Top 5 DEV Comments from the Past Week

#bestofdev

This is a weekly roundup of awesome DEV comments that you may have missed. You are welcome and encouraged to boost posts and comments yourself using the #bestofdev tag.

@rachelagnihotri's response to the What irritates you the most as a developer? 👩‍💻👨‍💻 all devs shipping a new feature can relate to. And I'd love to see the cartoon from the QA team's perspective.

Rachel • Aug 11 '20

This sums it up accurately for most developers I guess:

@coffeecraftcode got a new job!!

Christina Gorton • Aug 7 '20

I've been on the job hunt for a few months. This week I accepted an offer for a full time role on a team I am really excited about😉 🎉

@tterb shared an awesome visualization that helped them understand a coding concept better.

Brett Stevenson • Aug 7 '20 • Edited

I shared this one awhile ago on a different post because it helped me when I was learning how to use map, reduce and filter.

Please welcome @freddilynne to DEV and to software development 😊

Lynne • Aug 7 '20

My greatest win of the week is starting my journey into this dev world! It is the most excited I've been about a career-changing decision. It is the first time ever that I've written a blog and the first time putting myself out there . . . and it feels good! Thanks so much to the Dev team for allowing me to use your platform to share my progress!

Many folks regularly sing the praises of coding bootcamps, and rightly so. But this thread is dedicated to exploring how they can improve. A handful of folks weighed in on how coding camps are failing their students in this thread. @rizz0s has some great concrete advice and a balanced perspective.

Summer Rizzo • Aug 12 '20 • Edited

Commenting as a recent bootcamp graduate (Flatiron in NYC), so take everything with a grain of salt!

Bootcamps do not optimize for a long, successful career. They optimize for starting your career. They help you to get your foot in, and once you're there, you have to figure out the rest.

I think this excerpt hits the nail on the head. Some bootcamps will do this better than others, of course. In my experience, there's a lot of supplemental work you have to do - but in return, the program was <20 weeks, which is much less time than a four year degree or even an associate's. Landing your dream job and working towards the outcome of a successful career is a viable result from a bootcamp; there are enough success stories. Coming out unprepared for an entry-level software engineer job is also a viable result, and there are enough failures to support that as well.

I think a lot of bootcamps should be more up-front about this. On one hand, you could argue that it's on the responsibility of the attendee to do their research, get advice, and be realistic about the amount of learning and preparation they truly need to do to land a job. However, bootcamps certainly market themselves as being all you need by touting their best success stories and not being transparent about their service they are truly offering. Even in the best cases, employment report outcomes are windowed in their favor, often omitting those who fail to gain employment because of fine lines that comply with the requirements that define a "qualifying student." I'm also under the impression that having little to no foundation in programming (e.g. "Writing my first line of code at bootcamp") is a bit of an unfair sell - it's a lot harder for students to grasp abstract concepts quickly, like the bootcamp demands, when they're still learning the basics.

So, I think there are valid criticisms from several angles, but I surely wouldn't discount all bootcamps as scams or failures. They do offer some worthy skills and credentials, which can be very valuable if you have none. But they don't offer everything you'll need to land a job; even a junior position. I think that's near impossible to do for a most engineering/-adjacent careers in only 15 or so weeks.

See you next week for more great comments ✌