[mgirdley]

Bootcamp founder here.

There's a big difference between learning enough to tinker with code and enough to work professionally at it.

The vast majority of people don't have the network, self-motivation or ability to get to a level where they can work professionally as a dev.

[dudul]

What is the added value of the bootcamp compared to a good set of books, a couple of meetups where you can meet great mentors and some tutorials online?

I've interviewed candidates whose single "experience" was a code bootcamp and they were terrible. I think that propagating the myth that a couple week bootcamp can teach you how to be a professional developer is insulting to developers.

[mgirdley]

I think there's a wide spectrum of bootcamps. Some are elite and some aren't.

It's important to recognize bootcamp grads for what they are: people who've been coding for 3-4 months max. Many folks expect them to be seasoned devs with 5 yrs experience but they truly are entry-level.

Most people, as I said, are missing motivation, structure, connections and auto-didactic skills to even get to the point of doing Hello World.

[Oh, and if you interviewed someone who'd been to a 4-week (?) bootcamp, that explains why they couldn't do much. Nothing great in life is accomplished by working for 4-weeks.]

[runamok]

I think it can fill a valuable niche telling you the "right way" to do things. Such as using an ide/linters, testing, a code repo, virtual servers, etc. When you first try to learn to program you often hack things together to get them working and that's good enough.

A good boot camp has the opportunity to instill good taste in a new programmer before they learn bad habits.