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Hot take: most coding bootcamps are just selling hope, not skills
I was talking to a guy at a coffee shop who dropped $14,000 on a 12 week bootcamp and still couldn't build a simple to do list app on his own. That's not a fluke, I've seen like 5 people in the same boat. They rush through projects with hand holding and then freeze when they have to write code from scratch. The real learning happens when you struggle through your own broken code for 3 days straight. Bootcamps are good for structure but terrible at teaching you how to think like a developer. Has anyone else noticed this gap or am I just talking to the wrong people?
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laura9401mo ago
Oh man, that coffee shop story hits way too close to home because I literally spent $12,000 on a bootcamp back in 2018 and my first solo project was a to do list that broke when I typed my name wrong. The hand holding is real. Our instructors would literally walk around and fix our code for us during labs so we could "keep up with the pace" and then acted surprised when we couldn't pass the technical interview. I remember spending three full days trying to debug a simple API call after graduation and that struggle taught me more than all 12 weeks combined. The gap is definitely there, bootcamps are great for showing you the map but terrible at making you walk the trail yourself. Have you found any good alternatives for people who want to actually learn to code without draining their savings?
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