[jared314]

I've been interested in the idea of developer bootcamps recently, because it might make a good trade school for developers looking to retool into a new language/stack. But, I have yet to meet anyone, in my circle of friends, who has acquired their coding skills from them. What is the business model around them like?

[Peretus]

The schools usually charge somewhere between $6,000-$20,000, with most falling somewhere around $8K-$12K. The Maker Square has cohorts of around 40 students, split between two buildings, with multiple instructors in each room who help students as needed. We start at 9:00am and leave the space around 5-7pm every evening. We don't have class on the weekends, so those usually end up being study days.

[jared314]

Is it a school lesson like structure, similar to what you would get with a CS degree track, or a more a focused project-oriented structure, with increasing difficulty?

[Peretus]

The structure is highly focused and project-oriented. There isn't really an occasion where one would be likely to ask "Ok, so how am I going to use this in the real world?"

In the beginning, the day is usually split into two parts: frontend and backend. Each day there is a 'microproject' that covers what you learned that day, and each Friday there is a project that covers what you have learned up to that point. There is very little theory, though the instructors are constantly recommending books and other reading material for things they gloss over. Towards the end of the course, the frontend and backend lessons are integrated into projects that students complete while pair-programming.