[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.