With markets in a slump, many of us are concerned a recession could be right around the corner. The NASDAQ is already down 27% so far in 2022. Heck, maybe we’re already in the middle of a recession. If you are a developer, or are in the middle of learning to code, you may be justifiably wondering whether or not a recession will have an impact on your personal career.
And an answer to what you’re really asking: “are coding bootcamps worth it?” I’ll give you the quick answer right off the bat: coding bootcamps cost 13,500 on average based on the data collected by BestColleges. On the upper end of that range, coding bootcamps cost upwards of $20,000. Some of the less-expensive camps are a couple thousand dollars. It’s 2022 as I write this, so those numbers have probably increased even more in the interim.
I looked at the cost, duration, structure, and USP for each online coding bootcamp If you’ve been living under a rock for the last decade, let me quickly tell you about what a coding bootcamp is before I get into the top online coding bootcamps. Basically, a coding bootcamp is an expensive and mentally intense way to shoehorn skills and knowledge into your brain at top speed, allowing you to skip past degrees at record speed.
I’ve spent an unhealthy amount of time online over the course of my life, and in the last couple years I’ve been managing a Discord server for people who are learning computer science. Like all online communities, we have ban, kick, and moderation policies so that we’re not overrun with spammers and other non-contributors. However, I’m not perfect, and I have realized recently that we get a decent number of members who at first glance seemed like a spammer, but it turns out they just have no idea how to communicate online in a way that’s useful to themselves and others.
Is it a bit dramatic, perhaps, to say that the fate of the world rests on computer science and that’s why you should learn computer science? Maybe, but not by much. Computer science is “the study of computation and information, and is a subject which involves you in the very make-up of the world,” the University of York posits. Computer science is everywhere in our everyday lives. I wrote this article on a PC; you’re reading it on one, or a mobile phone.
I’ve found that almost anyone I talk to agrees with the statement: There is something wrong with education, particularly higher education. Interestingly enough, everyone also has very different ideas about what the problems are, and how we should solve them. A few popular ideas include: Pay teachers more Make university free Cancel existing student debt Online-first university A couple weeks ago I was listening to an old Indiehackers podcast where the interviewer was speaking with Austen Allred, the founder of Lambda School (now Bloom University).
tl;dr At Boot.dev we’ve launched “community insights”! Insights make it possible for our students to drop comments at the bottom of any step in our coding courses. We’ve quickly found that we have amazing students, and it’s much better for everyone if we give them tools to help each other more directly. If you’re interested in joining our self-paced, online-only computer science bootcamp, you can sign up for free here.
Just last month, Codecademy was sold to Skillsoft for $525 million. Not too shabby, and entirely well-deserved if you ask me. I’ll be straight with you, I love Codecademy. Maybe you’re wondering why I’m opening with that in an article about its alternatives, but I want to start with the history so you can really grasp what Codecademy alternatives are good for. Codecademy was launched in 2011 by a Columbia dropout and his Columbia non-dropout friend, it was one of the very first online learning platforms for coding.
Where to look for project inspiration, answers to specific questions, or support for your learning journey The one thing that every programmer has in common, whether you’ve only ever implemented a “Hello World” program or you’re a senior software engineer, is the need to continuously learn. New technologies, programming languages, frameworks, libraries, and conventions are constantly being introduced to the industry. As a beginner, it can be hard to suss out what you need to know to enter the profession, and once you’re a proficient coder, it’s tiring to constantly investigate trending topics in tech.
We’ll keep this announcement short – we’ve moved Qvault.io to Boot.dev! As you know, we’ve been hard at work bootstrapping on online computer science bootcamp. Qvault (now Boot.dev) is a simple CS curriculum where our students build real projects using modern programming languages and technologies. Anyhow, we think the new name does a much better job conveying our project’s goals, and the new dark theme is much easier on the eyes.