For women who get into this program, great! You're set and will probably have an easy time finding work afterwards! When recently moved back to the US with a

For women who get into this program, great! You're set and will probably have an easy time finding work afterwards! When recently moved back to the US with a basic programming foundation, I really wanted to get into this sort of school. I moved back with the primary motivation of becoming a top notch programmer. As a guy with my background, these kinds of programs aren't easy to get into! In general they all have a pretty strong desire to invite more women, and there are an awful lot of guys that want the training. Without the option of this kind of top-notch program or others like it, I joined the local ruby meetup group and kept an eye out for any kinds of free instruction... and found that all were railsbridge (women only unless you're invited by a female participant). If you're already at a level where you can build some things, there are a lot more options like going to hack night and asking for feedback on what you've already built, but there's not much if you're not to that point yet. If anybody reading this now is in the situation I was a couple of months ago, I strongly recommend the Coursera SaaS course through Berkeley. Obviously it doesn't compare to scholarships and in-person teaching, but there are free lectures, automated program graders, forums with active participants, study groups, and even human feeback on the quizzes. It's got pretty much all of the positives of Open Courseware, Code School (also great) and more videos rolled into one. It's open to people anywhere in the world, it's subtitled in several languages and everything except the optional textbook is free. I'm not trying to hijack the thread-- this is a genuine attempt to help others who are in the same boat I was in until I found this. https://www.coursera.org/course/saas https://www.coursera.org/course/saas