[azangru]

> I know in the best of times these programs were tenuous and full of questionable promises

Screw promises.

A coding bootcamp is the best guided way, other than college, of acquiring basic knowledge and skills of a software developer. It will not guarantee that after graduating from it you will find a job; although some bootcamps may have certain arrangements. What a good bootcamp does guarantee though is that after completing it, you will have sufficient knowledge to build, say, a mildly complex website, or do some data analysis tasks. In good market conditions, this makes the graduate somewhat employable as entry-level software engineer.

There are plenty of free online resources that you can use instead. But that requires a lot of discipline; and a curriculum to know what you need to be studying.