Question about whether those 'learn to code in 30 days' bootcamps are actually worth it

I was really skeptical about those fast coding bootcamps that promise you'll be job-ready in a month. My buddy signed up for one back in February and I figured he'd just throw away $500 on some hype videos. But he finished it last week and showed me the little weather app he built from scratch. It wasn't perfect but it actually worked and pulled live data from an API. He's already interviewing for a junior dev position at a small agency in Denver. So now I'm wondering if maybe I underestimated these programs. Has anyone else tried one of those short-term bootcamps and had it actually teach you real skills?

3 comments

3 Comments

casey68219d ago

Wait, your buddy built a whole weather app that actually pulls live API data after just 30 days? That's wild. I've seen people take actual semester-long classes and struggle to get that working right. Honestly makes me rethink those bootcamps too. My cousin paid like $2,000 for one years ago and all he learned was how to print "hello world" in like five different languages. Maybe the quality is way better now or something.

barbarah1919d ago

My bootcamp was intense too but it worked. I did one in Austin in 2019, 12 weeks full time. By week 4 we were building CRUD apps with Node and PostgreSQL. @casey682 your cousin's experience sounds like the old school ones from like 5 years ago. The good bootcamps now have you deploy something real by week 3 or 4. I shipped a little inventory tracker for my uncle's hardware store by the end. That project alone got me my first dev job.

harperg7619d ago

Yeah exactly, that's what got me too. My neighbor did one of those bootcamps last summer and she made a little to-do list app that actually saved stuff in a database. I was like wait, you learned that in a month? She went from zero coding to having a working app you could actually use. It's definitely not all hype I guess, at least not anymore.