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Who needs bootcamps? All you need is a decent machine and an internet connection to learn. That's how we learnt "web" back in the day. Cynical me hopes all comm

Who needs bootcamps? All you need is a decent machine and an internet connection to learn. That's how we learnt "web" back in the day. Cynical me hopes all commercial (and often spammy) bootcamps and conferences and meetups die a quick death. Also death to the hipster culture in tech. /rant over

PagingCraig 9y ago
With that logic you might as well do away with University as well, right?
wolco 9y ago
In my day we didn't have the internet and we learned by writing code and looking up function calls in books and bugging the guy at the computer store. With all of the free learning materials online you can literally get a university education from top schools for free. If I was starting out now I would considered it because it's a fast track to employment. When I started out I knew how to program but no one would consider you without an education. That forced me to go to college and learn fun things like COBOL and jcl and many other languages in a short period of time. In the end I rarely use most of those language but if a mainframe opportunity comes up I'm ready. Being forced to learn so many things at once was the real education because it helps in the real world where you are expected to pickup new languages. For some reason my mainframe dev resume bullet points have never been mentioned during an interview. If you can develop for a s/390 that should somehow give you a slight boost for your next javascript role in my opinion.
chrshawkes 9y ago
The personal computer revolution was started by hipsters.
ravenstine 9y ago
Why stop at bootcamps? There are so many resources on the internet, most of which are free, that can replace all of the knowledge universities have to offer and then some. Someone could learn astrophysics through Google searches. But that's not a reasonable position across the board. Of course universities offer more than mere information, and I would say that bootcamps(at least DBC) focus mostly on those other things and far less on the information. By that I mean learning to code at home online isn't going to give you the same experience as spending days or weeks hacking on your first mobile app with a bunch of other people, non stop, while chowing on beer and pizza. Yes, there's tremendous value in that, especially if you need to learn to work on a team and self-organize. In theory, you can emulate that environment on your own, but there's a reason people pay for that kind of experience. A person of novice experience can't or won't come up with a substitute for that. It's an introduction to a world, of sorts. At least it was for me.
Myrmornis 9y ago
It would be nice if that were true I agree, but in fact for many people a major part of the journey is getting to the point where you can teach yourself effectively. Some of those people benefit from these sorts of horrific social environments.

PagingCraig 9y ago

With that logic you might as well do away with University as well, right?

wolco 9y ago

In my day we didn't have the internet and we learned by writing code and looking up function calls in books and bugging the guy at the computer store. With all of the free learning materials online you can literally get a university education from top schools for free. If I was starting out now I would considered it because it's a fast track to employment. When I started out I knew how to program but no one would consider you without an education. That forced me to go to college and learn fun things like COBOL and jcl and many other languages in a short period of time. In the end I rarely use most of those language but if a mainframe opportunity comes up I'm ready. Being forced to learn so many things at once was the real education because it helps in the real world where you are expected to pickup new languages. For some reason my mainframe dev resume bullet points have never been mentioned during an interview. If you can develop for a s/390 that should somehow give you a slight boost for your next javascript role in my opinion.

chrshawkes 9y ago

The personal computer revolution was started by hipsters.

ravenstine 9y ago

Why stop at bootcamps? There are so many resources on the internet, most of which are free, that can replace all of the knowledge universities have to offer and then some. Someone could learn astrophysics through Google searches. But that's not a reasonable position across the board. Of course universities offer more than mere information, and I would say that bootcamps(at least DBC) focus mostly on those other things and far less on the information. By that I mean learning to code at home online isn't going to give you the same experience as spending days or weeks hacking on your first mobile app with a bunch of other people, non stop, while chowing on beer and pizza. Yes, there's tremendous value in that, especially if you need to learn to work on a team and self-organize. In theory, you can emulate that environment on your own, but there's a reason people pay for that kind of experience. A person of novice experience can't or won't come up with a substitute for that. It's an introduction to a world, of sorts. At least it was for me.

Myrmornis 9y ago

It would be nice if that were true I agree, but in fact for many people a major part of the journey is getting to the point where you can teach yourself effectively. Some of those people benefit from these sorts of horrific social environments.