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There are many ways one can learn something or get specific skills, and each of them has its own distribution of parameters like affordability, autodidact vs mentored, on-demand vs on schedule, short-term gains, long-term gains, one on one vs classroom, general theoretical vs hands-on practical, etc. There is no single best way to learn things — it depends on circumstances and a goal, and bootcamps may serve better under one set of circumstances for a specific goal, than other ways to learn. To be successful in the industry you have to have theoretical knowledge, all these generally dreaded algorithms, big O notation, Boolean algebra, graphs theory and so on — you may not use it on a daily basis but it shapes your mindset, gives you thinking models and makes a better engineer. The timeless stuff. Universities are pretty good at this. However, you also need practical skills. Most of us learned the necessary amount by ourselves, reading docs, doing and extending hello-worlds, reading open source code, etc. I believe it's the best way to get practical knowledge but it's very time consuming because it rarely has a "learning program" and is mostly an improvisation what you want to learn and how. Also, the industry is very fast changing, so to keep up with the technology you gotta follow it and try yourself. Bootcamps can teach you a slice of the current state of the industry mainstream, so you can code a simple full-stack something without going much into details but in a very short time. And it is expensive. It's like following an expensive recipe book. To me, the best use case for bootcamps is when you are a seasoned industry veteran with a good theoretical background, who got stuck in an enterprise environment with old tech for too long, working long hours and weekends, exhausted and burnt out and looking for an escape plan. This person most probably can afford a bootcamp, takes a vacation, quickly catches up with the current tech, and suddenly becomes a great experienced candidate, who can take an initial salary cut and negotiate a raise in six months. To summarize, there are scenarios when a bootcamp is the best tool but way too often it is not, really depends on a situation. When I interview candidates I mostly try to understand the reason for taking a bootcamp to exclude people who can't learn anything on their own and always require a mentor. |