I’ve always preferred books, so I really like Safari Books Online although it is kind of premium pricing at $40 a month without annual. I got it free through school email though, if you have something similar. They have really expanded their library and have a lot of video based learning paths, even quite a few pulled from Udemy published through Packt.
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I think you should do what works for you. For me, FCC was flexible and free and I am good at self-directed learning.
A “real” bootcamp? I can see that there would be some advantages to that. Having and intensive program where you are surrounded by like minded people? Yeah, I can see the advantage of that. If I’d been at a different place in life, I might have gone for that. Another big advantage of bootcamps is that they help you find a job and there are a lot of connections that you make - often very helpful for getting a job.
Udemy? Sure, why not? I used FCC as a framing device to guide my path but took lots of little side adventures along the way. Just find a path that works for you. As long as your learning and building things, it can’t be that bad of a path.
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Hi. In schools, you find teachers who pretend you do exactly what they say. You may find you’re not at ease with that, but this forms a lot, so as @hrs070 said, degrees always cut their figure.
But what is behind any school? Regular work and testing.
Then I think that in any circumstance , if you are able to schedule your time, fix targets and… enjoy, you can get any result. I just suggest reading the replies here by @jwilkins.oboe and be very confident in your skills.
Luck is when opportunity meets preparation. You can’t say what will happen tomorrow, but you can plan what you want to do tomorrow. Three months from now in this way, you will already be at another level of reasoning on the topic.
The publisher springer has a selection of free ebooks of their university books. That’s less pricy and there may be something interesting
I’m an established developer/engineering leader, and though I studied computer science in university I can honestly say they taught me the basics of C … and I had to teach myself everything else I needed to actually get a job. So doesn’t matter if you do a degree or a bootcamp, a large component of what you need to know to get a job you will end up teaching yourself…
With that said.
Bootcamps can be great for some individuals that have the time and resources to commit. However, I feel many bootcamps aren’t honest about their programs always and quality may vary. Bootcamps curriculum can fall behind what technical skills are trending because it is expensive to constantly update curriculum and then have to decided if the teachers can learn/teach the new material or do new teachers need brought in. For instance I heard about a bootcamp teaching an old version of React because none of the teachers knew about React-Hooks. And it can be frustrating to spend 20K on a bootcamp that promises you will make 150k and that isn’t really honest. Entry level roles might be more like 50-75k…
As someone that hires developers, I don’t really care about your bootcamp or school. What I care is can you do the work with confidence and no ego. Things that help, solid github repos of work that show me you’ve worked hard and put in the time to learn. And in a phone screen I can tell if you truly have learned what you need to know.
Hope that helps.
Lots of people here start quite late, freecodecamp is very helpful. All the Best!!!
I think you have already got a lot of comments from people above. But let me share some of my own experience. I already got my BS in CS. After that I did first FCC certificate and finished about 80% of JS certificate module. Overall, I think the learning platform used by FCC is much better than any platform I used in college and the course materials are well organized so far. All questions comes with solutions with both typed explanation(and verbal explanation most time). Also, they regularly release different topics of CS/IT videos on Youtube if you prefer “someone teaches” you online.
I have never tried Bootcamp but I would not say yes/no to that. As someone mentioned above, you might just need to do some research. Some people can just learn everything by googling and reading everything themselves. But people like me would prefer both googling and taking classes. People learn in different ways, some prefer reading, some prefer listening and asking questions. The benefit of taking classes is that you can ask questions in real time. And you can also use FCC as your supplemental tools.