jennyh55•2d agoProlific Poster

Question about those $300 online coding bootcamps

I paid for a 'guaranteed job' bootcamp last year, but the lessons were just recycled YouTube videos and the career help was a single email template. I'm out the cash and still building my portfolio from free resources. Are these expensive shortcuts ever worth it for a total beginner, or is it better to just grind through free stuff first?

2 comments

2 Comments

fiona_clark2d ago

Disagree with @kim_martin on this one. A good bootcamp gave me the structure I couldn't make myself. Free tutorials are great, but I was stuck in a loop of starting and stopping. Paying for the course forced me to finish, and the weekly live calls with a real teacher got me unstuck fast. The job help was just okay, but the real value was having a clear path laid out when I was totally lost.

kim_martin2d ago

Sounds about as useful as a warranty on a used car with 200k miles. Those bootcamps bank on people wanting a magic bullet, but there isn't one. Grinding through the free stuff first is the only real shortcut.