Last year we grew from a one-person operation to a two-person operation. In a time of fear and uncertainty, nothing sells like the quick fix. At least that stuff is free if, as the old saying about Linux goes, your time is worth nothing. The bootcamp business model frightens me: I see extraordinary tuition costs, curricula designed by committee to produce completely fungible entry-level programmers, and extremely sketchy contracts.
Imagine the impact on teaching quality from that particular gambit. And speaking of teaching quality, the impression I get is that many bootcamps, even with quality instructors, have such high student-to-instructor ratios that instruction boils down mostly to reading assignments and independent or team project work with minimal lecture or instructor-guided work time.
The worst-kept secret in this whole no-longer-cottage industry is that everything you need to learn can be had from at most a few hundred dollars worth of textbooks and likely for free on the Internet. I am not at all convinced that the bootcamp model provides enough of this structure to be worth the cost and the sometimes unconscionable contract.
You do also need some structure, or at least a plan: what do you want to learn? How are you going to get there? For a given focus area, this plan might be provided by a good introductory book, by your own research, or by one of the growing number of university courses whose course material is freely available online.
A good mentor, or mentors, can also be a great help. Potential mentors are everywhere, but the good ones are in demand—anyone offering open-ended free mentoring to all and sundry may have too much time on their hands. That said, remember that sometimes the best mentors are peers just one or two steps ahead, and that everyone has different expertise and experience.
