Ask HN: If you worked with a grad from a code bootcamp, how effective were they?

Re:Ask HN: If you worked with a grad from a code bootcamp, h... by doktrin on Wednesday April 16, 2014 @09:57PM (#7601630)

It's driven by the amount of material that students need to ingest over a 3 month period. As sciguy noted, this is totally normal in academic settings as well. For instance, OS (15-410) at CMU requires 70+ hours a week. That's a single class.

These are of course completely different animals, but the scale of learning is similar. Getting a solid intuition for not only web applications but programming fundamentals when starting with neither requires serious effort and is a challenge of breadth. 3 months worth of 40 hour weeks will probably not cut it.

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Re:Ask HN: If you worked with a grad from a code bootcamp, h... by greenyoda on Thursday April 17, 2014 @05:48PM (#7606648)

Just because CMU does it too doesn't mean that it's reasonable. Students who are stressed out and sleep-deprived aren't going to be learning effectively - there's lots of research that indicates that sleep is necessary for forming long-term memories.[1] Better to split the course into two semesters.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sleep_and_Memory

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Re:Ask HN: If you worked with a grad from a code bootcamp, h... by doktrin on Thursday April 17, 2014 @07:55PM (#7607265)

You've touched on an important point. Namely, that bootcamps actually can't very feasibly split or extend their curriculum. It's not a coincidence that most of these schools offer 10-12 week sessions. Moving past that and the logistics of relocation, tuition, expenses & health care become much more difficult to manage.

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