Bootcamps

It depends on 1. your goals, 2. your starting point, 3. your learning style, 4. your location Generally speaking though things aren't going great amongst the top bootcamps so this comment might need updating and might not hold true over the long term. SOME OPTIONS OF DIFFERENT STYLES ACROSS THE THREE AREAS YOU MENTIONED: 1. Rithm: small classes, reasonable but tough number of hours per day, high on the teaching side 2. Launch School: starts with a self paced mastery program called core and then ends with Capstone, which is a normal "bootcamp" style program focused on building open source projects. They have very strong outcomes because you do Core first and they only let in people they are confident it will work for. The projects you build are the most robust I've seen and probably wins on the portfolio side. 3. Codesmith: I completely stopped recommending two weeks ago so I wouldn't consider them anymore for two reasons. First, I strongly disagree with the direction they've been going in in 2024 and can't support them based on their CEO's inability to accept feedback, choosing to expel from the community and shut down commentary for being 'not positive and earnest' without even trying to reach out to talk about that commentary. Second, In terms of your criteria, they aren't anything special on teaching, but they are the top machine for job placements. However that machine isn't working as well because of the market. From the information I've seen, just like Launch School, placements are way down from the peak and more people are taking non-SWE tangential jobs and lower paying roles than in the past. So Codesmith wins on placements. So since the market is crushing placements, if you want to do a bootcamp to learn, or to have a portfolio, then look at 1 and 2. If you want to do a bootcamp to get a job, then I would consider a wide range of options that are on the 1-2 year horizon, including bootcamps, but also master's degree, post-bacc, self teaching, open source.

I think self paced part time like Launch School Core is a good idea. Part time structured like HR and Codesmith are crazy intense. I can't imagine going to Codesmith 4 hours a day M to T and Saturdays for 9 months straight. It kind of just stretches things out a bit but doesn't solve the fundamental problem of being ready when you are ready and the market is ready and going up and down with the life I'm maybe biased by the mastery based approach so take it with a grain of salt but I think it's a strong argument for this approach right now. When you have self paced arbitrary programs you can't really have outcomes reporting to compare between programs.

You get more support and the course is mastery based instead of one way. But depends on how you learn, may be worth it or not. It's also mostly text based and very different from a video based course.