Good afternoon/evening fellow readers. Today, I want to talk about the pros and cons about coding bootcamps. This has helped me make my decision about whether or not to apply and participate in a coding bootcamp curriculum. I have not participated in a coding bootcamp myself but the decision I have made is based upon this blog. So let's get started and talk about the PROS of being in a coding bootcamp.
One major pro about going to a coding bootcamp is that you'll be networking with other aspiring developers. Networking in the programming field, or any other field for that matter, makes a big impact on your career and will help you further into what you want to do. You will also be coding almost every day for about 9-10 hours a day, depending on what coding bootcamp you participate in sometimes they have after hours so that you can get further tutoring from your instructor if needed. You also get to build projects that you can put on your Github and your portfolio, making you more appealing to potential employers. SPEAKING of employers, you will be performing your final projects in front of potential employers during your last day of bootcamp, which consists of a career day, project presentations, etc. The excellent part of your final day is just talking to potential employers after your presentation, because you may never know if they want to pull you into their office for a job interview.
Now let us proceed into the cons of partaking in a coding bootcamp. The price! Oh heaven all mighty, the price of coding bootcamps. They can range from $8k-$30k depending on what bootcamp you decide to go to. The major thing about this price is that you cannot apply for federal financial aid to help reduce the cost of the tuition from the bootcamp. Generally, they will direct you to getting a personal loan from a bank, which also includes interest. Now, if you're parents are loaded and they just blow their money, you can ask them to pay for the bootcamp. But also, they would probably tell you to pay them back. The other con of the bootcamp is the length of the curriculum, which can last 3 to 6 months. Now, generally 3 month is NOT ideal to learn how to code, especially with how much knowledge would be implanted into your brain. Your brain may explode! Well... Not literally, but you will feel like you've learn jack squat in 3 months. Six months... Well, it can be probable. I've known some people who've gotten jobs within 3 months to a year from learning code. During that time, you may feel like that you won't learn anything during that 3 months time because every week is a different subject in coding. One week is HTML/CSS, the next is JavaScript, Ruby, or whatever language the coding bootcamp focuses on, so on, so forth. Also, there are sometimes some people that enter a coding bootcamp, and waste their money by just going there, hanging out, and playing games like League of Legends or World of Warcraft. You are there to learn how to code, not waste your time. As I said in the pros section of this blog, I mentioned employers. Employers may not want to hire you, so you need to be more realistic on applying for jobs DURING the course instead of just relying on the coding bootcamp to just hand you a job. Remember, you are THERE to change your career and future, not for a hand out.
What is my conclusion of this blog? Well, as one who almost went to a coding bootcamp and decided to go the self-taught route, it is completely up to you. The major thing to remember is that if you want to spend that $8k-$30k, that's all on you. I know I have a lot of cons when it comes to coding bootcamps, but they CAN be helpful at times. Just remember, no matter what route you decide to go when it comes to learning to code, put in hard work, start side projects, and constantly apply for jobs. Also, if you DO decide to go to a coding bootcamp, take a couple months before the cohort to teach yourself the basic of the basics of coding so that you have a higher success rate. That is all the time I have for this blog today. Thank you for reading.
Wednesday, November 14, 2018
Sunday, November 11, 2018
So Many Life Changes Happening
Hello fellow readers/developers! I apologize for not posting here for quite a long while. I have been extremely busy as of late. I have had my hands tied with my two current part-time jobs and have been doing a lot of extensive learning when it comes to web development, going to meetups, etc. However, I do have more plans to write more blogs that can help people with learning how to code and being a better developer in the near future.
I am also proud to say that I am going to my first hackathon on December 1st. I am extremely nervous when it comes to things like this because I'm going to be honest here, I am TERRIFIED of how I will do. I do have some forms of anxiety that makes me stressed out and forget some things that I have learned throughout the year that I have been teaching myself how to code. I have no degree, still trying to learn the theories of programming and web development, and even though I know some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I just freeze up and forget to the point where I want to give up. If there is anyone out there that can give me hints on what to do with my first hackathon, it will be appreciated. Thank you guys for understanding on what's going on and I will be back with more blogs soon.
I am also proud to say that I am going to my first hackathon on December 1st. I am extremely nervous when it comes to things like this because I'm going to be honest here, I am TERRIFIED of how I will do. I do have some forms of anxiety that makes me stressed out and forget some things that I have learned throughout the year that I have been teaching myself how to code. I have no degree, still trying to learn the theories of programming and web development, and even though I know some HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I just freeze up and forget to the point where I want to give up. If there is anyone out there that can give me hints on what to do with my first hackathon, it will be appreciated. Thank you guys for understanding on what's going on and I will be back with more blogs soon.
Friday, September 28, 2018
Self-taught VS College VS Coding Bootcamps
Why, hello there fellow reader! It's great for you to drop by the blog again! Today's subject is something that almost EVERY coding YouTube Channel covers: Should you be self-taught, go to college, or a coding bootcamp? Well, from me, you may be getting some biased and/or unbaised opinions on what YOU personally should do. However, in the end, it is ultimately your decision to make that one big decision when it comes to your education and what route you want to go through.
I would like to start off with the self-taught route on learning how to code. It is an EXTREMELY difficult path to undergo, especially if you are not disciplined well enough to just say, "You know what? I am skipping video games today and study code!" I have this issue honestly, especially since I speedrun video games on the side as a hobby. The other major issue is trying to find a quiet environment to study code. If you have a loud house hold, I would recommend going to a public library or school library to study. I will discuss about the school library section in the next portion of this blog. But it can also be fun because you get to look through resources where you can learn, like Team Treehouse and Free Code Camp! Books are also a great way for self-teaching because not all the books you read DON'T particularly have to be coding books. They can get soft skills books like "The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide" by John Somnez. But when it comes for application time, you ABSOLUTELY NEED to stand out from the crowd! Have a side project, like a blog that I am doing for example, or a YouTube Channel where you talk about code.
The second thing that I want to talk about is college. Even though a certain percentage of tech companies don't require degrees, it is a nice thing to have on your resume so you can breach that "HR Firewall" so it will be a bit easier for you to land your first developer role. There are a couple of things with college that you guys should know about college if you are a younger reader, like middle to high school younger. When you are going through a Computer Science Degree or certification program, understand that a LOT of your programming classes will be more theoretical than you actually writing code. So at the end of the day, it is still your job to work on your coding assignments. However, there is a good side to this. I heard about people going in for a CS Degree or certification program buying their books EARLY, reading them, and eventually becoming a Teacher's Assistant because you voluntarily help other students who haven't gotten far into the book. It shows initiative, and not only that, it could be possible that your professor could give you a letter of recommendation when you start your job hunt! You can also connect with other CS Degree students and start working on projects together to spruce up both yours and your peers' skills!
The last and final thing I want to talk about are coding bootcamps. I would be EXTREMELY careful when it comes to coding bootcamps, since a lot of them guarantee you landing your first entry-level developer job, which is not ALWAYS the case. If you come from a higher-income background and decide to use your money to spend $9,000 to $25,000 on a coding bootcamp, It's your call. The major gripe that I have about coding bootcamps is how they can be structured. You would have to pretty much drop your WHOLE life for 3 months to code every single day for about 8 hours. So if you have to quit a job while living on your own, you're kinda shit outta luck there until you miraculously land a job. You would also more and likely have to take a loan out from the bank to attend this bootcamp, depending on your credit score, etc. That's the scary thing about coding bootcamps. Just being expected to drop your whole life just to code for three months and not being guaranteed a job at the end of the curriculum. There IS however, a positive side to the coding bootcamp route. You will be connected with a bunch of aspiring web developers such as yourself and work on projects together. Also, during final projects, there may be a good chance that some recruiters from tech companies will be watching your final presentations and may want to connect with you. If you however, land a job right after bootcamp, great! But you will still have to put in the hard work and apply for jobs, because jobs won't be handed out to you like candy.
Well, this concludes what I have to say about the three routes of learning how to code and getting your first developer job. What is my ultimate opinion on what route you should take? Well, if you are looking to save money, I would say take the self-taught route because it's the least expensive route. However, everyone is different. I am a self-taught person with no developer job, however, I do plan on going back to college because I do feel like I need a more structured environment like college. But ultimately in the end, as I have said, it is up to you to make your own decision on what you should do. I do, however, strongly recommend that you go to meetups whenever you can! You will learn a LOT from meetups, meet other developers and recruiters, and pass out your resume. If you enjoyed reading this blog, be sure to comment and share the blog with people who think that may need to see this. Have a wonderful day.
I would like to start off with the self-taught route on learning how to code. It is an EXTREMELY difficult path to undergo, especially if you are not disciplined well enough to just say, "You know what? I am skipping video games today and study code!" I have this issue honestly, especially since I speedrun video games on the side as a hobby. The other major issue is trying to find a quiet environment to study code. If you have a loud house hold, I would recommend going to a public library or school library to study. I will discuss about the school library section in the next portion of this blog. But it can also be fun because you get to look through resources where you can learn, like Team Treehouse and Free Code Camp! Books are also a great way for self-teaching because not all the books you read DON'T particularly have to be coding books. They can get soft skills books like "The Complete Software Developer's Career Guide" by John Somnez. But when it comes for application time, you ABSOLUTELY NEED to stand out from the crowd! Have a side project, like a blog that I am doing for example, or a YouTube Channel where you talk about code.
The second thing that I want to talk about is college. Even though a certain percentage of tech companies don't require degrees, it is a nice thing to have on your resume so you can breach that "HR Firewall" so it will be a bit easier for you to land your first developer role. There are a couple of things with college that you guys should know about college if you are a younger reader, like middle to high school younger. When you are going through a Computer Science Degree or certification program, understand that a LOT of your programming classes will be more theoretical than you actually writing code. So at the end of the day, it is still your job to work on your coding assignments. However, there is a good side to this. I heard about people going in for a CS Degree or certification program buying their books EARLY, reading them, and eventually becoming a Teacher's Assistant because you voluntarily help other students who haven't gotten far into the book. It shows initiative, and not only that, it could be possible that your professor could give you a letter of recommendation when you start your job hunt! You can also connect with other CS Degree students and start working on projects together to spruce up both yours and your peers' skills!
The last and final thing I want to talk about are coding bootcamps. I would be EXTREMELY careful when it comes to coding bootcamps, since a lot of them guarantee you landing your first entry-level developer job, which is not ALWAYS the case. If you come from a higher-income background and decide to use your money to spend $9,000 to $25,000 on a coding bootcamp, It's your call. The major gripe that I have about coding bootcamps is how they can be structured. You would have to pretty much drop your WHOLE life for 3 months to code every single day for about 8 hours. So if you have to quit a job while living on your own, you're kinda shit outta luck there until you miraculously land a job. You would also more and likely have to take a loan out from the bank to attend this bootcamp, depending on your credit score, etc. That's the scary thing about coding bootcamps. Just being expected to drop your whole life just to code for three months and not being guaranteed a job at the end of the curriculum. There IS however, a positive side to the coding bootcamp route. You will be connected with a bunch of aspiring web developers such as yourself and work on projects together. Also, during final projects, there may be a good chance that some recruiters from tech companies will be watching your final presentations and may want to connect with you. If you however, land a job right after bootcamp, great! But you will still have to put in the hard work and apply for jobs, because jobs won't be handed out to you like candy.
Well, this concludes what I have to say about the three routes of learning how to code and getting your first developer job. What is my ultimate opinion on what route you should take? Well, if you are looking to save money, I would say take the self-taught route because it's the least expensive route. However, everyone is different. I am a self-taught person with no developer job, however, I do plan on going back to college because I do feel like I need a more structured environment like college. But ultimately in the end, as I have said, it is up to you to make your own decision on what you should do. I do, however, strongly recommend that you go to meetups whenever you can! You will learn a LOT from meetups, meet other developers and recruiters, and pass out your resume. If you enjoyed reading this blog, be sure to comment and share the blog with people who think that may need to see this. Have a wonderful day.
Sunday, September 23, 2018
So You Want to Become a Web Developer/Programmer...
Hi there! If you are looking to become a Web Developer like I am, great! Fantastic! Let's take this journey together! Before we begin on that, allow me to give a bit of background on myself.
I am 28 years of age, living in Southern California and working two jobs. I used to go to college but I am not attending anymore at the moment for specific reasons, but I am highly interested in going back. I have some knowledge of HTML/CSS and learning JavaScript right now with interests of working the front end.
Well, now that I have told you about myself, fellow reader, let's get down to business and talk about what it takes to become a Web Developer, whether it be front end, back end, or full stack! I'm pretty sure that you have read or watched videos on what I am about to tell you HUNDREDS of times, but it is rather important that you take the time to make these efforts always. I am going to be breaking down these down with what the top 5 important items that I believe that you should work on when it comes to becoming a Web Developer. So without further ado, let's break this list down:
1.) Figure out what you want to do when it comes to Web Development or any other sort of programming. It's imperative that you figure out what it is that you want to do and like when it comes to any kind of programming or development. Let's say that you are interested in Data Science. You would have to figure out what languages are used for Data Science. Python sounds like a good place to start, right? Well, you have to see how Python is structured, play around with code, work on a project. If you like it, great! Keep at it! If not, there's always plenty of other options for you out there.
2.) How are you going to learn these programming languages? This is very important to understand when it comes to learning how to program. Consider the costs of courses and the time that it will take for you to understand the language that you're programming in so that you don't need to look at resources too often. You can always take a course at a community college, purchase a course on Udemy, learn for free on YouTube, etc. I will be covering the pros and cons of all of these subjects in another blog post.
3.) Find meetups! Finding meetups can be pretty tough sometimes. However, a quick Google search can be your best tool! You can also use meetup.com or the meetup app to find a coding meetup near your area. Meetups sometimes provide some free food and drink, but please be considerate with those. The best part of meetups is meeting other developers, aspiring developers like yourself, and potentially recruiters that you can keep in contact with.
4.) CODE EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! It is preferred by a YouTuber that I follow, Dylan Isreal, big shout out to you if you read this blog, that you should code for 4 hours a day. However, we do have other obligations such as family, jobs, and other things that can happen. I try to code for at least an hour to an hour and a half a day at the moment. But once I start getting more free time, I will be coding so much more often!
5.) Have fun! That is the biggest thing that I think people fail to understand. Yes, it is important to take your self-studies or structured studies seriously, but please do remember that you will be running into bumps during your programming learning and you will make mistakes. Just take a deep breath, move away from your keyboard for a minute, reflect what you may have done wrong, then once you figure out what's going on, laugh it off and go back to coding. It isn't the end of the world if your code isn't working proper when you run a test. You can also talk to your fellow peers about your problem and see if they can help you out with it!
Well, that is all that I have for this blog today. If you want to follow, please go ahead and do so. I do intend to post more blogs for my journey as a Web Developer to come. have a wonderful day!
I am 28 years of age, living in Southern California and working two jobs. I used to go to college but I am not attending anymore at the moment for specific reasons, but I am highly interested in going back. I have some knowledge of HTML/CSS and learning JavaScript right now with interests of working the front end.
Well, now that I have told you about myself, fellow reader, let's get down to business and talk about what it takes to become a Web Developer, whether it be front end, back end, or full stack! I'm pretty sure that you have read or watched videos on what I am about to tell you HUNDREDS of times, but it is rather important that you take the time to make these efforts always. I am going to be breaking down these down with what the top 5 important items that I believe that you should work on when it comes to becoming a Web Developer. So without further ado, let's break this list down:
1.) Figure out what you want to do when it comes to Web Development or any other sort of programming. It's imperative that you figure out what it is that you want to do and like when it comes to any kind of programming or development. Let's say that you are interested in Data Science. You would have to figure out what languages are used for Data Science. Python sounds like a good place to start, right? Well, you have to see how Python is structured, play around with code, work on a project. If you like it, great! Keep at it! If not, there's always plenty of other options for you out there.
2.) How are you going to learn these programming languages? This is very important to understand when it comes to learning how to program. Consider the costs of courses and the time that it will take for you to understand the language that you're programming in so that you don't need to look at resources too often. You can always take a course at a community college, purchase a course on Udemy, learn for free on YouTube, etc. I will be covering the pros and cons of all of these subjects in another blog post.
3.) Find meetups! Finding meetups can be pretty tough sometimes. However, a quick Google search can be your best tool! You can also use meetup.com or the meetup app to find a coding meetup near your area. Meetups sometimes provide some free food and drink, but please be considerate with those. The best part of meetups is meeting other developers, aspiring developers like yourself, and potentially recruiters that you can keep in contact with.
4.) CODE EVERY SINGLE DAY!!! It is preferred by a YouTuber that I follow, Dylan Isreal, big shout out to you if you read this blog, that you should code for 4 hours a day. However, we do have other obligations such as family, jobs, and other things that can happen. I try to code for at least an hour to an hour and a half a day at the moment. But once I start getting more free time, I will be coding so much more often!
5.) Have fun! That is the biggest thing that I think people fail to understand. Yes, it is important to take your self-studies or structured studies seriously, but please do remember that you will be running into bumps during your programming learning and you will make mistakes. Just take a deep breath, move away from your keyboard for a minute, reflect what you may have done wrong, then once you figure out what's going on, laugh it off and go back to coding. It isn't the end of the world if your code isn't working proper when you run a test. You can also talk to your fellow peers about your problem and see if they can help you out with it!
Well, that is all that I have for this blog today. If you want to follow, please go ahead and do so. I do intend to post more blogs for my journey as a Web Developer to come. have a wonderful day!
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