Feel way behind and lost in Codesmith prep courses

Based on their info sessions, they want you to take the prep courses to see what Codesmith is like and if it's a good fit for you. Knowing you aren't a good fit at the CSPrep level, helps keep their bar for immersive high and their outcomes high. I agree with your reflection that you might have been better off starting another program sooner. It's great that Codesmith is hard to get into and waitlisted, but it means that you spend months preparing, 2 months waiting for your start date once you get in, and then months job hunting at the end. A lot of people would be better off starting sooner at another program, getting a foot in the door job doing anything programming related, and then working towards leveling up to a better job. (Disclosure: co-founder of Formation.dev and we help a lot of bootcamp grads make that second jump, so I'm bias in this opinion). The biggest problem with this advice is "another program". A lot of programs have very low job placement rates, and they take on too many people that aren't ready yet and are setup for failure (which is why you hear about bootcamp grads going to Codesmith as their "second bootcamp"). But if you can find a good program with strong partnerships to lower paying but decent foot-in-the-door jobs, I think that's something to consider alongside the wait-and-study approach.