[dogma1138]

Probably more than you think, for some reason people think it's a new thing, it isn't.

Go back to the mid to late 90's to early 2000's and there were tons of them usually branded under one of the large IT/Tech companies like Sun or MSFT.

Java programming schools were very popular same goes for .NET/ASP the only difference now is that bootcamps are slightly less vendor oriented but they are still usually not stack agnostic.

12 Years ago you would go and pay for a "bootcamp" to get a Microsoft certification for .NET or some Java developer cert, now you just call it a full stack bootcamp.

MSFT went also even beyond that, in the early to mid 2000's they run programs in many countries that would focus on high school students for free/huge discount you would get to do MCSE/MCPD as extra credit classes after school.

[mountaineer22]

Also, Cisco was also running programs in high schools to train the next generation of network administrators.

Also remember AOL server with Philip Greenspun?

http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/bootcamp/week1/week1

[dogma1138]

Never heard of the AOL one, but I always find it funny that some how people think that bootcamps are new.

I would wager that more people learned to code via a bootcampish route (especially between 1995 and 2005) than through CS/SE degrees.

The before the dotCom bubble burst there were advertisements for Java/C++/SAP/ASP/W/E++ programming certificate courses on every website/newspaper.

Then there was a consolidation period with CS degree again becoming some sort of a filter pre-requisite and now where the "demand" at least for cheap(er) labor (and labor with 50-100K+ in student debt can never be cheap) bootcamps are touted as the next best thing again.

The only difference really is back then those certifications could actually easily land you a job because companies would advertise specifically for "XYZ certified programmers".

Now it's LF Full-Stack Engineer 19 years of experience in some framework that is 2 years old and is going to be in perpetual beta until its decline.

Thats not saying that bootcamp graduates won't find a job, they'll just be thrown into the same recruitment hell pool.