Wanna Code?

[Heinrich]

I had heard that coding boot camps were tunnels of lost money and time. According to this article, it appears a CBC could be a way to go.

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/so-you-learned-code-what-jobs-can-you-get-after-coding-bootcamp

[Greg]

Dead end at your age I would think.

Coders are 10 a penny in India, China, E.Europe.  Why would someone want a newby?

If you are going to learn a skill then financial compliance and regulations is where it is at.  Very hard to replace you with a computer and they gotta have you because the fines are MASSIVE.

Boring, but relatively easy to learn and well paid.  They are not going to expose their risk or trading position to a foreigner.

[Heinrich]

Dead end at your age I would think.

Coders are 10 a penny in India, China, E.Europe.  Why would someone want a newby?

If you are going to learn a skill then financial compliance and regulations is where it is at.  Very hard to replace you with a computer and they gotta have you because the fines are MASSIVE.

Boring, but relatively easy to learn and well paid.  They are not going to expose their risk or trading position to a foreigner.

Not considering it. IT career ain't for me. If I do anything formal, I would get a CompTIA A+ just because I like to tinker and could parlay that into a side hustle.  There might be some young dudes here who could benefit. I did coding some stuff on my own with Genghis Academy, but that was just for passing time and personal edification. Forgot it all already.

[Daniel]

I'm considering one of these... might be my only option if I can't find anything else.

Revature looks promising. It seems to be a combination of a recruiting company and a coding bootcamp. If I'm understanding it correctly, I believe that if they accept you into their program then they will put you through their bootcamp (which is paid training) and then they will hook you up with a job afterwards. It doesn't look like a scam. I don't think the job is guaranteed, but they claim to have a high placement rate.

My main problem is that many of the companies that they might hook you up with are banks and large corporations--exactly the sorts of morally depraved companies that I'm deliberately staying away from. (And I don't believe they give you any say in who you'll be working for. I think they just train you and then hand you over to an employer.)
A lesser problem for me would be lack of interest. I love programming, but I have no interest in software development. I don't at all look forward to being on some team trying to navigate and debug other peoples' code, which, due to the company's tight deadlines, is often a patched-together mess of inelegant, sloppy, poorly-written code, which probably wouldn't even have bugs had the original programmer not been in such a hurry or been forced to cut corners. I suppose such a job would at least be tolerable though, if it's my only option (granted that I was working for a company that I approved of and rallied behind, rather than some sinful or morally-questionable company that I don't want anything to do with).

Here's another bootcamp: LaunchCode. I don't know anything about them, but I think their bootcamp is free.

In any case, I personally wouldn't go to a bootcamp that isn't free or that doesn't at least claim to be able to get you a job afterwards. If you're just in it to learn the skills, you can do that from home for free. Programming is not that hard. The problem isn't the skills; it's the experience. Anyone can go through some tutorials and learn an easy language like Java in just a few weeks (or even days), but unless you use Java day in and day out for several years you're never going to master it. Companies don't want people with a "working knowledge"; they want people who know what they're doing. Unless the bootcamp is able to get you a job, it seems kind of pointless. Even listing the bootcamp on your résumé probably isn't going to help much. (Especially if everyone is doing it...)