Coding schools are gaining popularity because there's demand, obviously. Many people see them as a way out of their stagnant earnings and soul-crushingly boring middle-class jobs.

I'm curious how sustainable these schools are in the long term. It seems like there is a limit to how many entry-level devs in a given language and framework you can pump into the local market before it becomes saturated. I suppose you can cycle through technology stacks and hope the market has soaked up enough devs before the next class comes around, but it seems like there is a limit to how big the schools can grow. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with many of these schools getting pumped full of venture funding.

i think the elephant in the room is that you can't just graduate one of these coding schools and compete with someone who has been coding for X more years than you have.

The expected competition, I believe, is to be competing against BA/BSc Comp Psi grads with 12 weeks of learning.

With that in mind I think they hold up pretty well.

So true. I was particularly humored by Bloc's comparison chart where they failed to compare themselves against other online cram-sites but instead listed full-cost options like GA and University of Phoenix tuition! LOL!

Free/cheap online options often won't take you past basic syntax or building a simple, static web page, while programs likes Bloc have students work on complex web apps under a senior engineer (simulating on the job experience). The outcomes are more comparable to those of on-site bootcamps, as opposed to Udemy, Codecademy, etc.

It's like the housing boom all over again.