Only If Your Time is Valuable
1 year following online tutorials == 5 weeks part-time Bootcamp.
Now there’s a statement. Let me explain.
Perhaps now that I am enrolled in a bootcamp, all of the previous study I have done has led me to this point and all of the loose pieces of information swimming around my brain are finally finding their rightful place. Perhaps if I hadn’t done any study at all prior to this, I would have been at exactly the same point as people who have spent no serious time studying prior to a bootcamp? That’s a depressing thought. Have I wasted months and months struggling to learn on my own?
I have done a lot over the past year. Here is my lowdown of some of the great and not so great resources available in the coding world.
What worked (pretty much)
The Web Developer BootCamp | Colt Steele |Udemy
My journey into coding began with good old Colt Steele on Udemy. Sure I froze when I got to JavaScript and I didn’t gain the confidence to start a project on my own, but the course made me aware of what a massive learning challenge I had taken on. It made me question if I was really in it for the long haul. The fact that I continued despite JS making me cry (on the inside) is a testimony to this guy’s calm, reassuring manner, massive curriculum and the clarity in his delivery.
Free Code Camp
An amazing resource when it came to practicing the fundamentals of CSS and HTML and giving me a guided learning pathway. But, when it came to understanding Javascript at a deeper level? I’m not so sure. I reverted to ‘youtubing’ and ‘githubing’ the answers just so I could get to the next challenge. Kinda satisfying, but in the long term terrible for my learning process as it gave me a false sense of accomplishment and capability.
Front End Masters — Particularly Will Sentance on JavaScript.
This guy is great and his courses alone are worth paying for a month worth of Front End Masters. Why? It’s simple: Will knows how to teach. There are no fancy videos, animations or demonstrations. It’s just him, a whiteboard and a room full of eager code students who he badgers with constant targeted questioning. It makes you feel like you are there with him, shouting out the wrong answer or feeling proud when you finally understand that it’s because of the “new execution context” (stupid). Of course it is, Will. Great stuff.
Javascript: Understanding the Weird Parts | Udemy
This guy is no-nonsense. He breaks down every single bit of jargon. What on earth is asynchronous? Let him explain it. Slowly. Like you’re a 5 year old. And boom. It makes sense.
The Coding Interview Bootcamp: Algorithms + Data Structures | Stephen Grider |Udemy
Useful Books
A Smarter Way To Learn Javascript | Mark Myers
Javascript: The Good Parts |Douglas Crockford
Eloquent Javascript |Marijn Haverbeke
Grokking Algorithms: An illustrated guide for programmers and other curious people|Aditya Bhargava
What didn’t work as well:
Codecademy
Codecademy is brilliant for getting you used to the syntax and introducing concepts. However, for real in-depth understanding of how to solve problems or start a project on your own? Thumbs down. I even paid for an intensive CodeCademy React course and after completing it, I wasn’t sure how they justified the £200 pound charge. The majority of the resources are available with the much cheaper monthly pro account.
Flatiron Online Web Developer Course-(I lasted 2 months)
Only now that I am in person bootcamp set up do I realise how limiting the online format can be. Flatiron seems to get amazing results with their in-person bootcamps, but their online platform ‘Learn’ has a long way to go. The ‘live coding’ videos are long, repetitive and unclear. The online platform is buggy and the concepts are not explained well. Yes, the job of a developer is to search for solutions online, but when you are paying a small fortune for somebody to actually teach you, the course at times feels like a complete waste of money. One plus point- you get a great looking Github profile as it automatically updates your account with green squares. Boom.
Back to the Boot Camp
Le Wagon — Part Time- London
So clearly, I’ve done a lot. More than the average self-taught student has in a year? I’m not sure. Why then do I think I’ve learnt more at the week 5 point at Le Wagon? Simple answer: forced, solo (or paired) problem-solving. When I was studying on my own and encountered a problem which I found really challenging, I would look for yet another resource to help me solve it. I was stuck in an infinite new learning resource loop.
Now, I sit in class and talk through (or scream at) the question until it starts making sense. The teachers are not there to give us the answer but to ask us the right questions. They know the student usually already has the knowledge and resources to solve the challenges that are presented to them. In the past I might have known what a method, a variable and a conditional statement were, but could I do CRUD operations on arrays and hashes on my own? At a push (note the intentional bad array pun). These gaps in my knowledge stopped me from taking the plunge into starting my own projects, even though everything I read told me that that’s how you learn. Now, the fact that I am sitting in a room for 12 hours a week and watching lectures for 3 hours a week every week for 24 weeks seems to be (finally) making the world of difference.
The boot camp so far has been a real struggle. There are days when I feel the burden of anxiety created by imposter syndrome and my age (ancient in tech) becoming more powerful than the voice that tells me that this change, at this point in my life, is right. However, when I look around our classroom, I see a room full of other students, struggling just as much as me and also wrestling with their own personal battles with “is this right”. This, in a way, is reassuring. Before this, all I could focus on was that one guy. The one guy who did the whole of free code camp in three months, whilst working and raising 5 kids. He now has a 6 figure salary at Google. Good on that guy. But comparisons to such rare cases at as this are not helpful for those of us who are trying to learn whilst keeping full-time jobs and juggling other responsibilities. They do nothing but amplify the “is this right” anxiety and aim to negate the fact that learning to code is hard. This shit IS hard.
I am a part-time student which means that my bootcamp at Le Wagon London will run for 24 weeks. I have given notice at my teaching job and will soon start the serious dev job hunt. How long would it have taken me to get to this point if I hadn’t been pushed off the cliff and out of my comfort zone by Le Wagon? One more year? Longer?
I know that doing a bootcamp is not for everyone and I know too that I am extremely privileged to be able to save the huge sum of money to go and do it. But, my advice would be that if you can, you should do it. Find a scholarship, get a loan if you must, but do it. In the long term you may save yourself a hell of a lot of time, but unfortunately not struggle. The struggle is real and it continues.
