Hey guys, I’m very new to coding but have decided this is the career path I want to take. My question is would I get more out of a 18 month University full stack developer course than a 5 month boot camp? The University is 4,500 clams while the boot camp is 15,000. That seems like an awful big mark up for the boot camp. I’m thinking I would get more out of the University simply because I would spend more time immersed in it. Please give me some advice. Is free code camp all I need? I am willing to dedicate to any of it as long as I know I will land a decent job after. I am not one of those students who wastes my time either. If I’m studying something, I’m learning it.
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If the university course is less than 1/3rd the price and more than 3 x longer than the bootcamp I would opt for the university course
The point about immersion sounds correct the longer you spend doing it the better you’ll get and it will give you space to properly learn and breathe rather than cramming 12 hour coding sessions everyday for 3 months
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People complaint that university is very theoretical and lacks practice. Which might be a selling point for a bootcamp…
But honestly, you can always grab some free resources on the side, while being at university. Like the FreeCodeCamp curriculum and just tons of resources on youtube.
And you get the benefit that a university is more likely a good credential than a bootcamp. Not that a bootcamp is bad, it’s just that companies more likely have an idea of what a university teaches, than what a random bootcamp does.
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You will. No matter how you learn, spending more time on a subject will result in you learning more.
For the amount of time you spend learning, bootcamps usually cost more than higher education. Its true bootcamps are more condensed and you’ll “finish faster”, but you will also cram and cut a lot of corners. Furthermore, bootcamps usually focus on key job specific skills, where-as higher education focuses on the fundamentals underpinning everything.
The one area where bootcamps could help, is with any job placement help, and or networking. Colleges also offer similar support, but again take more time and overall money.
It depends, it’s usually recommended to use freeCodeCamp as a starting point, and branching out to “fill in the gaps” that you need. Ultimately being self-taught means also being your own teacher. Not only do you need to be a good student and study/learn the material, but you also have to be the teacher by finding and using the right material at the right time, and structure your learning for success.
Going to a school/bootcamp, means you will get teachers/professors to do that part, but you still need to be a “good student”. So no approach, or single source can be fool-proof.
I usually recommend going to college if you can afford it. As it provides extra resources such as networking, access to staff, possible job placement help and other useful resources. All of which you’d have to hunt down yourself if your self-taught.
Good luck, keep learning, keep building 
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Thank you guys, that answered my questions.
i honestly dont think one university course is a replacement for a 4 years cs program. the paper is always superior to the one semester course because it doesnt just teach u the programming aspect but get you into the habit of problem solving. which is what programmings is all about. these theoretical math classes and algorithms is by far no useless at any means. it all get your mind to think out of the box in order to solve problems. thats just my take on it
but i will add though the semester university class is probably better than a bootcamp though. if those are the 2 options but a traditional degree will always be invaluable. employers love looking at the degree. ANY stem degree is proof ghat you’re not a slacker. and that means alot to many employers
I think you said it all. Great
I agree with some people here who state that courses are better, but I think all depends on the chosen university. If you’ll decide to go to University, please, consider more prestigious institutions, but be ready that it’ll be difficult enough to enter it. I’m a prospective coding student and I spend all my free time on writing personal statements to master them. So, if you’ll need to write this paper, please, use a guide while doing it. If you’ll need some useful sources, don’t hesitate to PM me.
Thank you, I will keep that in mind.
Building the freeCodeCamp curriculum projects and/or any projects that are meaningful to you will give you so much confidence and can be a great accomplishment if done the right way with research by using your favorite search engine(dynamically choose which search engine to use based on what’s most effective at getting the results you want). You’ll want to choose a code editor to learn and build your projects with, I use the popular VS code.
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