It is possible to finish FCC in 3 months?

I have been on FCC for three weeks now, and I am about to finish JavaScript. Is it possible to complete the full camp three months from now if I spend 8 hours a day solving problems and studying external materials?

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It depends what you mean, but the short answer is basically: no.

I don’t say any of the following to discourage you from putting in a great deal of effort for a short burst of time, but rather to ensure you have a realistic expectation of what is reasonable to learn well in 3 months.

Having 3 months of full time study available to you to work on coding is a phenomenal gift, and frankly I would LOVE such an opportunity. By all means, go for it, but don’t be discouraged if you put in all that work and haven’t completed the course by the end of it!

Firstly, NO ONE has completed the full course in the 2 years it has been running. So what do you mean by ‘complete the full camp’?

You can complete the Front End certificate in three months with 8 hours a day and come away with a pretty decent portfolio of basic front end apps if you work hard at improving. For example, I ‘completed’ the front end certificate in about 40 days spending about 2-3 hours a day on it. That said, I actually think my current portfolio from that section is of a sufficiently low quality that I wouldn’t go showing it to employers until I put a serious amount of work into improving it.

If you intend to complete the Data Viz and Back End certs in the same three months, it is possible, but not super likely. The learning curve on something like React is crazy compared to plain old JavaScript, and that’s just the tip of the icecberg. But it is possible if you take a good run at it and pick it up quickly.

The final certificate can only be started once you have completed the first three. For this one you work with another camper, a project manager and a real life client. Completing those 4 projects with whatever remains of your three months will be impossible.

I would ask what your motivation for this 3 month goal is. Do you have a reason for such a deadline, such as a new term of school starting, or a new position at a job becoming available?

I would also ask what value you perceive there to be in completing the course at all. Do you want to just be able to show people the certificates, or do you want a decent portfolio, or do you want genuine, robust and broad skills in web development? What’s your goal? Do you want to get your foot in the door at some little web agency? Do you want to build your own product? Do you want to work for a major tech company?

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I would agree here with @JacksonBates. I’ve been working on this for well over 3 months and devoting a ton of time to it, and I’m still getting CRUSHED by the back end app projects… And of course that’s not even to mention the non-profits which as Jackson points out no one has still completed fully yet.

With that said, 3 months is a nice chunk of time and the front-end certification a worthy achievement. The algorithm scripting challenges and front end projects are really pretty substantial achievements in my opinion.

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I have asked three months because my enrollment for the next School term is January and I am thinking that if I can finish this course, I might pursue this field rather than the one I am on which is Civil Engineering.
If I can convince my mom that web development is a thing and it does not need a College degree in three months time before my enrollment for Civil Engineering, I might have an opportunity to study in an intensive in-person boot camp to improve the skills I have gained from FCC and possibly learn more.

Well, that’s a good motivation, I think.

If I were in your shoes I would go all in with learning as much as you can, since you have nothing to lose at this point.

You can achieve a lot in three months if you are dedicated to it, although no one here will know what it takes to convince your mom! Only you and her can figure that out :wink:

Keep going, and holler out if you need help. We all do at some point :slight_smile:

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@cmelvin04 Yes, you can complete a lot in three months. However, it will be very hard to gain a very deep understanding of all the required technologies.

First, never turn down the opportunity to go to college, as long is it doesn’t cause you to go deeply into debt. Student loans will be a major burden for you financially. A lot of employers ask Developers to have a CS or related degrees. Yes, you can break into web development without a degree, but you will need to demonstrate your tech skills beyond creating small projects. I have seen some mid to large companies ask for experience with creating large and scalable applications. There is a difference between creating a web app for a couple hundred people and one for several thousand plus.

If you go into the development field, you will be forever learning new technologies. Or, you will be asked to switch tech stacks. That’s the position I’m in, we are looking into adding Node.js and Ruby on Rails development to our current ASP.Net and Microsoft tech stack.

With FCC, I can see people getting jobs at the entry or junior Front-End development with a pay scale to match.

Also, web development is not only programming. You will also need to know other skills like how to administrate a web server, that doesn’t mean shared hosting.

Here are some additional skills you will need acquire over time.
Ability to troubleshoot or identify networking issues?
Ability to programming and produce secure code?
Ability to install, configure, administrate and troubleshoot an Apache and IIS web server?
Ability to configure, administrate and troubleshoot a Linux or Windows Server machine?

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I might be on pace to finish within 3 months. 22 days in, currently working on the Rogue-like project-- about halfway through the Data Visualization section.

That absolutely does not mean I’ll pull it off, but it’s enough to convince me that its possible.

But you don’t need to finish the whole course to find work–or to impress your mom. I actually got my first unsolicited email from a recruiter today. Don’t know if its anything legit yet but I am currently unemployed (obviously, lol), so here’s hoping.

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I disagree with that part.
Developer and system administrator are different jobs. If an employer wants to avoid system administrator then he should consider Cloud PaaS, not expect me to do 2 things for the price of 1.

@cmelvin04
would like to suggest to stay away from any for-profit colleges like DeVry, Full Sail, ect.; you will save a ton of money. It is more cost effective to go the traditional route of Junior College than University, or just an University. Employers are more concerned you have an IT related degree than what college name is written on the degree.

@cmelvin04 I don’t think you should turn down a chance to earn an engineering degree. Chances are, as an engineer you will need to code, but instead of doing it for websites, it’ll be for larger scale engineering projects. I agree with people who suggested switching your major to either computer science or computer engineering. The foundational (ie math, physics) courses are all very similar anyway.

I would have to disagree. Granted, I am speaking from my personal experiences and opinions. Other Developers will have their own experiences and opinions.

If you are going to be just a Front-End Developer doing basic, intermediate and maybe some Advanced HTML, CSS and JavaScript; you might get away with it. However, if you are going to do Full Stack Development, than you will need knowledge beyond just programming. It’s not about companies employing and paying for proper positions, it just goes along with the job. Granted in small to mid sized companies it will happen more often, but it also happens in larger and enterprise companies, too.

If you are going to create web apps, you can’t just code and deploy then leave it up to someone else to troubleshoot why it doesn’t work. The Developer will need to ensure their web apps are coded properly and securely for deployment.

There are also other skills not related to programming like, a short list, Version Control, the Terminal/Command line, Testing (Major skill), Software Documentation, Agile Project Management, and Communication.

I have been a Full Stack Web Developer (ASP.Net MVC) for a little over 5-years working for the U.S. Federal Government.
I routinely perform these tasks.

  • Install, Configure, Administrate and Troubleshoot Apache and IIS Web Servers.
  • Install, Configure, Administrate and Troubleshoot MS SQL and MySQL databases.
  • Configure, Administrate and Troubleshoot Windows Server machines, in-process of learning Linux servers.
  • Configure, Administrate and Troubleshoot SharePoint Site Collections.

For freelance and side projects, I have performed these tasks.

  • Configured and Administrated Apache servers.
  • Installed, Configured and Administrated MS SQL and MySQL databases.
  • Configured and Administrated Linux servers, shared hosting.
  • Created, Configured and Administrated Azure App Services.
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Did you pursue a degree in Information Technology or Computer Science? Does a CS degree teach server administration like that?

Go to college or university!

if you like programming, get a C.S. degree and point, if that is not an option for you then get a degree in either electric engineering or systems of information.

I am on my sixth semester of Civil engineering and I found out this year that I have not only passion but a huge desire to become a software engineer, so since last month I have been dedicating around 2 hours a day to learn coding and things related to the area.

Even though I don’t pretend to pursue career in Civil Eng., I highly appreciate the skills I learnt during these six semesters, I think the mindset acquired during an engineering course is of extreme value to a developer.

Even Quincy Larson said to young people to get a College/university degree if it is possible, it will certainly help with employ-ability and increase your skills.

Most of my education has been in the Computer Information Systems, more of a general studies into IT covering programming, project management, software documentation, etc.

Computer Science is a deeper study into computers, programming, data structures, algorithms, machine learning, etc. Depending on a particular CS degree plan, they may have some courses covering servers.

I learned about servers through employer paid courses and free online resources. I have found plenty of free online resources for programming, servers, and other IT related topics.

Job recruiters work to woo UW computer-science students

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MSDN Channel 9
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Cybrary
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Thank you for sharing these links.

I have finish 4 trimester of Civil Engineering and yeah our school is fast paced. I did not really put much effort on most of my classes because I don’t really know if Civil Engineering was for me. So when I tried to find other career paths, trust me I tried a lot, I found Computer Science is quite awesome. In FCC I can learn the basics and if I can I will enroll Computer Science in College.

Sounds like a plan. I don’t know if you can finish the whole track in three months, but you can certainly finish the front end certificate in that time, and that should be enough to let you know if you like web development.

From there you can get into Node.js and Express if you have time. I recommend the book Express in Action if you get that far, as FCC is still getting its back end materials together. Put it on order around the time you start your Simon project and it will be waiting on your shelf by the time you finish.

All your projects are rad, I’m sure you will have a job soon enough. What’s your background? It’s pretty clear you didn’t start coding 22 days ago.

I have started my path in july 20 and now I am about to start first back end project. Technically it’s very possible to finish all this stuff in 3 month. I think it depends on you background, discipline, and the way of how do you learn(is it efficient or not).I was not so serious about it initially, was spending a lot of time procrastinating + I am going through online bootcamp.

So as advice - work on you discipline, choose correct learning resources(don’t waste your time on crap - carefully read reviews)

Thank you! I probably should have mentioned I’ve been trying to learn all this stuff haphazardly on my own since around January(?) and started thinking about pursuing it professionally back in summer. But FreeCodeCamp has been invaluable-- my old code is so gross. If I would’ve known about the site sooner I would have signed up right away.

As for my background, though, I have a degree in audio production, and pursued painting before switching to that.