Oregon State Post-Bach Program vs. Bootcamps vs. Free Programs Like the Odin Project

I must preface with the fact that I haven't slept in like 36 hours so this might come out kind of incoherent.

Also, some of it might come out as sort of aggressive, but that's because I'm very familiar with the typical response reddit gives to the bootcamp questions, and honestly I find it a little frustrating.

Anyway,

I came out of a coding bootcamp recently and I can say that going there was honestly the best decision I've made in my entire life.

Everyone, especially here, will tell you that you can "save your money" and "learn it all yourself", and even though that's for sure true...those people really don't know anything about coding bootcamps, at least not the one I went to.

Yes, I went there and I learned how to become an entry-level programmer in 9 weeks, yes ultimately what you learn culminates to a Rails project or similar.

But the experience itself is so much more. You're held accountable for learning at a rapid pace. Sure, I theoretically could have put in 15 hours a day 7 days a week on my own. But there's no way in fuck I would have actually done that, I do not have that sort of discipline or motivation. While I was at my bootcamp though? Loved every single freaking minute of that place.

Being around people that are in the same boat as you, learning the same thing you're learning in a highly intensive and highly fun atmosphere is unbelievable.

You can for sure learn Rails at home by yourself, but can you learn Agile at home by yourself? Can you learn what it means to be an empathetic co-worker? Can you turn to your left and ask someone with 20+ years of experience in the industry any question you can possibly think of? Can you learn the ins and outs of Git and team dynamics at home by yourself? Sure, you can learn the concepts, but you can't get real world practice at home. You can't get the feeling of a devastating force push to master while trying to combine a 4 way merge on a project you're demoing to employers at home by yourself. That's of course not the only way to learn Git, but it's an effective way for sure.

That's another thing, employers. My bootcamp hooked me up with so many networking opportunities on our graduation day, not only that but the entire week after was "career week" where we learned all about the tech industry, how the interview processes work, etc. Invaluable to me, and I really don't think you can do that all on your own. Mock interviews, white boarding sessions, group feedback, it was all insanely helpful.

Aspects are similar to college, such as the things I mentioned above, but waaaay more condensed and strictly related to coding.

Being a dev without a CS degree is without a doubt harder, but "hard" in this sense is a relative term, it's still pretty easy...especially when compared to other professions.

/r/cscareerquestions Thread