1) She didn't learn anything she couldn't have learned on code academy or learn python the hard way.
2) She didn't like the social environment. Quote: "I thought it would be frat boys calling me sexy mexy, not passive aggressive hipsters basking in the glow of steve jobs style superiority. At least some brogrammers are hot."
2b) GA is all about group projects and public demos. She wanted to do coding because she'd rather sit with her computer alone than deal with hipsters.
3) She said many interviewers looked down on the GA name after experience with underskilled GA leavers.
4) She got a coding job and the pay hike has probably paid for the cost of GA by now.
tl;dr; If you can just learn the new skills and post code to github, you probably just saved $12k over what GA offers.
I benefited greatly from the structured curriculum, but it didn't go much deeper than Hartl's Rails tutorial. Once you've got the basics, you're really only limited by your imagination and your desire to make interesting things that have a range of practical applications that might get you job ready.
I'm still quite lost in any conversation with advanced programmers, but I'm doing alright helping my sister learn to code at the moment. I've got a lot to learn, and I'm doing that on my own now. The program was a decent jumpstart.
Midway through the course I adjusted my expectations for where I'd be by the end, so I'm not really disappointed with how it turned out. Now, I'm basically a marketer with much stronger than average coding chops for someone in marketing.
This is especially true for complete beginners. If I sat down in front of a piano and practiced an hour every day for six months, I would probably not do very well, since I wouldn't know where to start, I wouldn't know good technique, and I'd probably learn a lot of bad habits. If I took just a few weeks of lessons and then practiced an hour a day for six months, I'd make a lot more progress since I'd have a better idea of how to learn piano.
I've been writing code and researching CS in various capacities since I was about 14 (I'll be 26 in a few weeks). I contribute to FOSS as much as I can, I occasionally push out personal FOSS projects, and occasionally make screencasts / blog posts highlighting things I find interesting or have learned.
I get by at the moment doing freelance web dev for agencies in town, but its a dead market, and a lot of places have either gotten very complacent or segregated as far as design and development (we have lots of agencies that can make "pretty" things and lots of agencies that can make very "good" things, but no agencies that have a strong design _and_ development presence).
I don't feel like I have an opportunity to advance myself beyond where I'm at. There aren't any start-ups, developers don't talk to each other, and we're being taken over by three-letter-agencies (We're now home to US Cyber Command).
At the very least, from my perspective, I make serious improvements / contributions to local companies as a contractor, but get very little recognition / respect from the developers in those companies.
Its my goal at GA WDI, to gain better connections with individuals / companies that I want to work with and do interesting things with, and to get better understanding of where I'm actionable (right now I work in a lot of various environments doing a lot of different things; the only time I really get to discover where my interests and my strengths converge is in the evenings and on the weekends).
I learned from community college that you typically get out what you put in (at least in my limited experience)-- I'd like to think that if I'm able to put in what I already know and take advantage of an opportunity to learn more and be "in the right place", I'll be able to get a better and more stable job.
I hope that makes sense; its been a long day.
The places I'm interested in working at probably wouldn't care much about me not having a degree in CS, but I would like the benefit of having someone outside of myself and my work stand behind my resume. I'd like to think GA will give me that benefit of the doubt when I go to apply for jobs I really want.
I could be mistaken, however.
Work remotely for someone, work for some clients. I honestly can't think of a reason to attend GA. It's like the anti hustler attitude. Everything prettily packaged in a nice little box to be "an epic programmer!"
I do work with clients, every day, often times remotely (my office is at a co-op, almost never on premises).
> I honestly can't think of a reason to attend GA. It's like the anti hustler attitude.
I can see where you're coming from with that statement.
> Everything prettily packaged in a nice little box to be "an epic programmer!"
That might represent some people's attitudes on going into and coming out of something like GA; it doesn't represent mine. I tried to convey that in my original reply, but I might not have done as good a job as I had hoped.
>but I would like the benefit of having someone outside of myself and my work stand behind my resume
Well it looks like you already solved that then.
My students came from many different backgrounds, and some seemed to get a lot more out of it than others. Some took tremendous advantage of office hours and 1:1 mentoring. Others barely tried. To some, it seemed to come completely naturally, others struggled even with all they help they could get. For something like front-end, there are so many ways to do it wrong, and so much bad (and outdated) information out there, that it really pays to have the mentoring, even for th students to whom it comes naturally.
You will get more help getting a job as a grad of these courses than I certainly did on my 4 year degree.
Compare that with their fees