What do you guys opinions of Bootcamps?

Bootcamps are too expensive. We now have online courses that are much cheaper, and with the right motivation, determination and persistence you can do better than even students with a cs degree.

I wholeheartedly disagree that doing a bootcamp is as good as holding a degree in Computer Science, in regards to actually becoming a solid software developer. I'm just so tired of seeing crappy code being pushed around, and god knows CS graduates will make horrible mistakes, imagine those who haven't actually already spent 4+ years doing it. I have a feeling most bootcamps will create script kids more often than not: totally clueless about any fundamentals, with crazy narrow "skill sets" and just spewing horrible code everywhere.

I went to Code Fellows in Seattle and it was a great experience. I can agree that finding the first job is difficult. I am going through that process right now. You are going up against applicants with computer science degrees so networking is basically the only way to stand out in the crowd. If I had to do it all over again I would have gone to my local community college that offers an IT focused bachelors degree that is basically their version of a coding boot camp, but you will at least have the bachelors degree to show for it instead of a certificate. Check your area for similar programs.

I'm currently doing a second degree in computer engineering and bounced often between the ideas of finishing the degree or going to a bootcamp. I decided not to take the shorter route because I find it difficult to believe that you can get set up to be a competent software engineer without taking the time to understand the fundamentals of CS. Despite all of my hard work I feel that years of studying have not been enough to qualify me for the workforce, so I doubt that 3 months is sufficient. You'll need to put in a lot of self-study time to catch up to a CS/CPEN grad.

Completely agree, infact its not even necessary to get a degree for development. I myself was an electromics engineer shifted to web development after some courses on lynda.com and tbh its been amazing. Been working as a full stack developer in a startup and the learning here has been great. In a year i have familiarised myself with javascript, react, nodejs. Opt for a college degree only if you plan on studing further for masters etc otherwise you can just do development for a few years and possibly start your own startup after some experience.

It's very interesting topic. Here, in Poland where I live, bootcamp aren't popular at all and probably won't be any time soon. There is one huge reason for that: university education is free in here (there are some private, paid ones as well but in most cases they are worse than public ones). Coding bootcamps on the other hand cost quite a lot. I've found some random one really quick. It costs about as much as I earn in 4 months as a junior java dev and it is 360h long. Of course it allows you to gain necessary knowledge but I'm not sure if having no degree won't block some career paths tho.