No, You Don’t Need a Bootcamp or Degree to Become a Software Developer
Do you really need a bootcamp to become a software engineer? While it may seem there are only two viable paths into the world of software — bootcamp or college degree — there is another way.
Full disclosure — I did complete a bootcamp style program nearly 7 years ago. The price tag was trivial compared to what the average programs costs nowadays — $2000 for 12 weeks — but to me, at that time, this was a sum of money that I figured I might not soon see again. I needed to make this work.
In the months leading up to my program, I furiously studied, spending my weekends and free time building awful looking sites after learning HTML and CSS then learning enough Jquery and Javascript to be dangerous. By the time the program started, I wasn’t so much as learning anything new as I was reinforcing what I had taught myself. I was hired 8 weeks into the program and have continued a mix of self-study and bootcamps since then to round out my knowledge.
So do you need a bootcamp? Short answer: NO. One of the strangest complaints that I see about bootcamp programs for software engineers is that “you can learn all this material online… for free!” Well, yeah. Internet.
What a bootcamp provides is a clear and well-defined path to proficiency. The world of web…
