I just quit my job to attend a coding bootcamp that starts at the end of this month. It's a full-stack web development course using C# and .NET. I loosely have work lined up for when I'm done... one of my college buds works for a consulting company in Los Angeles and he told me they are looking for an entry level .NET developer. So we'll see what happens! I'll post updates here from time to time.

The background is: I have been in love with programming since my TI-86 in 10th grade. Started CS in college, but drinking beer in the woods was more fun, switched to geology, eventually got BS and Masters in geology, been working for an oil company for four years, I don't enjoy the job that much and oil industry is in the crapper right now, no house note and no kids so I can afford to quit and attempt a career change, I still love programming and have kept it as a hobby, so I'm going for it. I chose a C# and .NET course because C++ is what I know best at this point, and C#/.NET developers appear to be in the highest demand right now, so that's a natural fit.

Any questions, please reply or inbox...The bootcamp thing is very new and a little frightening (rapid pace, several thousand dollars in cost, trying to find a job afterward) but a good friend of mine went through one in Portland and has gotten work, and I have heard several secondhand accounts of success stories, so I decided I should go for it myself.

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hope this works out for you

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www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

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keep the post updated if you could. i'm curious.

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First off great post! Good luck and keep me updated.

My situation is hellish over here in Sweden because I'm simply not made for here whilst hopping off the plane back home equals opportunities left and right but I have offspring so I can't move back. My background has been in startups pretty much my entire adult life and I've done sales, business to business sponsorship, project leading and new business to say the least. After the financial collapse my path got hellish because all of the startup money dried up and I went from getting courted to seeing how "just us" this country can get. Long story short I've made people money but they tend to be protectionist about their jobs so no matter what I've accomplished I'm over here starving.

I've been trying to figure out a way to get out of this hell and sending out my resume everywhere and last week a friend of mine said "if you could code I could jobs for you all the time" which kept bouncing around in my head. I have zero experience programing and switched my major in college before I sat through a second class but '93 computers sucked. Anyway I've always wanted to go back to school but with two children the concept of living off of student loans makes no sense in the worst housing market in the world. So I called the same friend who mentioned coding to me and asked him how long would it take until i could get freelance work and he after 6 months I could get some grunt work but after a year I could get better stuff and frequently plus I know the startup world here. I called around to ask a few programing friends of mine and found out I have like a genius friend (who knew) who talked me through what high level languages she suggested I start out with. Since school is free here my I honestly don't care where I start as long as I get financial aid so I'm calling around Monday. My friends have offered to look through my code and help me improve so I think this is the route I need to go.

To top it off with my background in the tech world and the fact that I've done my own startups but always had to depend on programmers and graphic designers to implement my ideas but this would free me. Also my project leading background would benefit me beyond just coding so we'll see..

Thus far I've been told to check on Python, Ruby on Rails, C++ and Java. Like I said before I have no experience with this but at 40 the challenge in itself plus the eventual freedom is more than enough to fuel me. Any pointers or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

I don't have a lot to add, but from what little education I have in IT, I can tell you that peer-based learning is as effective as classroom learning.

It's good that you have knowledgeable friends who can advise approaches to constructing your code as well as optimizing that code to work as efficiently as possible.

I haven't been able to earn a degree, but what skills I managed to pick up were learned just by coding with friends of mine in school.

Definitely keep us posted.

Yeah I'm looking forward to their input and to help me step over time sinks. I'm looking forward to learning something that's totally outside of my natural comfort zone and making it through that first barrier until it starts to make sense.

I feel like if you're already in the industry, then self-guided learning (aka free or low-cost) with online tutorials, and peer learning as stated above, could be the way to go. But someone who's actually in the industry might have better insight.
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I wasn't starving.

Shit's rough over here and getting locked out of contracts is something Americans regularly experience because they fear we'll take over or something. Think they watched Wall Street too many times.

Education is free so I could stabilize out with money for studying while learning it.

Yeah, that sounds reasonable. If your current work isn't steady, then you may as well go for it.
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Hopefully, it won't get in the way of watching football in the fall.

Joking of course.

Good luck.

And the only thing that might prevent my normal football viewership is the darn time zone change...I'm going from west coast to east coast, so I'll have to get used to staying up until 1 to watch my west coast teams... well it won't suck for me, but my gal may not like me spending my Saturday night watching Fresno take a beating. Haha. She's in grad school an azure demon basketball school that will remain nameless, so I'm heading out there for the bootcamp. So it's an adventure all around.
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I can learn two of these but face difficulty deciding which two to learn. OKProgrammers which of these should I learn? Technically, everything is open as far as teching myself new languages so if you feel something else is better then I could learn that.

in my research Ruby on Rails keeps coming up over and over again.

Has it been easier or more difficult than you thought it would be learning the new information?

>Has it been easier or more difficult than you thought it
>would be learning the new information?

This is only week 1. Our project this week was to create and publish our personal web page to display the projects we'll be developing through the rest of the course. I was basically done yesterday, and we were expected to take all week plus time spent at home. I'm glad I got the bulk done early because my CSS needed a lot of work, but it's done now.

It's been about the difficulty level I expected so far. I have a pretty good knack for programming, so I expected I'd pick things up quickly. No doubt it will get tougher when we get into more complex tech like apps with C# and SQL language. I'll keep this updated as we go along.
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http://www.amazon.com/Code-Complete-Practical-Handbook-Construction/dp/0735619670

It helped me tremendously in becoming a better programmer. There's a big difference in writing hacky code that barely works, versus code that's well written, easily readable, maintainable and extensible.

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We are building an MVC project now. We basically are learning backwards because they are handing us code with explanations and letting us figure out how it works rather than have us build from the ground up. So it's a cycle of receive code, get confused, work through figuring out how it works, fix errors, feel satisfied for the moment.

I would rather learn from the ground up, but that would take way longer. This method will certainly get the student functional enough for employment more quickly. It makes me want to go back and build my own projects from the ground up. But we have three more MVC projects to build by the end of the 12 weeks, so I will get the reps I know I need.
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Pretty much daily, coding syntax becomes less and less of the thought process, and I can focus on program logic. Feels great.
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enjoying the updates

C# is clicking more for me now. I have the hang of calling object members in cascading fashion, and querying lists with LINQ statements. To the point where I am thinking in those terms, so whatever I am thinking, I can code. We made a system for submitting tech help tickets for our last project. You can check it out if you like. The layout is a little raw, and I'm handcuffed on updating even simple things ("Application Name" in the upper left, for example) at the moment because I'm trying to add a better-looking bootstrap template to it, and the local copy on my machine is borked until I get that straight. http://awonderly-bugtracker.azurewebsites.net

I find the general workflow of building an app to be fairly intuitive. We are using "code first" database building, which means the database tables are built by Visual Studio using the classes we define. I have run into some database issues, but it usually stems from me defining a class wrong, or adding an extra database relationship that shouldn't be there, which creates an extraneous foreign key or etc, and so forth.

Razor is pretty sweet. That's the language that lets you use C# code inside your HTML.

Overall, I am learning a ton and I feel very functional. I am pretty confident about getting employment. Even if I don't find a job that fits me right away, I am not worried that I will eventually. And the staff here at the bootcamp is heavily committed to the job placement aspect, so by that alone, I am confident.

Lastly, I have definitely learned the ways of Github. I sync to Github at least three times a day, usually more. One guy lost his whole project the other day, and he hadn't been pushing to Github because he'd been having trouble with it, so he lost like a week of work. He bounced back, but damn, that should teach you your lesson.
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A few folks have gotten jobs. I sorta shot myself in the foot by saying that I wanted a job in a certain geographic area, and I missed out on some opportunities. I'm not super pressed to get a job, though, so I'm good to wait for the right opportunity. I also have a soft job lead with one of my college buds in Los Angeles still, so that will do me fine if that comes through (remote job...I wouldn't have to move to LA).

It's been pretty laid back here the past couple of weeks. The instructors made the final project an easier one (singe page application -- Angular and Web API) because typically the most job interviews will occur at the end, and they didn't want to have an intense project going on during that time. Apparently it happened in past sessions and they wanted to prevent that.

Also, another new class session started a couple of weeks ago, and a lot of the staff focus has been on them. Understandably so, from their standpoint, because they want the experience to be the best possible for them to minimize the dropouts. Our class had four dropouts...two older gals got too far behind, one guy got a job in his previous industry, and one guy had a family hardship.

I am super pumped about programming in general. I dream about code at night, literally. I am getting ideas all over the place, and I can see ways things can be improved. I think it would be possible to make a phone app for the boards, for example. It would basically be an app with a web browser object, and then make a browser extension that would reformat the page to be more phone-friendly.

I'm also going through C++ tutorials right now because I am interested in desktop apps and games, which is not the focus of this course at all. But I figure if I can develop a few simple things and get some code on github, I could market myself for those types of jobs as well. I learned basic C++ in college, so it's not much of a leap.

It's a really exciting time. I will update as job prospect stuff develops.

edit - I made a Twitch chat bot a couple of weeks ago for fun. I followed a tutorial on YouTube (search "Hardly Difficult Twitch bot") and then added some command functionality. I then made it into a Windows form project so it has a GUI. It keeps track of user time in chat and gives XP and level ups. http://i.imgur.com/xbcM3lj.png
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I've been frantically searching for something like this to no avail but loved your updates. Please keep them going well past this and good luck!

I'm glad you're digging the updates. If you have any specific questions, let me know. Have you been working through any tutorials or anything?
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I will shortly though

If you ever decide to follow through with your idea to make an app for the Boards and you would want someone to help with the project, send me a message.

I'd been thinking about making an app or someway to streamline the boards, but never made the time to make anything.

Yeah, I'm interested. I am pretty new so I don't know the best way to approach it, but it seems like a Chrome and/or Firefox extension might work well.
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>Yeah, I'm interested. I am pretty new so I don't know the
>best way to approach it, but it seems like a Chrome and/or
>Firefox extension might work well.
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Yeah, the extension is a good idea. That way it could work across most browsers. Microsoft Edge is supposed to support extensions as well, but I have no idea about their format.

I had an idea to write a mobile app in HTML5 and Javascript on the front end and then porting it to iOS and Android, but didn't get very far. But I'd be down to do some backend coding as well or at least help look into some of the best ways to approach the app / extension.

What was your basic idea of functionality for the extension? Or what type of user problem would it try to solve?

I think an app would be ideal, but I was thinking about a browser extension for some easy layout editing. I am not super knowledgeable on how extensions work, but from what I can tell, they can edit CSS of a page, add and remove things, and maybe even run scripts (not sure about that one). So for mobile, you could do things like change fonts to improve layout, and make buttons bigger to make them easier to click on a phone or tablet. You could also make the posts themselves more responsive, and make them fit to the zoom of the screen rather than go off-screen which I see happening sometimes when I browse it on my phone.

It would help a lot to know how the boards work. I tried sending posts to the PHP app from a webpage on my desktop, but I couldn't get it to work because the post ID is generated by the app, and my little html surrogate page wasn't generating one. If that could be figured out, then you could entirely write your own page or app to browse the boards.
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I didn't think of simply writing something that would read the HTML and display the boards in another layout. My idea was a lot more complicated. LOL

Tell you what. I have some free time this weekend, so I'll do some research about the browser extension and either post here or send you an inbox with some information about the functionality of an extension sometime next week.

What were your more complicated ideas? I'm totally down to try whatever. I have no problem getting ambitious.

The goal of the app was to optimize the experience of viewing the boards on a mobile device.

The app was going to use five different functions to allow the board visitors to view the boards.

First, a script would read the HTML of each page in a given forum. Once the HTML was read, the metadata for each post or the format the message board software uses to access each post, would be used to download the replys to each post.

That data taken from the boards would then be stored in a database which mirrored the database on OKP.

Once all of that data was stored, another script would take the text and links for each post and create a new HTML file containing the contents of each post. But this new HTML file would use more modern approaches to displaying content. The new technique would hopefully allow for pages to load faster and let mobile apps or browsers load pages with a high number of replies without crashing.

There would also be a JavaScript script that would run along with the HTML which would help load content like embedded YouTube clips and Tweets or the content from links embedded in posts.

Lastly, a script would scan the front page of every forum and then notify a user if a post they made had been given a reply. Or if the post someone was read had been updated, a user could click a button or a link and the page would update the post with the new replys. It would like a Twitter feed updates with new tweets every minute or so.

The closest the app was to completion was its ability to read the formatting data of the forums. It could read the forum titles, their descriptions, the moderators data and their names.

That script was written in Node.js, but the new hosting service for my domain doesn't allow for Node.js. My plan was to rewrite the app in Ruby on Rails, but outside of configuring my laptop, I haven't been able to make time to make any headway with the project.

The process for reading HTML and then spitting out a new stylesheet in order to make reading the boards easier is straightforward.

Both formats have language methods for reading HTML and then running that content through a stylesheet with the purpose of displaying a new layout of the boards in the browser.

The extension would likely have to be written in Javascript and then that script could spit out a CSS stylesheet which would act upon the HTML and display an 'updated' board.

If you have some spare time and are still interested, I could workout some ideas for layout and the programming structure and then post them in a Google Document of some sort for you, or anyone else, to read over.

That sounds good. I do like your ideas in your previous post, but it would require hosting and a lot of server-side stuff that could be resource and cost intensive. If I am interpreting it correctly.
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So the app would have needed hosting. I have hosting for another domain which offered a decent amount of bandwidth, but I'm starting to feel the extension idea. If the extension is used by enough people, maybe making the mobile app would be worthwhile.

I have some free time the next couple of days, so I'll workout some ideas of the structure of the extension. Once the ideas are worked out I'll post a flowchart here in a Google doc.

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I guess I should throw out that I've never developed an actual 'App' before. I studied CS in college and have made web pages before using some Javascript, HTML and some other techniques, but my understanding of development cycles and testing aren't very developed, So read the presentation with that in mind.

Anyway, here's the link:

https://1drv.ms/p/s!Avk2yLiiKRpXooVySSXmfWITjqfW9A

I like it a lot. I think the Twitter and Youtube embedding are doable with a browser extension. Those are great ideas.

Regarding pinging the boards, can you have a browser extension run persistently like that? That would be pretty powerful. You could use Ajax calls to update the page as posts are made. That part is pretty ambitious, but why not go for it.
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I started working on an extension just to get the hang of it. I am parsing the href attributes of <a> tags for twitter statuses so they can be converted to iframes and embedded in the post.
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It uses a site called Twitframe. The result isn't super elegant, though. To get a truly embedded tweet, OKP would need the twitter API coded into it. I am looking into ways to doing cross-domain Ajax calls. They're supposed to be out of bounds, but there are some ways to do them. Here is the code of the content script: http://pastebin.com/CauczzA2
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I'll try and look at the info at the link tonight.

Hey, do you have a GitHub page? I'd like to look at what you've done so far.

Also, do you have a gmail account for a Google Hangout or twitter handle so we could go back and forth about ideas and the development of the extension?

You can inbox me the details.

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I have an interview Thursday in Charlotte setup through the school. The school actually offered me a job helping teach in their Charlotte location, but I couldn't get too jazzed about it, so I passed on it. Largely because my gal is at Azure Demon University in Durham, and I want to be near her. Yes, this interview is in Charlotte, but I need to explore all of my options right now...it could be some kind of dream job or pay a lot, who knows.

I've submitted several applications on my own and gotten one call back so far. Since I haven't been searching that long and I already have several possibilities and a couple of hard leads, I'm confident I will get something good.
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I wish Swift was round during my Comp Sci classes as it is really useful. It tells you something works or does not work before you even hit the run command. I love it but what are your thoughts on it? Your refers to every OKP.

That's impressive if it can detect more than syntax errors. Visual Studio is pretty good with type safety, and of course syntax. Can Swift detect runtime errors or null errors? That would be pretty rockin'.
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>Can Swift detect runtime errors or null errors?

From what I've seen thus far the answer is yes. The official documentation has the answer:

https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/Swift/Conceptual/Swift_Programming_Language/ErrorHandling.html

*prayer hands emoji*

I actually got an unofficial offer two Fridays ago, so this isn't exactly hot off the presses, but I am just now getting around to posting about it. It's a C# .NET developer job in north Raleigh. They develop software for hospitals and biotech companies. I can give more info via inbox, I just don't want to post the name on here.

The job is ideal on paper because it involves the same languages and tech I learned at the coding school, so it's perfect for experience and the resume bullet point. I note this because a couple of other job prospects I had through recruiters were front-end page design and DBA, for example. Which I would do if needed, but I wasn't too hot on.

Although most of my job hunt involved recruiters and staffing agencies, I got this job simply by applying online and getting a call back. They were impressed with my portfolio and Github profile to get me right in for an in-person interview, and I got the unofficial offer later that day. Solid pay with benefits. It's also a casual, jeans and t-shirts type of office, which will be a welcome experience after four years in a fancy, corporate, three-story office building.

And when it rains, it pours. I had to turn down an in-person interview for another company that I'd had two phone interviews with prior to getting the job offer from this company.

My experience with recruiters was an extremely mixed bag. The coding school also acts as a recruiter, and they were probably the best recruiter I worked with. They got me one official in-person interview, and tech demo that was a precursor to an interview (although the interview didn't materialize), and a handful of phone interviews. On the other hand, another recruiter was supposedly getting me a couple of interviews, but both were canceled day-of in the morning before the interview, which was really upsetting. They did get me one in-person interview at AT&T in the research triangle, but there were major communication issues post-interview, and the place was basically a sweat shop and I didn't want to work there, anyhow. The recruiter's response when I said I wasn't too hot on working there was that it was better than having to get a job as a Walmart greeter or barista. Lmao. That recruiting company was pretty bush league with me. I think they're actually a major national staffing service, though.

But anyhow, only positive vibes here. Time-wise, it was two months on the dot from completing the coding camp to getting the offer. I was actually the last person in my class of eleven to get a job (we all got jobs), so the average time was much sooner, with a couple guys getting jobs before class was done. But as I mentioned before, me taking longer was mainly a geographic issue because I wanted a job in Raleigh, which is a much more competitive market to crack. The other folks were mostly placed in Greensboro. One other guy in our class managed to get a job in Raleigh, maybe about a month ago.

So if you're considering any kind of leap like this, I recommend going for it. I had way more programming experience than most of the class, and everyone was able to get employment. The first guy in my clique in class to get a job had never written a line of code before coming to class (very smart guy, though -- masters in finance or accounting, I forget which). So you certainly don't need much experience. Just some logic, math, and diligence.

If you have any questions, please shoot.


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really on the upswing. plus, biomed is HUGE down here, as you can no doubt see, so if you do well at this gig you should pretty easily be able to parlay that to a spot in any of a number of other places in the industry.

plus, you might hit on an idea for a startup, and startup culture is pretty hot here right now, also.




peace & blessings,

x.

www.twitter.com/poetx

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I'm an advocate for working smarter, not harder. If you just
focus on working hard you end up making someone else rich and
not having much to show for it. (c) mad

www.engadgethd.com - the other stuff i'm looking at

Code in the real world can be ugly and messy, but hopefully you have good coworkers to help you learn the systems and architecture.

Regarding recruiters, my motto is to use them, but don't have too much faith in them. Most of them don't have a clue about software development. Always apply directly with the company wherever possible.

To the above replies, Raleigh does seem good and I am going to make the short move here from Durham. And my coworkers have been very helpful so far. I'm sure in a week or two, all of the different software we use (VPNs, database, source control, version control) will be second nature.

The "real world" code is already pretty hairy, haha. Apparently the guy who designed one of the systems here decided to invent his own version of MVC that involves storing web page elements in the database, and they are injected into HTML using a DLL that he wrote. It's hard to believe. And the guy is no longer here, so it's literally an Indiana Jones-style archaeological dig when any part of it needs to be updated. Complete with spike traps and giant rolling boulders.
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My lady (now fiance!) finished her PA program at azure demon university, so the move was planned. The job move was actually not planned, as my current employer was going to let me work remotely after moving back to California. But a job popped up on indeed that was too good to not apply to -- significant raise over my current wage, and more interesting work (they do mostly desktop software, which is something I always wished for but is hard to find). And it's in the energy industry which is what I quit to pursue development, so I am happy to get back in the industry as a software developer. It's tough to give up the full remote aspect, but the increased pay and more interesting job tasks will be worth it, I'm pretty sure.

For the new job, I didn't have the requisite experience on paper, but the video interview went well, and I was able to demo a pretty feature-packed game level editor that I had made in Winforms (lol at winforms, yes. It was my first legit desktop project). And I believe it helped that I had a few years of energy industry experience, so I think my lack of dev experience was overcome by that and demonstrating my skills in the interview.

It's also interesting that the bootcamp world has experienced quite a shakeup recently. Iron Yard and Dev Bootcamp, which were two of the biggest, if not the biggest, have gone under. I think the one that I attended is poised to take a lot of that market that was just vacated (I'd rather not post the name here so it doesn't show up on web searches, but feel free to inbox). And actually, of my core group of friends that I keep in touch with from the course, three of them were hired by the bootcamp as instructors. And they're being paid a fair amount more than I made at this current job. Anyhow. That's the update. Onward and upward.
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I hope all is well with you.
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The bootcamp I took is starting an online component that is sort of a warmup to the real course. And there are other bootcamps that are purely online. If you're just trying to enrich your skills and not necessarily make a hard career change, I think an online bootcamp would be great. Especially one that let you work at your own hours so you wouldn't have to quit your current job.
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