Catalyst: a new front-end developer training program

Can you share the empirical evidence that it works? There is a lot of talk about these programs but not many resources on the outcomes that I know of.

I completely agree that with the right candidate this could be great -- however, that can be applied to almost any area of knowledge.

I've been fed up lately with all the wrong people learning to program for the sake of learning to program. While I do agree with the fact that it's a very important skill, I also think that physics, mathematics, and so many other ones are too. If I came across a program like this for "serious mathematics" or "astrophysics" that was promising job placement after 12 weeks, I'd call the same.

You should learn something if you genuinely want to learn it, not because you think you'll make money, or if it's really means to an end. I feel that these "learn to program in a matter of weeks" type programs just encourage this behavior in too many people (and also attract them).

12 weeks is hardly enough for foundational programming knowledge -- and cramming more hours into a day may have more negative effects than positive. Above everything else, everyone learns differently and turning education into a sub-par web programmer farm will certainly impede on others' quality of learning.

If this instead went the route of hiring a one-on-one tutor (with an indefinite period of service) I think I'd have higher hopes. I have no doubts that you'll have some bright guys come through your program, but I can guarantee there's going to be a whole lot more of 'em with the wrong mentality -- which will be to their detriment, and possibly yours.

As for your friend JP, no, I do not think this will make his future worse.

Hey Shawn. I've been looking into Dev Bootcamp so to hear about Catalyst is exciting for me. I'm surprised there are several other programs of this type though. Which ones are they?

Whoops, that's an error (now fixed). Our hours are 10-9, six days a week.

Me too, but I'd rather go through a program on the LAMP stack instead.

You disagree with the suggestion to clean up the code? Because teaching how to code and writing code are two different things, I agree.

It is great you saved time by using a theme and hacking it a bit for your purpose. Perhaps now there is some time to make your site accessible, credible and adherent to standards, like you teach your students?

You know best where to invest your time. This shouldn't take too long though.

  <meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />

Is that supposed to be there? You are already indexed, but lack a snippet, due to this. Google substituted your page title in the results with your first <h1> ("Learn to code. Get a job.")

I would guess that the major alternative for most of the applicants for this program would be studying on their own. You can take as long as you'd like to learn. Doing that, you can spend as much time as you'd like with friends/family, doing community work or anything else you choose. If you're motivated (and possibly unemployed), doing whatever it takes over a 3 month period to learn how to do front-end development might make sense. But like any other decision, there are tradeoffs. This "all-in" boot-camp style takes a lot of dedication. I don't think there's much risk of it becoming the primary way people learn to code, and even if it does, one can still learn on their own as easily as they could before.

OK, that sounds like a fantastic use of Coffeescript, as it is probably rather dry with standard, "lower level" curriculum of the same subjects. Speaking of which, is there somewhere to find "the curriculum?" I obviously made a mistake in assuming this might be another case of pushing Coffeescript for all the wrong reasons.

Kudos, nonetheless, as this would be a superb addition to what is really lacking in our education with younger crowds. What is the expected out-reach to those just out of High School or in pre College-Degree status?

Hey Shawn,

Jesse, here. For those just tuning in, Shawn & I know each other and I help run Dev Bootcamp. Tony Phillips, one of Shawn's co-founders, was a teacher-in-training at Dev Bootcamp for 5 months and before that a student in our first, 8-week cohort.

A few corrections:

1. Our current cohort has 54 students. Starting January 28th, we'll have 48 students in the space at a given time. Although it's been challenging, we've so far been able to increase group cohesion as we increase class size.

Below a certain size it's very easy for students to feel isolated if they can't find at least one other student to identify with.

2. Although our core hours are 9AM-6PM Monday-Friday, most students are here 12+ hours per day, 6-7 days per week. 75% of the class was here last weekend, for example. We keep a tight container on core hours and give students flexibility on off hours.

The average student is working for about ~750 hours over the course of Dev Bootcamp.

Also, about 50% of each cohort comes from out-of-state, and about 20% have families and children. Trust me, they're "tak[ing] time off [their] normal life."

3. We've worked with around ~100 companies over the course of our hiring days and none of them are asking for a longer training period. If an employer is skeptical, there's little difference between 9, 10, or 12 weeks.

Twitter hired one of our summer students as an intern, for example, and their initial skepticism was more along the lines of, "How could 10 weeks compare to a 4-year University CS education?" That's a rough paraphrase from a conversation I had with a head of their head of college recruiting in April.

On the flip side, virtually all employers return for future hiring days and about half send employees to become mentors for students in the following DBC class. I'll grant you that we might be talking to different employers.

We are still figuring out the details of our pricing scheme, but one thing we are committed to is not letting finance problems stop us from accepting a good applicant. If you are at all worried about the price, I would suggest applying and we will try our best to find a way to make it possible to attend.

It seems to diverge from my goal, which is to really learn JavaScript (learning HTML5 and CSS are bonuses). Seems to focus on Ruby on Rails and hardcore web development.

I have zero coding skills.

Edited to add: Just read up at the site. I would need a Pre-Hacker School (Hacker Pre-School? Heh.). Otherwise the program sounds good and I'm glad to see something like that here in the NYC area.