As an entirely self-taught programmer, I say skip these programs entirely. When I got my first real programming gig, my company sent me to a quick, 7-or-8 session long bootcamp for rails, although I'd already taught myself all the rails conventions. The program was a huge waste of time for me, and a waste of money for my employer.

I had already gotten 500% more out of just reading guides.rubyonrails.org than I did in the entire program. If I had been required to pay for the instruction, I'd have come out feeling distinctly ripped off, especially if I had been a web designer who'd never used command-line build tools before.

This might vary with the program. The particular format of the one I attended just wasn't well-suited to getting people up and running quickly, or addressing the varied needs of students at different levels. That being said, learning _how to learn to program_ is much more important. Learning that failure is the first step to success and a prerequisite to actually synthesizing knowledge. If they could teach that in these courses, they'd be priceless.

Hope that helps, kind of rambling but, that's my experience :)

It depends on your definition of 'best'.

Do you want to leave with a solid understanding of how a programming language works, how memory functions, many of the fundamental algorithms and data structures in CS, and more of that kind? Or do you want to leave with a couple of different, solid Rails/Python/JavaScript/mobile apps under your belt, and go straight into app development? Different courses focus on different things.

Many of the online courses skip the former and jump straight into 'rails generate' -- but not all of them, especially if you supplement with Coursera courses which are often far more academic in nature. The in-person bootcamps vary a lot, and I had a fairly low opinion of them as a breed until I started mentoring Hackbright students and realising that they do learn the fundamentals -- but I know there are others that don't teach that stuff at all.

Disclaimer: I'm a part-time instructor at Hackbright Academy and a former Thinkful mentor. In structuring the part-time class I have had to think a lot about how to help convey the elements of CS in a very limited time-frame. It's tough. I honestly welcome feedback and discussion from others who have tried to do it.