2 coding schools, learning to code

[imabanana]

Frankly, I would learn a bit before trying any schools. You also should narrow your scope a bit. Apps, I would start with Android as it is a more approachable development system then iOS or Windows Mobile. Games, I would put that on hold for awhile... websites, not sure what you mean by that, but lets assume HTML5 & JavaScript.

Windows Mobile ? Deprecated since 2010, nice choice.

And I'd argue Windows Phone is much more accessible than Android dev as a beginner. I've taught WP development and had quite a few times students telling me it was "crazy how much they could do after just a few hours compared to their Android/iOS lessons". C#/.Net is really easy to get, and Visual Studio helps a lot compared to Eclipse.


Never heard about these schools though. After a quick look they seem way too much "language oriented". Learning a lot of languages/tools/frameworks isn't what makes you a good programmer, it's the understanding of the general concepts behind all these, and I see absolutely nothing about these on their websites.

And reading things like this makes me a bit worried :

We're four teachers, two outreach coordinators (who help our graduates find jobs and help enroll new students), and our president. Except for our president, all of our staff are Epicodus graduates themselves.

The school started in 2013, and all their staff have graduated from it? This means that everyone who was teaching the first class except the president already left and were replaced by people just out of school and with probably no experience?

Also, that cost for such a tiny team school short lessons. Oo

[Independent voter]

http://www.codingdojo.com/

It's not the only one, but they train you in 'full stack' javascript and ruby. Get you a job where you code for 80 hours a week and when you burn out they replace you with another 18 year old.

[Kuntantee]

I too recommend avoiding these kind of programming courses. If you have time and money, get a CS or Software Engineering degree.

[Themius]

I myself am earning to. It's been an interest of mine for a while especially web development. I have enough savings to live off for a while so I quit my job which I felt trapped at quite recently (past few weeks).

So far my learning method has been codeacademy for some familiarity, books, books, doing little things, solving things on codewars and coderbytes to get myself more acquainted with javascript.

I'm not sure what the consensus is on coding boot camps. Some say you can learn everything by yourself if you are well disciplined, some say you should get a CS degree, others say get a cs degree and do a coding bootcamp after or during the summer because you won't learn current industry needs solely from a cs degree.

From what I've found there are some good boot camps and a lot of not so good ones.

[Beat5beat]

I'd imagine a school course like those would cost a fair bit and since you've no previous experience, you might discover you hate it. I'd try an online course first - have a look on http://www.udemy.com

Well, I shouldn't have said that I have ZERO experience. many years ago I actually programmed a game in Qbasic? (I think it was called Q basic or just regular basic maybe) And I loved it, I recently tinkered around with RPG maker and some other game making program. It was a lot to take in without any instruction, although I prefer the style of building everything from the ground like I did back with Basic.

I will definitely look into some online tutorial stuff.

[Kuntantee]

I myself am earning to. It's been an interest of mine for a while especially web development. I have enough savings to live off for a while so I quit my job which I felt trapped at quite recently (past few weeks).

So far my learning method has been codeacademy for some familiarity, books, books, doing little things, solving things on codewars and coderbytes to get myself more acquainted with javascript.

I'm not sure what the consensus is on coding boot camps. Some say you can learn everything by yourself if you are well disciplined, some say you should get a CS degree, others say get a cs degree and do a coding bootcamp after or during the summer because you won't learn current industry needs solely from a cs degree.

From what I've found there are some good boot camps and a lot of not so good ones.

You definitely do not need a degree to be a programmer and frankly, in most universities, there is no academician to teach you good programming. I advised CS because it will make getting a job easier, enlarge his/her perspective, surely will boost problem solving skills and who knows maybe there is some other part of CS which would interest OP more.

[Independent voter]

Well if it's gaming you're interested in, there's Unity. It's a gaming platform that can use either javascript or C# for scripting. An there is Unreal game engine, at least I think it's Unreal, it uses C++ or you can use their proprietary language. Unity is free and Unreal is cheap at the moment, free for educational programs. It's just amazing the software you can get for very little money now.

If game design is what you're interested in, I would just get an engine, one of the free ones and jump right in and learn coding that way. Do something very simple at first like a dice game so you won't get frustrated trying to recreate WoW from scratch.