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That's an extremely common opinion on the internet. But I don't get it. If a 12 week bootcamp is "at least as good" as a 156 week bachelors degree, then what ar

by geor9e 3y ago

That's an extremely common opinion on the internet. But I don't get it. If a 12 week bootcamp is "at least as good" as a 156 week bachelors degree, then what are people learning the remaining 144 weeks of college? I feel like my first 12 weeks of college were worse than a bootcamp - I was working from dusk till dawn having a nervous breakdown trying to keep up. And there were plenty of hard quarters after that. Calculus, Linear Algebra, C++, Differential Equations, Discrete control systems, Numerical analysis, having to make a weather simulation with navier-stokes equations in MATLAB, having to make a room mapping roomba out of a microcontroller and some bump switches. I could go on and on but college was hard AF for me. Jobs have felt like a breeze in comparison. Maybe it was all waste of time, and I should have gone straight into job experience. I'm genuinely saying that, not sarcasm. I just don't know.

_mlbt 3y ago
A significant portion of the first two years of a typical Bachelor's degree program are very liberal arts heavy with a generous sprinkling of electives. These classes may deliver some value to the individual, but it is questionable how much they add to your skillset as a software developer. Also a bootcamp is a very compressed format, versus a typical college schedule. On top of all of this there is also the elephant in the room that the cost of college has become so great that the value proposition isn't the same as it was in the past. If I can learn even 75% of what I could learn from a college at a bootcamp for a fraction of the price, does it still make sense to choose college?
ryaneager 3y ago
Bootcamps typically focus on a single tech stack, i.e. web apps made with Ruby on Rails. While a degree focuses on all aspects of software development and could delve into hardware depending on the school.
beej71 3y ago
144 weeks of learning to learn, is the way I see it. And jobs feeling like a breeze is a great side effect.

by geor9e 3y ago

_mlbt 3y ago

A significant portion of the first two years of a typical Bachelor's degree program are very liberal arts heavy with a generous sprinkling of electives. These classes may deliver some value to the individual, but it is questionable how much they add to your skillset as a software developer. Also a bootcamp is a very compressed format, versus a typical college schedule. On top of all of this there is also the elephant in the room that the cost of college has become so great that the value proposition isn't the same as it was in the past. If I can learn even 75% of what I could learn from a college at a bootcamp for a fraction of the price, does it still make sense to choose college?

ryaneager 3y ago

Bootcamps typically focus on a single tech stack, i.e. web apps made with Ruby on Rails. While a degree focuses on all aspects of software development and could delve into hardware depending on the school.

beej71 3y ago

144 weeks of learning to learn, is the way I see it. And jobs feeling like a breeze is a great side effect.