[glanotte]

I recently met a graduate from dev bootcamp in Chicago. I had an opportunity to talk about various coding subjects. Was he a junior? Yes. However, he had a grasp of good design patterns, best practices and most importantly he had a desire to learn - I mean this guy was a sponge.

I realize that I have a sample set of one, but based upon my interactions with him, I would say that this isn't a scam. It appears to give aspiring developers a very solid foundation to base a career on and dismisses them with realistic expectations.

I also don't see the fault in someone offering a course and charging for it. If people have the money and are willing to spend it on this, then I think there is value in what they offer. I have someone that I mentor, but I feel like these programs would definitely speed up the learning process. I wish he could afford a program like these, he would surely benefit from the breadth of knowledge offered.

[gorbachev]

I've had an exact opposite experience. The couple of people I've interviewed who had graduated from a dev bootcamp of some sorts (I don't remember exactly which one any more) had really poor understanding of software engineering principles and only seemed to really know how to use Ruby on Rails for building relatively simple web applications under heavy supervision.

Maybe the program they went to was a poor one, or they didn't have programming talent, but there's no way we could've hired those folks to do any work for us.

Obviously my sample size is really small as well.

It's encouraging to read comments on this thread mentioning positive experiences though. I think when well run by competent mentors/teachers, these things are very useful for all concerned.

[mickanio]

Your sample size of one is bigger than the guy who wrote this article, who admits to not talking to any schools or graduates. Poorly researched speculation.