A lifetime ago most if not all computing pioneers or professionals where thoroughly educated mathematicians, physicists or more recently computer scientists who spent many years of their lives on studying many aspects of information technology and related sciences.
Times have changed, uncountable layers of abstraction have been laid since the invention of computers, and programmers can be seen as modern skilled craftsmen who don’t need to understand every bit of computer science in order to perform their craft well.
Coding boot camps pushed this idea even further and with market’s stable demand for workers in IT field they started to offer intense learning courses for people with little to no prior IT experience or education. The above mentioned courses usually have very similar structure. Attendees sit in class for a few months and learn under guidance of experienced professional, known as mentors in a boot camp’s lingo. Knowledge passed to students is strictly focused on the market’s needs.
Unlike in a college you won’t have to memorize useless trivia or use outdated solutions which are no longer relevant to business applications.
The idea behind boot camps sounds great. If you don’t have experience, they will teach you everything that is necessary, if you can’t find a job or work in a dead-end job they will give you a kick-start in one of the most promising fields right now. But are those slogans used by companies true? Is a three months course equivalent to at least a three year long in-depth program you are taught in college?
Over the internet you can find very different opinions about the boot camps.
On the one hand you can find people massively criticizing the phenomenon. Dominant point of criticism is focused on lack of knowledge of attendees. Despite skills they learned it is often not enough to land a job, because even though demand is high so is competition on the market.
On the other hand you can see people praising boot camps and telling how taking part in one was a major factor in finding their first job in the industry and it probably would not happen it they didn’t participate in such a course.
However, I once stumbled upon a comment which felt most reasonable to me. The author of the comment said that it was not the pricey camp which landed him a job but his own work after hours.
1.Do you have any prior experience with boot camps?
2.Do you think they can replace college education?
3. If you have any additional thoughts about the topic feel free to comment.
Sources:
1stimage:https://medium.com/bits-and-behavior/what-i-learned-from-researching-coding-bootcamps-f594c15bd9e0
2nd : https://www.coursereport.com/blog/are-coding-bootcamps-worth-it
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There isn’t one solution for everyone. If you are upper secondary school graduate you are in a different situation than mother of three children who wants to come back to work. Colleges and boot camps can coexist because target groups alter. Somebody, who believes that higher education is a value will not choose a camp, the other one, who is a master may don’t want to spend 3 or 4 years studying again. Those courses may give you a deeper sight in problem, but it is only a basis to start, studies also give you a basis and although your knowledge is wider you have to specialize.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was writing the text I weren't thinking about an important factor you brought, that is personal situation and experience. The choice between bootcamp or college seemed more like a binary problem to me where you pick better option either one of another considering time and money you spend and the abilities you learn in given course. Now I see it's a more complex thing and you have to take your personal situation into account.
DeleteFor me it wasn’t binary problem. I didn’t take into account only my situation I also saw more than two options. I could try to learn myself from internet or just try to find related work without knowledge and experience and learn what I need at work. I know a person who did it and succeeded.
DeleteI've also met a person who succeeded by learning from internet. He is a big role model to me. Whenever I feel like giving up on learning because I got lost and feel like it's pointless his example motivates me to continue on picking up new skills or at least not giving up on courses instantly in fear that I will not succeed
DeleteCoding is being commoditized. This is what always happen to things as they saturate the market. They become common, they become ever-present, they become so ingrained into the fabric of reality that you stop noticing them. That is what happened with electricity. That is what happened with cars. That's what has happened with cellular communications. It used to be a service, but currently this is a commodity. The market is saturated at almost 100%, many people have 2 phones on them, the competition is astonishing and the prices for the primary product went into free-fall. The same is happening with coding. The demand for coders is growing. Coding itself is a skill. Software is becoming more and more complex. It used to be an art form, it became this mundane job of executing the task of writing a piece of code according to technical specification that you received. This can be done by code monkeys. According to Techopedia, a Code Monkey is: "a derogatory term for a programmer or developer. It infers that the person's skill set is very simple or basic, or that they could be easily replaced." I wouldn't call them that, I would call them the blue collar workers. The assembly line guys. I believe that bootcamps really make sense. They make sense in a way that they teach you an actual skill. A skill that, in time, will continue to lose worth as more people learn it. The problem with bootcamps though is that they sell hopes. They advertise using the Silicon Valley as a reference, but Silicon Valley is not about Code Monkeys. Silicon Valley is about artists, virtuosos and even when it's about skill and craft, it's about master craftsmen. If you want to move the needle, you need to know more than what you've learned at the bootcamp. You will not be able to compete in Silicon Valley with three months worth of skill and no knowledge. But if you want to grab a job in the IT and maybe then develop your skills further, develop your knowledge further, boot camp is as good a way to go as any other. Ultimately it is about your goals, about the effort you put in and your definition of happiness :)
ReplyDeleteI agree with yours view on similarity between current people hired in IT and blue collar workers. Today's workers hired in IT indeed resemble me of semi-skilled workers that just happen to do the work that was considered to be on rocket science level back in the days. With rapid growth of the market and the number of the workers wanting to start their careers in IT, skills that used to be in demand are now becoming devalued.
DeleteInterestingly if bootcamps dropped their fancy slogans about turning you into highly qualified specialist in just few months who will undeniably find a well paid job soon after completing the course my look on the phenomenon would be slightly different.
I had an opportunity to interview few candidates after boot camps and recently even teach as a lecturer in one. My general impressions is that they lack hands-on experience as well as understanding of programing fundamentals. They learn a lot of definitions without actually understanding them and fail to write simple programs like Fizz Buzz. Therefore I don't expect boot camps to replace colleges yet. They target completely different groups. I expect that a graduate from University of Warsaw or Warsaw University of Technology has extensive algorithms knowledge, strong fundamentals and know basic of software engineering. Obviously you don't need a degree to know this but you can't learn all of that during 2 or 3 months course. Boot camps can be a good starting point but you still have to put a lot of effort after hours to actually find a decent job after the course.
ReplyDeleteThis is my comment, btw :) forgot to login
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DeleteYour insight as a lecturer is very important to me. I never really had a chance to speak with a lecturer who wasn't biased towards one option or another, thus reading such a reasonable opinion is especially valuable. From what you are saying it doesn't seem like these two(or three if self paced learning is taken into consideration) learning paths are equal, as the target group and competencies passed to attendees are different.
IT is growing very rapidly and who knows what new specializations and entire branches of computer science will emerge in next couple of years. The industry is already very complex and if someone want to be a specialist in some field he has to put much work towards this specified goal, intentionally ignoring knowledge not important to the area of interest. Postgraduate studies offered by colleges who serve that purpose already exist but I wonder if in a couple of years will there be bootcamps comparable in length and content. As a lecturer, recruiter and a specialist do you think it is possible?
I think courses with comparable length might be too expensive. Even 3 months boot camps can cost you more than 10k zł. By the way, not all boot camps are for newbies. We already have boot camps for professionals where they can teach you advanced stuff.
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ReplyDelete1.Do you have any prior experience with boot camps?
ReplyDelete2.Do you think they can replace college education?
3. If you have any additional thoughts about the topic feel free to comment.
1. I have interested in those but I didn't participate in any.
2. I think it is possible, but only if boot camps will evolve into cheeper and better form of passing real, wide and needed knowledge. For now I think it is more a way to earn money by giving some basic little knowledge for people who want to start in given topic.
3. In a past I thought about universities via Internet. I believed it is possible but now I see many web services offering various lectures but they are most often of poor learning quality. Although they are some shiny examples of really good internet courses. I think it can be similar with bootcamps. After some time it can be that bootcamps will be better and better and will become important part of learning for many people in many subjects and areas.
Price is indeed an important disadvantage of bootcamps. As Anh Tuan Nguyen have written above, even relatively short course in comparison to college or postgraduate studies can cost you considerable amount of money.
DeleteYou also mentioned learning from universities via Internet and internet courses. From my experience, I highly recommend giving a try to MIT OpenCourseWare and edX. Both platforms host courses of highest quality, although some of them may be focused more on academic knowledge.
I hear for the first time about boot camp. Certainly they can't replace university studies, for example because of the degree.
ReplyDeleteHowever, it seems to me that this is a great solution in a situation where, for example, you want to change the industry because you have already burned out and want to start something else. I like the idea of learning things that are focused on the problem. However, I know for myself that during my studies I discovered things that I would not have been interested in before, and now I'm exploring them and giving me incredible satisfaction.
Your point about degree might not convince everyone but to me it's valid. I often hear opinions that degrees aren't that important anymore but contrary to that almost every company requires a degree in a field adequate to company's area of business.
DeleteI never participated in a such bootcamp, but programmers in my company told me that bootcamps already had a big negative impact on the recruitment process. Before bootcamps they were getting around 5-10 resumes for a junior position, mostly from people that had a high interest in programming, some kind of related education and already few programming projects on their github. Now they are getting around 100 resumes, when 50 of them just needs to be thrown into thrash because people don't have any educational background, no experience in IT, none finished personal projects, but they passed two weeks of a bootcamp. Bootcamp could be a great start, but still you should invest time to atleast create one personal project, it will give you a lot more knowledge and possibility to answer questions on a job interview.
ReplyDeleteThis is so true. Because of this having a boot camp in your resume and nothing else is almost like a disadvantage.
DeleteI don't have any experience with coding boot camps. I'm able to believe that the college will not guarantee the full background necessary at work. Learning programming in the way it will be implemented in the future at work can certainly bring good results, but 3 months is probably not enough ...
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ReplyDelete1.Do you have any prior experience with boot camps?
ReplyDeleteNo, I didn't participate to bootcamps
2.Do you think they can replace college education?
No, it won't replace any education, because computer science is all about your own work, even people with college degrees are sometimes worse than people with no education but many projects in the past. Computer Science is all about expirience not degrees. Of course college helps to get that expirience but it's all about you, if you'll be a good specialist or not.
3. If you have any additional thoughts about the topic feel free to comment.
I think bootcamps are just another great business to cheat on people who want to be cheated on. It's ok to go to the bootcamp, get the knowledge and develop. But I think most of the people without college think that it's so easy and they will advance their wealth. Everybody would agree, working in IT is not so easy sometimes, it's a good, convinient job, but sometimes very hard. Si after that bootcamp the reality comes and it's a very big sadness everywhere that it wasn't a key to success. Because the key is somewhere else and it's in working hard, developing and learning. Second thing that it's just not for everybody.
Also it's better to get the basic knowledge, decide what you want to specialize in, and then go to some specialized courses rather then doing all of it in one time. It's to much to learn to get that so fast.
I finished boot camp a few years ago, and I cannot agree that three months of intensive learning are not enough to start work as a software developer. All depends on the attendee. For sure you have to put a lot of own work into it to succeed. The college education gives you perspective on the full range of programming paradigms but does not focus at all on any of them. You do not learn any practical knowledge during whole studies. I admit that understanding specific algorithms or frameworks might be beneficial for you, but it will not teach you how to write code correctly. Things like Design Patterns or TDD approach to code writing are essential in real software development. It allows you to write clean and maintainable code. Unfortunately, a lot of people how have finished college do not have this kind of knowledge at all, but they know how sorting algorithms works. Not that the implementation of them you can meet in every leading language frameworks nowadays. In my opinion, college should be treated as an additional source of information, but concurrently you have to gain a lot of practical knowledge at work. Summing up - if you put a lot of effort during the boot camp, you can save up a lot of money and more likely lead yourself to success in IT world.
ReplyDeleteBut college is free so attending boot camps is by default the more expensive solution. And it's not like they will teach you Design Patterns or TDD during those courses. To make it clear, I am not saying that boot camps are bad or college is superior. I just think that everything that you wrote about college is also applicable to boot camps. What you wrote is just general issues with junior developers.
DeleteI've never attended any kind of boot camps in my life, so I cannot share my experiences with you. However, I've been interested in this topic, even thought about joining one a while ago. I've been deeply searching over the internet looking for reviews about each programming boot camp our market offers. Many of those were rather positivie, although the perspective of wasted money (in case when the result wouldn't be sufficient for me) has prevailed. The price for the course was overwhelmingly high, therefore the decision wasn't easy. Over time I may say that this was a good decision as I kept my money and reached the goal I was aiming for. I think that this is possible for these bootcamps to replace current education options. We may see the number of facilities offering this type of learning will be increasing, because this is just a faster education alternative. Also this is a very profitable business for schools offering such services.
ReplyDelete1) NO
ReplyDelete2) NO, I think college edudaction is still vital to develop a basis, required to understand more complex problems of IT.
Indeed, more and more peaple are becoming interested in IT industry. Even the waiter from the restaurant near my office asked me what is the best way of starting working . I adviced him trying to become a test engineer
When it comes to bootcamps, I have mixed feelings - everything is available in the INternet (tutorials, examples of code, video trainings on youtube) that there is no need to study information technology at the university,
on the other hand, people learning e.g. programming on the their own, may leave out some fundamentals aspects, such as algorithms and data structures.
I believe that coding bootcamps can change your life for the better. You get the essential knowledge that it's required to get the job. The price of them can be really high but it pays off after short amount of time when you get the new job. I don't have any experience with coding bootcamps myself but I might try it one day.
ReplyDeleteDo I think that they can replace education? No I don't think that it possible at this time. Because courses are focusing more on the specific topics rather than overall value of knowledge like IT itself they cannot replace universities that are teaching you more that one topic.
Those bootcamp companies are getting a lot of money in short amount of time so they can hire even more professionals to grow the courses. Overall I think bootcamps are great idea.
My brother did a bootcamp for backend python developers because he wanted to change his career path and wanted to learn more about python as well. And for him it didn't work as he would like to, mainly because he have a well paid job and he won't get a similar salary going for a junior dev.
ReplyDeleteThere is no easy way to replace university degree technical knowledge as there is no easy way to replace practical experience. So bootcamp might help but it won't be a substitute.
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ReplyDeleteBootcamps can learn you something - that you have to learn on your own, haha! If bootcamps help you to do so, then great, you can become a professional. If it is univeristy - same situation. I was on one bootcamp, we were experimental group so for us it was free. I learned there which subjects I have to learn on my own and how, but mainly we were taught how to answer job interview, sadly. The first real skills I learned were at my first work. By the way I think that bootcamps are great business - low costs, high income! Sometimes I wonder why don't I create one and be rich, haha!
ReplyDeleteNo, but I have few friends who participated in boot camps.
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion college education gives us a general knowledge about a lot of topics. It shows us a lot of paths in which we can develop. Boot camps are shorter and focus on one subject. Even if we take part in bootcamp, self-study is the most important. There are many paid and free sources on the internet that we can learn from.
In my particular case, where I'm already an civil engineer and I'd like to become developer I was thinking about taking part in some sort of bootcamp. The reason was that I want as fast as possible change my work environment and I was thinking that knowledge compress at some small amount of dev-field will allows me to change my job. For now on, when I've already joined PJWSTK most of people I met bring interesting facts that there's quite a lot of bootcamps right now and people that're off them know exactly the same things. Second thing is that every particular field of study need practice and time and in my opinion it's impossible to really go into something during 2 months course. It might be a good alternative for intermediate person but still it would be very expensive "pleasure".
ReplyDeleteThere is no short answer to this question. On one hand IT revolution and high demand on market makes such coding camps resonable.
ReplyDeleteAs you said - is present times programmer don't need to know much to do his job decently. On the other hand programming is soo complex
and to be really good programmer you need to know way more than just 30 key words and understanging on basic logic, algebra and some data structures.
It's not possible to learn that in 3 months but it can be a good start if you want to learn after camp finishes.
Coding camps don't need to be on a basic level only and then even people with IT degree can learn much on such a advenced camp - learning from proffesionals with degree.
From my own exprence - one of many stages of recrutation for my first job was 2 week training where I could learn basics of tools for my future work.
Additionaly this training was a test as well - eg. it evaluated how fast we can learn new things and only the best of particiapnts got the job.
1.No, I don’t have any experience with boot camps. Only studying and working on my own to broaden my knowledge.
ReplyDelete2.I think they cannot replace 100%. Studies are a long period when we can learn a lot of things and we have time to work on everything. At boot camps, we can refine something or check ourselves.
3.In the other hand I think this kind of boot camps have good opinions. Thanks to this, a lot of people got a job that they could not even dream about before. Many people are also gifted and thanks to their own work and passion have better skills than already educated computer scientists for example. The only thing they lack is the proof that they have this knowledge and skills. Boot camps are a good proof that they are worth the job and trust.