Coding bootcamps are offering students a new way to enter careers in tech and web development without spending the time and money on a standard four-year college degree. They can be an exceptional way to pick up the skills most-wanted to by employers today in six months. Nevertheless, they still represent a major decision for prospective students. The time commitment and effort is considerable, and of course there are fees involved in attending almost any bootcamp.
If you’re considering registering for a coding bootcamp, you should ask yourself if you’re ready to….
Work Really Hard
There’s a reason coding bootcamps use the word “bootcamp” to describe what they’re all about. They are challenging, they pack a lot of information into a condensed period of time, and they expect students to dedicate a lot of time and energy to getting their work done. After all, no matter what bootcamp model you choose—online, offline, or hybrid—there’s a lot of work to be done. Either you’ll be attending an immersive offline program that required you to attend classes five days a week for six months, or you’ll choose and online or hybrid model because you’re fitting your learning around work, family or other must-do responsibilities. It can be a lot to juggle and you will be heads down for many months, but the payoff is worth it.
Solve Challenging Problems
One of the aspects of web and mobile development that’s so empowering is that if you can think it, you can build it. Of course, that’s what makes it so challenging too. Tackling something that no one has ever done before, or at the very least that very few people have done before, means there’s no proven path forward. You will no doubt come across major roadblocks and hurdles, and you’ll have to frequently troubleshoot to get things to work. Coding is hard and being a good developer requires patience and adaptiveness to make what’s in your head come to life.
Work As A Team
While the typical vision people have of a developer is a lone person working in a dark room, this couldn’t be further from the truth. People are often surprised to learn that coding actually involves working together as a team. Of course, each developer is focused on writing a specific set of code, but so are his or her colleagues. At the end of the day, that code has to come together to build a finished product. And during the coding and combining process, bugs and other issues emerge. Troubleshooting these issues means leaning on colleagues, peers and online forums, leveraging the know-how of a community of coders to overcome hurdles and create great code.
Build Things (Almost) From Scratch
Do you love tinkering with things and getting them to work? Do you love the idea of piecing together raw materials to bring something to life? If so, that’s at the heart of many coding projects where you’ll put together the foundations and the finishing touches on a project. Though one thing that’s great about working amongst a community of coders is that many share their code openly. That means that you’re rarely stuck building things completely from scratch. Instead, you can pick and choose from blocks of code that help get you started, and then use your coding knowledge to customize it for your project’s needs.
Did you answer “yes” to all of these? If so, then a coding bootcamp, and a career in web and mobile development, could be a great fit for you. If you’re still on the fence, you can always try a web development fundamentals bootcamp. It’s a great way to dip your toes in the coding waters and experience firsthand if this is something that you can see yourself doing for years to come.
