Code Bootcamp

[eljefe-speaks]

Hello everyone! So, this particular discussion area explicitly allows “random topics.” I wanted to bounce this off the MMM community because, well (and I am not trying to flatter here), the MMM crowd are some super-smart folks, many of you work in tech, and I value your opinions. Thanks in advance for those that are shared.

Does anyone have any experience with a coding bootcamp? I am super tempted to attend one in my city. The program does not claim to do much more than teach you to code (no job placement, no certificates). They teach Ruby on Rails, HTTP, HTML/CSS, Javascript, AJAX, among some other broader subjects. The cost is roughly $5k for 8 weeks.

Would something like this make me remotely employable or would an employer expect 5 – 10 yrs experience? (I have a BBA, zero experience in anything tech related). Is there a different, MMM-approved (free?) approach I could take and get the same result? How can I know my chosen program isn’t an elaborate scam? What questions am I not even thinking to ask?

I’ve always had an interest in coding and I would honestly be psyched to learn this stuff even without a career prospect, fyi. So that’s a factor.

Again, thanks everyone for you your time.

[iamlindoro]

Personally, especially given the topics covered, I would avoid paying much, if anything, for this kind of training.  There is just *so much* good, online, free material on all of these.  One example (and it's just one of many) for Ruby on Rails is something like Rails for Zombies:

http://railsforzombies.org/

You don't even really have to set up an IDE for this one, and it's excellent.  There are similar wonderful tutorials for all of the rest of this stuff.  I also don't believe that any of these bootcamps make you more employable.  You're far better off throwing yourself into it and then creating something on your own that showcases your talents, and using that to get work.

[WhatIsFrugalAfterAll]

As a coder..

There are lots of jobs in the tech industry. Many of them will demand a BS in CS or similar. So attending or not attending will not matter for them. However I could see 2 benefits to attending

1) Just learning to learn the material. It can be a lot to do the first 5% of learning how to code. I could see an inperson class a good way to get the foundation of coding down, that you can learn more on your own.

2) It would qualify you for some coding jobs, some of the people that don't care about college. Not like 1/2 of all coding jobs or something, but they do exist.



Now as someone who potentially hires coders, would I hire you?  Well it comes down to a few things.
a) What is your cost going to be? A fresh college grad spent 4 years in the books, and has a head full of coding knowledge. He doesn't know a lot about coding, but he has no family, no mortgage, and is cheap. You also don't know a lot about coding, but you have 10 years of XP and maybe a family and a mortgage. I can't really pay you more than I would pay a fresh college grad.. is this OK for you to get your foot in the door?

b) What can you show? A college grad has a degree to show. I know they at least did something. Do you have anything more than a 4 week bootcamp? Like some github projects?  You need to work a little harder to show me what you can do. Just saying "I know how to code" with no code sample is OK for a college grad, but not for you.

[Cougar]

i wouldnt pay for anything like that without a job placement program and probably certificates from the industry, like microsoft; and not their 'you passed this course' cert.

if i were you, i'd spent lots of time on the internet; find out what you seem to like best, find out if its a strong market for it; start training yourself and if you can find someone to give you an industry cert and job placement on that tech; then pay them.

you may spend 8,000 and have nothing more to show than you could have got from $100 in books.

[BarkyardBQ]

I wouldn't pay for that kind of training. You can find free information on all those topics online. The first place to start would be open projects on each of those technologies, that let you start playing right away.

HTML - W3.org
CSS - https://css-tricks.com

Training:
http://www.w3schools.com
http://teamtreehouse.com
https://www.livecoding.tv

IDE:
https://koding.com
http://www.sublimetext.com

HowTo:
Broad Scope Web Dev -  http://davidwalsh.name
OMG Give Me Code & Answers - http://stackoverflow.com

[eljefe-speaks]

Thanks for the responses all, you are really helping me get a handle on this. Thanks for the input and the links.

WIFAA - this program would have prospective students believe that there is such a dearth of coders that this would be all you need to get a foot in the door. Is that misleading? Also, would my BBA and solid work history (albeit non-relevant) help? Am I setting myself up to be a perennial, low-paid pariah in the industry because I don't have a CS or BS? Also - the answer to your question a), yes! I would likely come work for you for what you pay an incoming freshman. I have spent years toiling at a VERY conservative bank where solid raises/promotions are like unicorns. I'd rather be at the bottom rung of a ladder that I want to climb. (However, I find this entire prospect rather unrealistic. How could the conversation even begin? It is more likely for a hiring manager to simply throw out all resumes without a CS and move on.) 

Ultimately, my attitude is this: it can't possibly hurt my long-term career to learn to code. Right? As for the expense, I feel like the value is there in the form of in-person training, guidance, and networking opportunities.

[iamlindoro]

Ultimately, my attitude is this: it can't possibly hurt my long-term career to learn to code. Right? As for the expense, I feel like the value is there in the form of in-person training, guidance, and networking opportunities.

It will not hurt your prospects.  It just won't necessarily prepare you better than (or as well as) using the many excellent free resources to do so.

[Cathy]

I learned to program when I was around 6 years old and even though that wasn't all that long ago in the grand scheme of things, it was still before the advent of widely available free resources. The internet existed but it wasn't yet mainstream, and my family didn't have it and we didn't get it until years later (when I was around 11). So how did I learn? It was a combination of "reading the manual" and "reviewing existing source code".

In the old days, products like compilers and operating systems often shipped with physical manuals describing the programming capabilities of the environment or language. These days, the equivalent would be learning Python from reading the manual on python.org, or learning PHP by reading the manual on php.net. That's actually still how I would recommend learning how to program. Why get your information from a third-party source when you can get it directly from the manual?

Aside from manuals, the other major way to learn is by reviewing the source code of existing large projects and/or contributing to them. These days there is such a massive wealth of free and open source code available to learn from, for example, by directing your browser to github.com. (To be fair, not all of that code is any good, and at first, you won't be able to tell what is good, so maybe stick to learning from well-known projects at first.)

Personally, I'd never entertain the notion of paying or taking any kind of class on how to program. It's not a good use of time, and here's the main reason why it's not worth it: the main skill in programming (and most things in life) is being able to learn new things on your own. Being able to pick up something new without formal instruction is far more valuable than being able to take notes through a class. Why not challenge yourself?

[eljefe-speaks]

To the coders: are you happy with your career choice?

[Cathy]

If you think of yourself as a "coder" or as having a career in "coding", I guarantee you are going to be severely underpaid at whatever you are doing.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-programmer/

[mskyle]

Hey, I went to a bootcamp. I think I've written on here about it in another thread. I was a librarian with not much coding experience before, now I'm a Rails developer (my title is "Software Engineer" fwiw - I don't put much stock in titles).

You don't learn anything in a bootcamp that you can't learn on your own. You can, potentially, learn *faster* because you're devoting yourself to it full time and you have specific people (study buddies/pair program partner/TAs/instructors) to go to for help when you get stuck. A bootcamp can also help get you out in front of employers, specifically the kinds of employers who are open to hiring bootcamp grads.

I would advise you to go to some meetups in your city/metro area (one based around a language or framework like Ruby/Rails/Javascript/Node or one based around programming something that you're interested in) and see if you can get a feel for how bootcamps in general and this bootcamp in specific are perceived by people in the community.

Short answer: I don't think bootcamps are universally a waste of time and money - I believe it would have taken me much longer to make the pivot to my new career if I hadn't gone to one. Also "severely underpaid" means different things inside and outside of tech. Take it with a grain of salt.

[eljefe-speaks]

One other thing - I hear everyone on saying I can just learn on my own. I agree, I am fully capable of doing that and it's perferable in many ways. However, I don't see how that could lead to gainful employment. What would be the path? An 8 week program isn't ideal, but it's not nothing.

[Grid]

Posting to follow, but I would recommend learning Java, Python, and C++ and perhaps dive in to some of the free online courses on sites like Coursera that offer CS fundamentals.  Languages will change, but the fundamentals will not.  Then, once you've developed some experience coding, build up a code base that showcases your understanding.

[eljefe-speaks]

Do tech jobs have an entirely different resume system? As in, you link to some work you've done rather than bullet-point a bunch of business-speak bullshit?

Again, very thankful for the advice I am getting. You all are fantastic.

[mskyle]

One other thing - I hear everyone on saying I can just learn on my own. I agree, I am fully capable of doing that and it's perferable in many ways. However, I don't see how that could lead to gainful employment. What would be the path? An 8 week program isn't ideal, but it's not nothing.

I do know a couple of people who are completely self-taught and got jobs by aggressively networking and working on open-source projects, taking small in-person classes here and there, getting involved in the community. It's possible. To me it looked a lot harder than bootcamp.

[Grid]

One other thing - I hear everyone on saying I can just learn on my own. I agree, I am fully capable of doing that and it's perferable in many ways. However, I don't see how that could lead to gainful employment. What would be the path? An 8 week program isn't ideal, but it's not nothing.

I just completed my Master's in CS, and my undergrad was in biology, so I can relate when it comes to diving headfirst into the digital realm and hoping you come out (alive and) with employment.  The reality for my degree was that it was very much self-study.  You need to put in the time and effort to understand the language you're working with and the problems you are trying to solve with it, and that hardly ever happens on any time but your own time.  I felt a degree was a good way to prove competency, but I don't think it's needed to find a job in the tech industry.  Set a goal for a specific type of job, and work toward it.  Or start freelancing once you've gotten your feet wet and go from there.

Do tech jobs have an entirely different resume system? As in, you link to some work you've done rather than bullet-point a bunch of business-speak bullshit?

Again, very thankful for the advice I am getting. You all are fantastic.

I've included links to my work in my resume.

[iamlindoro]

Do tech jobs have an entirely different resume system? As in, you link to some work you've done rather than bullet-point a bunch of business-speak bullshit?

Again, very thankful for the advice I am getting. You all are fantastic.

Many developer positions (particularly the kind which you'd be applying for as an entry level developer) request links to example work from an app store, or in the case of web development, web links.  So yeah, this is a common request.

For what it's worth, having been a Director of IT and in charge of hiring developers, a boot camp would be far lower on the "interesting-meter" than links to actual work and experience.  Attending a class tells me you paid for a class-- not that you did well at it, or even that you showed up-- but actual example work tells me a ton about you.  I can't think of an instance where a boot camp type class made any difference in evaluating applicants.  That's anecdotal, YMMV.

[mskyle]

For what it's worth, having been a Director of IT and in charge of hiring developers, a boot camp would be far lower on the "interesting-meter" than links to actual work and experience.  Attending a class tells me you paid for a class-- not that you did well at it, or even that you showed up-- but actual example work tells me a ton about you.  I can't think of an instance where a boot camp type class made any difference in evaluating applicants.  That's anecdotal, YMMV.

The bootcamp I attended had us build a web app and we committed all our work to public repos on github, so that potential employers could see our work and see how we progressed over the course of the course. I would only recommend attending a bootcamp that has you complete a project, teaches you to use source control (git is most popular) and teaches test-driven development. A lot of my classmates also built sidehack projects either alone or in small groups.

A good bootcamp is not about taking classes, it's about doing work in a supportive environment with like-minded people. The lectures were actually pretty worthless.

[Rubic]

<< To the coders: are you happy with your career choice? >>

I absolutely love coding.  Most of my dissatisfaction arises from work unrelated to coding.  Writing code to solve real world problems is intrinsically rewarding. Deployed code has a "force multiplier" effect, i.e. it can be replicated at almost no cost.

For example, there's a pretty hard limit to how many houses Mr. M can build/renovate, even if he were to hire more staff and spend more time on his projects.  However, as a software developer, I can deploy applications to thousands of users with a few keystrokes.

I'm fortunate in that I work on projects where I choose the tools.  My choice of tool will be determined by whatever completes the task reliably in the shortest amount of time.  I use open sourced tools, so cost is not a factor.  A carpenter considering the purchase of a new saw, for example, will have to make a cost analysis based on his estimate of its ROI.  With open sourced tools, I need only to invest my time in learning how to use them.

I enjoy workng on projects with other coders.  Distributed version control systems (github, bitbucket) make it possible to collaborate with other developers -- which compels me to up my game.

I enjoy working with emerging technologies, the ones with rough edges, possibly inadequate documention, but clean code design.

I enjoy coming up with counter-intuitive solutions to real problems.

I enjoy crafting my own tools, which may be code the user never sees, but is used to squeeze out many of the more boring/repetitive tasks in my daily workflow.

Being FI certainly helps in choosing projects I want to participate in, but I think the average debt-free MMM'er would be happy with a less-than-stratospheric salary if their efforts form a positive contribution to the whole.

<< If you think of yourself as a "coder" or as having a career in "coding", I guarantee you are going to be severely underpaid at whatever you are doing. >>

See above.  If you've got the skill sets (or are willing to learn them), you don't have to settle for a crappy job.  The danger is a company will overpay for a mediocre programmer because they want the stability of an in-house coder.  Unless it's a company that actually provides coding services, your company typically doesn't care about your skill sets or (beyond palid lip service) your job satisfaction.  Coders who get sucked into the vortex of being overpaid for their work are often living in fear of losing their jobs.  Their skills have atrophied and they're worried about a significant reductions in pay if they switch jobs.

Contrawise, I'm almost always in the opposite situation in that I'm always (knock wood) in demand and have no worries about future employment, even if I weren't already FI.

[eljefe-speaks]

Amazing posts on here. Thanks everyone for your time and input!

[Dodge]

CodeNewbie just published a podcast about bootcamps:

http://www.codenewbie.org

They also have a forum, with lots of discussion on bootcamps:

http://discourse.codenewbie.org

And they had a twitterchat about bootcamps in Jan:

https://storify.com/CodeNewbies/bootcamps

And again just last night:

https://storify.com/CodeNewbies/the-bootcamp-business

I personally know a lot of people who went through coding bootcamps.  They all seemed to get jobs making about 65-95k in NYC, and absolutely LOVE it!  Good luck with your decision!

[eljefe-speaks]

Great links, thx Dodge!

[Dodge]

Found another link for ya:

https://www.coursereport.com/resources/course-report-bootcamp-graduate-demographics-outcomes-study

"We surveyed graduates from 48 qualifying programming schools and received 432 responses from graduates that met the criteria."

[Cathy]

One other thing - I hear everyone on saying I can just learn on my own. I agree, I am fully capable of doing that and it's perferable in many ways. However, I don't see how that could lead to gainful employment. What would be the path? An 8 week program isn't ideal, but it's not nothing.

Getting a job, if that is what you want to do, is the easy part. The hard part is becoming an expert.

Focus on becoming an expert and using that expertise to create your own projects.

Don't think of your projects as audition material to "get a job"; think of them as potential business prospects that could spare you from ever having to work another day at a job in your life. It's a lot more common than you might think for a popular website or mobile application to earn millions of dollars in a short period of time. I personally know multiple people who have never worked a day at a normal job in their lives and never will because their personal projects took off.

If, after becoming an expert, you decide that a "job" is what you want -- and I'm not saying there's anything shameful about that, but it's not the only choice -- then it's not going to be hard to get one if you are truly an expert. Just to give you one idea: a large ratio of the regular posters on this forum work at well-known tech companies and would probably be happy to pass your name along to them if they like your showcase of work. That doesn't mean every lead will work out, but eventually something will because it's really not hard to get a job if you are actually good. I wouldn't worry about that.

[VanTran]

I wish I could wrap my head around programming. How does one approach learning? Information overload kills me. I've looked at a few tutorials and quickly lost interest/intimidated, especially because I couldn't see how to apply code to something relevant in the industry. Do bootcamps start out with a simple, practical project and build from there?

[gimp]

Programming is the art of telling an idiot savant, very clearly and explicitly and step-by-step, what you want it to do. If you get it right, the idiot savant executes your instructions at great speed.

To be honest, 8 weeks is enough to teach the basics of programming, well enough for them to do a very mediocre job at some tiny, mediocre outfit doing mind-numbing work. With that said, even in such shitty conditions, the efficiency gains are often enough to pay someone decent wage. (There are more than a few jobs that can be automated in a half hour of my time.) Then again, there are people whose entire careers are lining data entry forms up to data entry back-ends to enter data into a database. If the money's worth metaphorically shoveling shit, attend your bootcamp. If you're already shoveling shit, you only have a few thousand dollars to lose. (Though I'd be more impressed if they collected the bulk of the tuition after a successful full-time job offer.)

[mskyle]

To be honest, 8 weeks is enough to teach the basics of programming, well enough for them to do a very mediocre job at some tiny, mediocre outfit doing mind-numbing work. With that said, even in such shitty conditions, the efficiency gains are often enough to pay someone decent wage. (There are more than a few jobs that can be automated in a half hour of my time.) Then again, there are people whose entire careers are lining data entry forms up to data entry back-ends to enter data into a database. If the money's worth metaphorically shoveling shit, attend your bootcamp. If you're already shoveling shit, you only have a few thousand dollars to lose. (Though I'd be more impressed if they collected the bulk of the tuition after a successful full-time job offer.)

Look, this is just not consistent with my experience. I work with interesting people on an interesting product. I am not the World's Best Software Engineer. I'm in an entry-level position, and even after a year and a half (working) my engineering skills are more on the "competent" than "expert" end of the scale. But I learn every day, I contribute useful and visible work to our product, and I enjoy my work. I do way more interesting stuff in this job than I did in my previous career (which I had to get a professional masters degree for).

Everyone's a beginner at some point! A bootcamp can streamline some of the process of getting to the "useful beginner" stage. You still have to do the work, obviously. But if you can get some of that first 10,000 crammed into 2 months, instead of spreading it over a year or two of after-work hacking, it's a nice option to have.

[Mistah Cash Lion]

I would recommend teamtreehouse.com. I'm currently on the free 14 day trial and I am getting a lot out of it. I have previous programming experience, but they do a great job of explaining things in a way that someone with no prior knowledge can understand.

My goal is to continue taking the courses and develop a few apps and projects on Github while also looking for a job as a junior developer.

Good luck! I'm excited to be pursuing coding again and I how l hope you can stick with it.

[gimp]

To be honest, 8 weeks is enough to teach the basics of programming, well enough for them to do a very mediocre job at some tiny, mediocre outfit doing mind-numbing work. With that said, even in such shitty conditions, the efficiency gains are often enough to pay someone decent wage. (There are more than a few jobs that can be automated in a half hour of my time.) Then again, there are people whose entire careers are lining data entry forms up to data entry back-ends to enter data into a database. If the money's worth metaphorically shoveling shit, attend your bootcamp. If you're already shoveling shit, you only have a few thousand dollars to lose. (Though I'd be more impressed if they collected the bulk of the tuition after a successful full-time job offer.)

Look, this is just not consistent with my experience. I work with interesting people on an interesting product. I am not the World's Best Software Engineer. I'm in an entry-level position, and even after a year and a half (working) my engineering skills are more on the "competent" than "expert" end of the scale. But I learn every day, I contribute useful and visible work to our product, and I enjoy my work. I do way more interesting stuff in this job than I did in my previous career (which I had to get a professional masters degree for).

Everyone's a beginner at some point! A bootcamp can streamline some of the process of getting to the "useful beginner" stage. You still have to do the work, obviously. But if you can get some of that first 10,000 crammed into 2 months, instead of spreading it over a year or two of after-work hacking, it's a nice option to have.

The only shortcuts you get are where you don't waste time on stupid things while learning. (I fondly remember wasting about 30 hours getting a microcontroller programmed - turned out the toolchain was overwriting some of my settings.)

For the rest, there are no shortcuts. You can be taught as many formulas and equations as you can remember, but you'll never understand them until you derive them by yourself, from scratch, through pain-staking effort. So it goes with any sort of engineering and programming.

If the point of the bootcamp is to provide external motivation to actually slog through writing everything from scratch, figuring out the overall architecture of everything you do, and after each step building up outside knowledge to correct and improve your architecture and implementation for the next project - great. That's still eight weeks compared to four years that most people take. Certainly, four years, if you cut away vacations, breaks, and general education classes, could be cut down to a year of sixty hour weeks of solid work - still neatly six times as much as code bootcamps get you, in the most pessimistic case.

Consider, in addition, that most folks who survive four years of college education are still, by and large, barely competent enough to get an entry level position doing mind-numbing, boring work.

[jmusic]

There's also Coursera and Khan Academy for free online training.  There's even an abundance of videos on YouTube. 

Not saying you shouldn't do the bootcamp, but you could definitely get a head start learning some of the raw basics before starting the classes.  You'd probably get more value out of the bootcamp that way.

[Cathy]

Consider, in addition, that most folks who survive four years of college education are still, by and large, barely competent enough to get an entry level position doing mind-numbing, boring work.

The aphorism commonly attributed to Dijkstra that "computer science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes" is apt here.

A computer science degree is not about learning how to program. It's disingenuous to compare it to a bootcamp course which is in fact about learning how to program. That said, this isn't a defence of these bootcamp courses, but it's worth noting that their objective is totally different from the objective of a computer science degree, and the two things aren't directly comparable.

In terms of the skills commonly required for software engineering jobs, I feel like almost nothing taught as part of a computer science degree is frequently used by most engineers. The primary reason that a computer science degree can help get a job as an engineer is that the degree is a somewhat valuable status symbol -- it's not because the degree teaches skills required for the job, and even if it does, that is certainly not the focus of the four years.

[chickenlegs1]

Hello there,

Longtime lurker, first time poster. Not to hijack the OP's thread, but I came across this post and am in a rather similar situation so I thought I'd jump in.

My background thus far is in classical music performance (yeah, I know, way to pick a dud of a career - I think I may have been better off pursuing basket weaving) - for various reasons, I've been looking for quite some time to get out of this field. After a lot of research and contemplation, I am trying to figure out how best to navigate myself into coding/the IT field (with the hope that this will be a more reliable/steady career choice, while still being something that I enjoy doing) 

I'm already 27, and unless it would really benefit me in the long run, I'm less inclined to do another 4-year degree. I've been looking at taking a community college certificate course (specifically, the computer systems certificate at Camosun in Victoria. B.C.) It's a 9 month long course, followed by a 3 month internship. I'm also going to be spending the next few months in Saskatoon, Sask. - although I haven't found any summer courses or anything there, I came across Ladies Learning Code (not sure if perhaps any Canadian moustachians are familiar with this non-profit) and was thinking that also might be a good place to connect with other coders/acquire some skills? 

I've been doing some self-learning using various free resources online (codecademy, coursera etc...) but I really think it might benefit me to have at least some initial instruction to help give me a more solid basis and understanding. I like the idea of a program that includes an internship, my thought being that this might help make me more appealing to a potential employers? The entire cost of the certificate program + internship comes out to about $4600 CAD.

Is this a waste of time/money? Any other general suggestions about the best way to approach this career change, or things you wish you had done or known when starting out? I'm okay with starting out at a bottom of the barrel salary (because honestly, in comparison to music, it can't be any less).  Perhaps coding altogether is not the best area to be moving into it? Although I find it very interesting and think I would enjoy it, job stability are security are top priority for me at this point.   

Anyway, I'm so glad someone posted about this, since I probably would have been too bashful to start my own thread.

[Beardog]

I do have advanced degrees in a different, albiet scientific/mathematical field, but I broke into IT from another career by getting a 6 month part time evening certificate and getting a job at a non-profit.  This was at a time of peak IT demand and growth but my impression was that not many people were looking in non-profits so I exploited that area in my search.  I found that once I had this first job under my belt, I was in demand. 

[mskyle]

I do have advanced degrees in a different, albiet scientific/mathematical field, but I broke into IT from another career by getting a 6 month part time evening certificate and getting a job at a non-profit.  This was at a time of peak IT demand and growth but my impression was that not many people were looking in non-profits so I exploited that area in my search.  I found that once I had this first job under my belt, I was in demand. 

I think that's a really good point about getting the first job under your belt. And I think that's what bootcamps are supposed to be for - helping you get that first job. I learned a lot more on my first year on the job that I did in 10 weeks of bootcamp - obviously!

And a bootcamp is only going to help you get an entry-level job. But I like my entry-level job, and I contribute business value to the organization. Do I contribute the same way as my colleagues with a CS PhD? Definitely not! But the company needs lots of different kinds of work done, and it would be kind of a waste of expertise for PhDs to be doing work that someone with couple of years of self-taught coding experience can do.

I don't wholeheartedly recommend bootcamps - there's a lot of sketchiness out there, they're completely unregulated, and they're multiplying like rabbits, to the point where the job market is already becoming oversaturated with bootcamp grads in some places. And I was frustrated by a lot of things about my particular bootcamp. But it got me that first job. And I was 35 when I started, and I want to retire early - spending years taking academic classes in things that were not going to improve my job prospects was absolutely not in the cards. A BS is not job training, however much college administrators want you to believe it is (can you tell I worked in higher ed for many years and know too much about how the sausage is made?).

[StreetCat]

Paid training/bootcamp may be worthwhile and better than self-learning depending on your personality and circumstances.  A list of bootcamps and what they offer: http://www.skilledup.com/articles/the-ultimate-guide-to-coding-bootcamps-the-exhaustive-list/

However, if the bootcamp wants to take substantial amount of your money and offers no guarantee or certificate in return, I would be wary of parting with my money in that case.

Like others have pointed out, you can find a LOT of learning material online for free.  If you want more structured courses, try out udemy.com - once you register there, they send you coupons with steep discounts.  For $500 you can get a lot of training there, especially with coupons.

Depending on what you are getting trained in, you can also get certifications on your own (Java, .NET, etc.).  Udemy also offers a Web Development Certificate: https://www.udemy.com/become-a-certified-web-developer/

[Beaker]

For anyone looking for a(nother) free-yet-semistructured approach, check out the Google Guide to Technical Development.

It's basically a CS curriculum made up of free resources around the web. Skimming the list, it looks like a pretty good foundation for a generalist programmer. Depending on your goals you might want to add to some areas and subtract others. eg, if you want to be a frontend web developer, you probably need more graphic design and none of the compiler, crypto or parallel programming. But it's a good starting point.