Should I go to College, Coding Bootcamp, or Take Online Courses?

You’re probably here because you’ve heard that learning to write computer code is a great way to create solutions to problems that the world has. These skills are valuable and marketable to employers in virtually every industry. Market data consistently ranks software engineering as one of the highest paying and most satisfying career paths, so you may want to pick up coding skills for a few different reasons:

1. Getting on a career path that comfortably provides for you and your family
2. The flexibility that a lot of software engineering jobs have to work remotely all or part of the time.
3. You may want to bolster your existing subject matter expertise with coding skills helping you add more value at your current job, and even get you promoted!

Whatever the reason, it can be tough to know how to get started. The journey to becoming a seasoned coder is full of triumphs and perils and the on-ramp will look different depending on your unique circumstances, which is why I want to break down 3 ways you can get started. The 3 options we’ll look at are:

1. Going to college
2. Attending a coding bootcamp, and
3. learning online

I also want to give you a free gift which is 6 of my favorite best practices and tips for writing stellar, clean code. If you consider yourself a beginner or intermediate coder, this will be useful to you no matter which of these 3 options you’re considering. Go get the free guide here!

College/University

Alright, let’s jump in and take a look at the first method.

And that’s getting a formal education from an accredited institution like a University or community college. For the scope of this video, we’ll consider costs in the United States. Prices may be different if you’re in a different country of origin.

2 major decisions here are whether to go for an associate’s or bachelor’s degree.

Keep in mind that for both degrees, there are factors that can affect cost of education across a pretty dynamic range. These factors include:

• Whether or not the institution is public or private
• prestige of the institution, and
• in-state vs out-of-state tuition rates

For a bachelor’s degree, you can expect to invest:

• 4-5 years of your life and
• Anywhere from $40K - $160K at a university

In a bachelor’s program, 3 solid majors to choose from are:

• Computer Science (CS)
• Applied Computing Technology (ACT)
• Computer Information Systems (CIS)

I don’t have time to fully break these down in this post, but let me know  if you'd like a more detailed walk through of these majors. For now, consider that CS and ACT degrees will cover more technical theory and CIS will cover more business topics

With a bachelor’s, you can expect to receive:

• The best education money can buy with a solid foundation in theory to sustain you, as you continue to pick up new skills throughout your career.
• Direct access to academic experts like professors and teachers’ assistants
• Networking opportunities with fellow students and campus organizations
• Internships and job opportunities with little or no trouble

The downsides of a bachelor’s degree are:

• It’s expensive. Tuition rates are rising rapidly every year with no signs of slowing down.
• This can be a lot of time and money spent if you’re not certain on a career in software development
• Also, Nearly 25% to 50% of your time will be spent on classes outside of your major

Now let’s look at what an associate’s degree has to offer:

For an associate’s degree in software engineering, you can expect to invest

• 2 years of your life and
• Anywhere from $10K - $40K at a community college

You can expect to receive:

• A focused education on your main course of study with little or no requirements for ancillary general education credits.
• Experience with software development frameworks that are popular in the industry
• Ability to get a software engineering internship out of school with little or no trouble
• Very good value per dollar spent since these degrees are typically offered at community colleges which are usually more affordable than universities.

The downsides of an associate’s degree include:

• Although not to the same degree as a bachelor’s (pun intended), It’s still a sizeable investment to make in terms of time and money.
• The lack of computer science theory makes it harder to compete against candidates with bachelor’s degrees when you don’t have prior job experience to lean on

Coding Bootcamp

Now, let’s talk about coding boot camps.

Coding bootcamps are short, but very intense programs designed to flood you with a very specific set of marketable skills (usually web development, cyber security, or data science) to get you an entry level job as quickly as possible.

You can expect to invest:

• 12-20 weeks of your life
• 50-60 hours a week
• $10K-$20K

You can expect to receive:

• A quick education with a curriculum hyper focused on core skills necessary for an entry level coding job.
• Interaction with teachers in-person or online, with an emphasis on building a lot in a little bit of time.
• Networking with fellow students and teachers to assist in group learning and job hunting
• Accountability for your learning and completing assignments on time with the appropriate level of quality.
• Quickest potential for the return on your investment

Here are the downsides:

• It’s a very intense pace, and 50-60 hours per week is really needed in order to absorb the massive amount of information in such a short 12-20 week time frame.
• Skills are very market focused, to the neglect of foundational theory. You’ll understand more of the “how” instead of the “why”.
• The steep learning curve experience continues after bootcamp is over, and skills may fade if they are not continually put into practice.
• Much less competitive than a 2 or 4 year degree in a related field

Online Courses

Finally, we’ll look at educating yourself using online resources. The sheer volume of free and low cost educational materials online may have you feeling empowered and possibly a bit overwhelmed. Thousands of content creators (like me) are putting up millions of hours of free information on YouTube, and selling online courses to help folks in their coding journeys. Here’s a rough shake of what the online space looks like:

Expect to invest anywhere from:

• nothing to a few hundred dollars a year of your money, and
• as much or little of your own time as you are willing and able to

You can expect to receive

• Low risk access to beginner and advanced coursework
• Self paced curriculum
• Helpful virtual instructors whose livelihood depends on lower cost, quality content.

Downsides

• Harder to curate online content for a holistic approach to gaining marketable skills
• Varied levels of access to the instructor or online community surrounding the course
• Less accountability to get through self-paced material and get results

Conclusion

To wrap up, let me give you a few of my recommendations.

1. If you’re reasonably certain you want to pursue software development or another field in science, engineering, or mathematics. Go get a degree! There are affordable options for bachelor’s and associate degrees alike, and taking out student loans in this field is a relatively safe risk.
2. If you’re looking for the quickest way to pick up skills to boost your career and can afford to take a few months to devote intense, focused time on your education, coding bootcamps are a great option.
3. If you’re testing the waters or want a low risk way to explore interest in college or bootcamp, find a couple courses online and a coding community.

At SonicScholar, I want to help you take the next right step for you on your journey. Obviously, I’m here making content in the online space which is the 3^rd point we looked at. I may or may not be the best fit for you, and that’s ok! Success will look different for each person.

Lastly, keep in mind you’re not constrained to only doing one of these. I know people that have done all three. Personally, I have bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and I keep a subscription to Pluralsight and use Udemy on occasion whenever I need a quick introduction to a new subject.

Again, I want to hook you up with a free gift which is a no-fluff guide that contains 6 sure-fire best practices to write clean code right from the start. Go to www.sonicscholar.com/6tips and I’ll send it right to your inbox so you always have it.

As we close out, let me know what your hopes and dreams are with learning to code, and also what fears and failures have you experienced so far on your coding journey? I’m here to help!

Hopefully, you are now armed with some helpful information so you can plan out your first or next move on your career path! Thanks for checking this out, and I’ll see you in another post soon!