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CS degree vs programming bootcamp
Casually Hardcore
Once an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered User regular
Once an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered User regular
So I have a goal to get into software development. I'm currently using free resources such as freecodecamp. I want to spend time and resources to continue my education beyond self teaching, so I'm looking at getting CS degree at a state college ( Denver metropolitan state University, if you're curious). I already have a BS, so I can transfer a lot of credits to get the lower level classes out of the way.
But, my friends and co-workers are telling me that a faster way to learn to code is to go to one of these bootcamps that will crash you through programming with a goal of you gaining the skills and having a portfolio that'll get you hired within the year. That sounds really scammy to me, but I've read a lot of testimonies that says it's legitimate thing.
Does anyone have any advice, opinions, it experience in this?
But, my friends and co-workers are telling me that a faster way to learn to code is to go to one of these bootcamps that will crash you through programming with a goal of you gaining the skills and having a portfolio that'll get you hired within the year. That sounds really scammy to me, but I've read a lot of testimonies that says it's legitimate thing.
Does anyone have any advice, opinions, it experience in this?
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Bootcamps are accelerated and often times difficult if you struggle with any single concept they are teaching. Also they're not worth as much as a degree long term.
if you want to get into web, then I think a bootcamp is probably fine, well researched
otherwise, get a degree
CS will give you a good mathematical foundation for being a programmer, but you'll almost definitely need to do some outside studying to stay abreast of current tech and design patterns and stuff.
There's a lot of web, but it's certainly not all development by a long shot. Hell, I've not been in the game super long (professional dev for about 7 years now) but I've done almost all backend work. What kinds of companies are you looking at?
Edit: but this is not my thread. My biases against web programming are because I'm crotchety, old before my time, and just dislike it for no rational reason. It should not be taken as advice to the OP.
Web is huge these days and being well versed in JavaScript and some of the bigger frameworks will help get your foot in the door.
I once googled a guy I was going to be working with, and a really cool thing he'd done was set up a programming blog. It was only the very occasional post about projects he was working on, tricks he'd discovered, problems he'd run into, events he'd attended etc. but it impressed the hell out of me. I knew right away he was going to be a good communicator, which is probably the most important skill you can have.
With a CS degree, you'll get a much more rounded education. You'll still have to pick up languages and frameworks that you want to work with on your own time as well as build your own projects. You will also have to take classes that you might not care for, but by learning the fundamentals, you'll set a better foundation for later things. Also if you continue doing freecodecamp, I believe you get to some site ideas later that stretch your chops more.
Meanwhile with a bootcamp, I gained hyper specific knowledge in one area of web development. As a result, I'm playing catch up with others by learning these fundamentals now. But I had a decent portfolio leaving it.
There's a wide range of factors to consider on these things. What time line are you looking to be done with things? (I couldn't rededicate multiple years to this so CS degree was out at the time) How can your finances handle this? Is the bootcamp even a good one? (Do note that while a lot of them like to say they have a 95% hire rate or some such, that doesn't necessarily mean the person got a job in development. A number of my classmates instead went back into their old field because they didn't have much luck.) More importantly, is the teacher good? In college one bad teacher is an annoyance but the structure allows you to still succeed. A bad bootcamp teacher will be a complete waste of your money and time.
Thank you
You can bootcamp for basically anything, though many focus on web as even internal apps are often web apps these days (embedded development is a whole different ball of wax, but you'll DEFINITELY want a CS degree for that).
Before you go - check to see the companies the bootcamp is affiliated with, as most of the good ones have deep contacts into large corps to aid your hiring.
Honestly, once you get high enough in many organizations this happens. I'm an embedded software engineer mostly dealing with safety critical systems over my 11+ years and for the last few years, my job is more paperwork and project lead stuff than directly tech work. And for me it isn't a bad thing.
For note, my education is BS Computer Engineering (which I also recommend to people interesting in software engineering), a MS in Computer Science, and a pending MBA.
From your OP and responses, I think you need to also spend some additional time looking into what you really want to do. An amazing and exciting career? A steady career with room for growth? A paycheck? Just having anything different than what you do today? Not a simple question, but I recommend more research and reflection before making any large commitments.
Good luck.