Ask HN: As an Experienced Developer, What Do You Think about Bootcamps? - alshtico
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lhorie
They cover gaps that most universities overlook (web development), but
conversely, skip a lot of CS theory that would otherwise make a more "well-
rounded" engineer.

As someone who interviews a lot of candidates, I tend to find that fresh-out-
of-bootcamp alumni tend to suffer from tunnel vision (i.e. they may be well-
versed enough in one library or framework, but completely fall apart outside
of that narrow comfort zone, e.g one abstraction level below or a different
framework, never mind a different stack or language)

From conversations with people that have done bootcamps, I heard these courses
are also quite expensive (some to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars for
6 months), especially considering that any piece of paper you might earn out
of an accelerated course is completely useless and that the web is flooded
with similar resources online for autodidacts that are far more affordable and
that don't necessarily require strict time commitments (e.g. you could study
early in the morning or after work)

Something that I think both universities and bootcamps fail at is that neither
really teaches you how to go about implementing architectures on top of
building blocks in a meaningful way. Neither goes one level below the
abstraction level that the industry uses, nor they explore what different
approaches to framework design exist and their trade-offs. As a result, I
sometimes see people ardently defending something like redux without having a
clue about any of the alternatives, or a "well it works well enough for me so
whatevs" attitude. This tends to be dangerous to a beginner's career because a
combination of wanting results fast and lack of proper foundations can lead to
becoming comfortable with the status quo, and that's the antithesis of
software engineering.

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k__
I don't think this is something needed here in Germany.

We have universities that cover researcher education, with many CS and CS-
related degrees.

Then we have universities of applied science with cover engineer education,
with many CS and CS-related degrees, many of them having mandatory (and often
paid) practical semesters at companies.

And finally, we have paid apprenticeships. They take about 3 years, where
people work at companies 3 days a week and go to a technical school 2 times a
week.

So every level of education is covered rather good, from practical to
academical.

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fouralarmfire
I would agree with others who say it depends on the school and the student.
The most important thing to note about bootcamps is that their "Learn to code
in N weeks" is an exaggerated sales pitch. No bootcamp alone can get you job
ready in that time, in sort of the same way that doing a CS degree but doing
basically no coding modules will not make you very hireable (as an engineer).
The bootcamp students who do well are those who understand that the course
simply fast-tracks you through the first stages of learning, and gives you
strong and useful tools to learn further. These are only strong and useful if
you acknowledge this and decide to use them and keep improving (maybe by
filling in the CS theory which as another poster noted, is missing from
bootcamp curriculum).

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arsenykostenko
There are many ways one can learn something or get specific skills, and each
of them has its own distribution of parameters like affordability, autodidact
vs mentored, on-demand vs on schedule, short-term gains, long-term gains, one
on one vs classroom, general theoretical vs hands-on practical, etc. There is
no single best way to learn things — it depends on circumstances and a goal,
and bootcamps may serve better under one set of circumstances for a specific
goal, than other ways to learn.

To be successful in the industry you have to have theoretical knowledge, all
these generally dreaded algorithms, big O notation, Boolean algebra, graphs
theory and so on — you may not use it on a daily basis but it shapes your
mindset, gives you thinking models and makes a better engineer. The timeless
stuff. Universities are pretty good at this.

However, you also need practical skills. Most of us learned the necessary
amount by ourselves, reading docs, doing and extending hello-worlds, reading
open source code, etc. I believe it's the best way to get practical knowledge
but it's very time consuming because it rarely has a "learning program" and is
mostly an improvisation what you want to learn and how.

Also, the industry is very fast changing, so to keep up with the technology
you gotta follow it and try yourself.

Bootcamps can teach you a slice of the current state of the industry
mainstream, so you can code a simple full-stack something without going much
into details but in a very short time. And it is expensive. It's like
following an expensive recipe book.

To me, the best use case for bootcamps is when you are a seasoned industry
veteran with a good theoretical background, who got stuck in an enterprise
environment with old tech for too long, working long hours and weekends,
exhausted and burnt out and looking for an escape plan. This person most
probably can afford a bootcamp, takes a vacation, quickly catches up with the
current tech, and suddenly becomes a great experienced candidate, who can take
an initial salary cut and negotiate a raise in six months.

To summarize, there are scenarios when a bootcamp is the best tool but way too
often it is not, really depends on a situation. When I interview candidates I
mostly try to understand the reason for taking a bootcamp to exclude people
who can't learn anything on their own and always require a mentor.

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snfjjdjsjdjfk
For $10k usd, you are better off just buying a textbook from amazon. You will
learn the same amount.

Self taught senior programmer

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cakridge
$10,000 will buy you many CS textbooks

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inktony
Not a big fan, I get a lot of applications from bootcamp graduates and some of
them make it to the interview and none of them have passed the interview, so
far. But I'm still open-minded about it. I think (and hope) the model will
improve over time.

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0hostus
How come none have passed the interview phase? Lack of experience? Lack of
knowledge?

Trying to understand from a hiring perspective, as Im debating a bootcamp
route.

~~~
verdverm
It may also be that many boot camp students are from non analytical
backgrounds, and thus lack some skills that are hard to teach. We've hired a
boot camper who outperformed all the CS grads in contribution and continued
learning. Most applicants struggle with things they weren't taught, we try to
work through tech they haven't used before (during the interview) to gauge how
well they learn / explore.

In short, it really, really depends on the school and more so the student.

