I am not sure if its appropriate to start this topic here and I hope I dont get removed from the community. Moderators, please feel free to delete it if its inappropriate.
Anyway, I dont have a job at the moment and I am waiting to finish Web Development course to put osmething worthwhile on my portfolio before I can start applying for jobs. And from the looks of it, its going to take a looong time before I can get done.
To speed up the process, I was thiknking of enrolling in either a nanodegree on Udacity or an online bootcamp that gurantees job placement too. I cant seem to pick between the two. Please help!
Hi there
So Iāve actually completed Frontend Nanodegree back in 2015. I can tell you right now that theyāve added a lot of things since then.
Truth be told, I completed at bare minimum because I was working full-time at another job, and I wasnāt sure if I wanted to web-development. After I completed the course, it confirmed that indeed I wanted to do it and I took a hitatus of working and studying (took a whole year of traveling around the world).
In my opinion, I think Udacity is worth a shot. I think their curriculum is well-put, they teach you from the grounds up of HTML-CSS all the way to Javascript, and their job-support is great.
However, unlike FCC Curriculum, Udacity does give out all the information for you already to complete the projects. Though it is convenient, I felt enforcing to do your own research of how to complete a project is worth more- you learn how to google the right keywords, which then you might stumble something you didnt know, etc.
If youāre looking for a more āstructuredā curriculum, Iād say Udacity is worth it but keeping in my mind that (in my experience) theyāve hold my hands a bit too much. So why not do both Udacity and FCC?
It depends which type of curriculum are you looking for and which type of involvement you want to have.
Udacity has great courses, great curriculumā¦ with a soft-approach(as said).
Bootcamps are EXTREMELY demanding, as a time invested and as You approach the studying. Nobody is āholding your handsā although you may have invaluable time with a mentor on your side.
by bootcamps I meant Launch Academy/Thinkful/AppAcademy etc. Will a Nanodegree from Udacity get me a job? Im unemployed at the moment and want to get it done and over with as soon as possible.
Those bootcamps and even Udacity does have some career coaching. However, finishing a bootcamp isnāt going to be enough to get you a job. What will get you a job is for you to actually understand the material, and how long it takes varies one person to another.
Iāve done Udacity (dropped out of the FullStack ND and competed a few free courses). They offer so much in the way of free courses so I think itās better to supplement FCC and Udacityās free courses, as well as other things like Eloquent Js.
When I was just starting to learn to code a few months ago I was big on ultimatums of āthis vs thatā. Now that Iāve spent some time learning (as well as too much time lagging) I see that doing multiple things is the way to go.
Front End FCC can honestly be completed very quickly. A majority of the the stuff is algorithmic challenges. Iāve spent like a month just doing Codewars challenges nonstop and Iām at a point where I can complete algorithm puzzles ābeautifullyā according to a guy I was pair programming with at an FCC meetup.
I feel like you can learn a lot more by doing; music in the background and google tabs rotating on a constant, and thatās what FCC is all about. I wouldnāt discount FCC just because itās free.
Quickest shot to learning > quickest shot to get a job. Most bootcamps donāt hold much weight job seeking and Iād assume nanodegrees hold even less.
You have to pay an extra $100 /m for that benefit with Udacity, and it essentially preselects people with the initiative to learn things fast. It goes to stand that theyāre likely doing things during that 6 month window that makes them more likely to get hired.
With bootcamps I said āmostā. I plan on going to Hack Reactor (which also offers Remote, OP) but thereās a theory that Iāve talked about with people from an FCC meetup that top bootcamps like HR only select people that are already essentially job ready.
I donāt know. How did you get your first dev job?
I was part of Googleās Dev Scholarship for Udacity Front-End NanoDegree. I found there coverage of JavaScript not enough to complete the projects they have you complete and the mentorship was aweful.
Iād recommend steering clear of them if you have to pay for it.