Ask HN: Part Time Code Camps in Boston
I live in Boston and work full time here, and I do not plan to quit my job.
What are some good options and do you think this will help me accomplish what I’m hoping to?
I’m hesitant because coding boot camp feels like the new mid-20s crisis thing to do. I don’t want to be in the company of 20+ ppl who are like “I hear engineers make $xyz, I just need to learn how to do it so I can get a job at xyzStartUp”, or essentially believe $10k-$20k on a code camp will buy them a new career.
BACKGROUND:
Visual art major at top lib arts school (grad. 2014) working in content strategy at a marketing technology company. I’ve also been doing design work for ~10 years, mostly print/identity, but no UI experience.
I have completed around 300 freeCodeCamp modules (Basic HTML and CSS, Basic JavaScript) and have familiarity with python as well. I’m fairly comfortable with basic concepts and do a lot of googling to solve specific problems.
GOAL:
I’m interested in a camp because I would like some structure, project based learning, more advanced, career applicable teaching, and most importantly mentorship from someone with professional experience (I don’t always feel I’m learning principles/concepts when I solve a problem with an hour of google searching).
I don’t know for sure that I want to be “a developer”, but I do know that technology will likely be part of my career, and can bring ideas to life.
I’m hoping to come out of a program with the confidence to apply to product positions (PM, UI/UX, Visual Designer) without saying “yeah I have no portfolio of digital projects.”
[+] [-] tylery|7 years ago|reply
I'm probably going to go with the Launch School (https://launchschool.com/) because of its focus on giving you the foundational skills to learn any language (after learning Ruby from them). I may or may not decide to do the Capstone project.
It seems you're only interested in front-end, not full-stack, so I'm not sure they'd be a fit. But I will say that as a software PM knowing about the back-end is probably useful.
Just my two cents.
[+] [-] testb|7 years ago|reply