I'm going to get downvoted for my "elitist" opinion but have to say this, to warn those few who'll listen. Recently I was hiring on a tight budget. I've interv

I'm going to get downvoted for my "elitist" opinion but have to say this, to warn those few who'll listen. Recently I was hiring on a tight budget. I've interviewed a dozen people from various coding boot camps, self taught web developers, etc. None of them could solve a Fizzbuzz level problem on a whiteboard. (One thing I've learned after 15 years in industry, 8 jobs, 2 continents - a person who can't do fizzbuzz-type problem is not worth having onboard even for free). It seems to me that even with best training in the world and a ton of prior IT experience it always takes people at least 2-3 years to start thinking in code in a way where you don't waste everyone's time. Learning to code is not about a bunch of syntax rules. It's about retraining your brain to use different mental models, developing intuition about where a bug might be, finding your way around a large and hostile codebase, anticipating how your today's decision will interact with all the features you'll implement over next 6 months, and so on. Basic rules of programming are simple, but so are the rules of golf or snooker, or making bespoke suits, or wine tasting. If you are prepared to spend next 3 years aimlessly poking around the debugger struggling to figure out the simplest thing only to realize at 11pm you were looking in a wrong place - go for it. It's frustrating but also rewarding. If you think in 6 months you'll be able to build the next facebook with AI - only thing you'll learn in that time is how much there's still to learn.