person.
Not being able to learn everything in a few months is also true for an undergrad university program in computer science, and being free to learn new concepts as we feel interested is actually quite positive.
Not every computer science concept is absolutely necessary, and we do can learn them as we find them necessary. And in regards to the getting a job focus, of the fundamental goals of a coding bootcamp is precisely helping graduates to land jobs in tech, but as a learning experience alone, they are also quite great.
While true that some people simply cannot afford attending a bootcamp full-time, there are many part-time and even online bootcamp programs now! Other bootcamps offer special paying plans to pay after landing a job. For students, it’s much cheaper than a full tuition in college.