I did MakerSquare last fall, with a couple of the other commenters here.
I had worked on learning by myself with all the usual free online resources, and it wasn't enough for me. I learn best when I can have a conversation with another human about WHY something works the way it does after I read the tutorial and practice the syntax.
Lacking funding and other resources I'd have needed to go to school full time for 2-4 years, I chose to sink what funding and resources I did have into MakerSquare. I graduated in November and have been working fulltime as a front end developer since the start of December.
Some points to consider:
- A good bootcamp comes with teachers and mentors who teach in multiple styles depending on the lesson and student. I was able to seek out the mentorship I needed for my learning style. This is something that is difficult to do in my experience of normal college, and nearly impossible to do while learning on one's own.
- In addition to being a sort of "education accelerator," as another commenter has mentioned, MakerSquare was also a "networking accelerator." I left the program with a robust network of professional contacts, all in different stages of their career and parts of the local tech scene.
- I also made a fair-sized handful of new best friends, and we continue to provide both educational and emotional support for each other on a regular basis. Going through a bootcamp-style education experience, no matter how good a programmer you become, has a pretty profound effect on one's life and worldview, and sometimes the only people who really get it are the ones who've gone through it with you.
- I definitely learned far more quickly than I would have had I continued to self-tech in spurts between work, life, and my financially unsustainable attempts at traditional education.
- I didn't learn everything I needed to know to work at my job. In fact, since MKS teaches Ruby/Rails and I work in a PHP shop, I learned very little. What I did learn at MKS was enough to figure the rest out. No bootcamp OR school will teach you everything. Without MKS, there is flat out no way I would have been able to have this job that I have maintained for going on a year now, while some others in my office with more experience than I've got have been fired for sucking at their jobs. I may not be a great programmer (yet), but I at least don't suck at it and I know how to learn and get better.
- Yes, the quality of graduates is inconsistent. Some people go in with some programming knowledge, and are going to get more out of any program than most people who start at nothing. Some people simply don't get as much out of their chosen program as others, regardless of their starting points. I'm sure this is just as true for a traditional CS program, and I'm equally sure that the difference in skills levels between graduates of the same group is more stark than that of a CS cohort's.
- Quality of programs varies so much. Hell, the quality of one program can vary based on how developed their curriculum is at a given time, who's teaching that curriculum, and who a student works with to learn it. But hey, see my above comment about CS degrees.
- We chose our own projects, by the way. I would say at that least most of my cohort could point to a bit of code that we personally wrote and are proud of.
- Yes, we had interview coaching, and the teachers and founders did their best to boost our confidence levels. Impostor Syndrome is a known thing for programmers who've been programming for a long time. Can you imagine what it must be like to feel years behind other programmers your age because you really actually ARE years behind a large group of people who've been programming since childhood? Even the best of us sometimes need a "you can do it, buddy!" from someone they respect.
Comments
I did MakerSquare last fall, with a couple of the other commenters here.
I had worked on learning by myself with all the usual free online resources, and it wasn't enough for me. I learn best when I can have a conversation with another human about WHY something works the way it does after I read the tutorial and practice the syntax.
Lacking funding and other resources I'd have needed to go to school full time for 2-4 years, I chose to sink what funding and resources I did have into MakerSquare. I graduated in November and have been working fulltime as a front end developer since the start of December.
Some points to consider:
- A good bootcamp comes with teachers and mentors who teach in multiple styles depending on the lesson and student. I was able to seek out the mentorship I needed for my learning style. This is something that is difficult to do in my experience of normal college, and nearly impossible to do while learning on one's own. - In addition to being a sort of "education accelerator," as another commenter has mentioned, MakerSquare was also a "networking accelerator." I left the program with a robust network of professional contacts, all in different stages of their career and parts of the local tech scene.
- I also made a fair-sized handful of new best friends, and we continue to provide both educational and emotional support for each other on a regular basis. Going through a bootcamp-style education experience, no matter how good a programmer you become, has a pretty profound effect on one's life and worldview, and sometimes the only people who really get it are the ones who've gone through it with you. - I definitely learned far more quickly than I would have had I continued to self-tech in spurts between work, life, and my financially unsustainable attempts at traditional education.
- I didn't learn everything I needed to know to work at my job. In fact, since MKS teaches Ruby/Rails and I work in a PHP shop, I learned very little. What I did learn at MKS was enough to figure the rest out. No bootcamp OR school will teach you everything. Without MKS, there is flat out no way I would have been able to have this job that I have maintained for going on a year now, while some others in my office with more experience than I've got have been fired for sucking at their jobs. I may not be a great programmer (yet), but I at least don't suck at it and I know how to learn and get better.
- Yes, the quality of graduates is inconsistent. Some people go in with some programming knowledge, and are going to get more out of any program than most people who start at nothing. Some people simply don't get as much out of their chosen program as others, regardless of their starting points. I'm sure this is just as true for a traditional CS program, and I'm equally sure that the difference in skills levels between graduates of the same group is more stark than that of a CS cohort's. - Quality of programs varies so much. Hell, the quality of one program can vary based on how developed their curriculum is at a given time, who's teaching that curriculum, and who a student works with to learn it. But hey, see my above comment about CS degrees.
- We chose our own projects, by the way. I would say at that least most of my cohort could point to a bit of code that we personally wrote and are proud of.
- Yes, we had interview coaching, and the teachers and founders did their best to boost our confidence levels. Impostor Syndrome is a known thing for programmers who've been programming for a long time. Can you imagine what it must be like to feel years behind other programmers your age because you really actually ARE years behind a large group of people who've been programming since childhood? Even the best of us sometimes need a "you can do it, buddy!" from someone they respect.