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I am a Software Bootcamp Instructor, Ask Me Anything!

Steve Brownlee on September 29, 2019

I have been a coach for over 4.5 years now. I've been personally responsible for 17 different cohorts of students, run innumerable experiments, and...
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Benji

I've had some friends who have done bootcamps that leave with a "portfolio" of projects. Rarely do these projects look like production-grade code to me.

In your experience, how long does it take someone to go from no knowledge, to a more mid-level engineer that can actually produce quality work without having their hand held?

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Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard

Hello! I want to do a short "discover programming" workshop with my non-programmers friend. The reason I'm interested in this challenge is that I want to try to explain my job, that looks really foreign and mysterious to them, in simple words.
I plan to show them how to build a website with GitHub, a static website generator, explain them markdown, ...
Any tips and resources for beginners you could recommend?

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Steve Brownlee

I think that the intros on Free Code Camp and Codecademy are decent introductions to seeing the kind of logical problems that developers deal with and then convert into code.

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Jess Lee

What's your advice for incoming students?

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Steve Brownlee
  1. Don't have any major life distractions. Selling a house, getting married, getting divorced, having a baby, etc.
  2. Be prepared to have an honest conversation with your ego and work hard to adopt a growth mindset which will allow you to accept failures as a positive thing that solidify learning.
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Steve Brownlee

Zero

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Vico

What are the requirements to make a bootcamp or certification?

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Steve Brownlee

Sorry, Vico, but I can't answer that. I did not create the bootcamp. You would have to check with your local education regulators.

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bobbilee

I was a bootcamp mentor for 5+ years as well. Air five!