A number of replies here, and elsewhere generally, are along the lines of "bootcamps aren't worth it bc the material is all available for free online." I think this fundamentally misunderstands what coding bootcamps (and all schools) offer and what students get out of them 🧵👇🏽

I'm a Senior Instructor at @junocollege, known for our 12 week bootcamps and our exceptionally handsome Senior Instructors. It's absolutely true that everything we teach is available totally free online, all over the place! The thing is, that's true for most (all?) trades.

The appeal of trade schools is rarely that they offer arcane knowledge to which only they have access. That's never really how educational institutions work. (I say 'rarely' bc of course the exception here is Dave's School of Passwords. "Dave's! Just call ***-***-****!")

The purpose of a school isn't to share secrets; it's to help people engage with knowledge. The most significant things that good schools offer are safe, structured, supportive spaces in which to learn, and the opportunity to build a community.

This is why it doesn't matter that the content is freely available online. Good education isn't about walking through the material, it's about bringing the material into a space where people feel like they can trust themselves enough to engage with it.

See, the freely available thing we sell isn't code, it's the stuff people bring in the door with them; a good school teaches people to access that stuff. Education is about empowerment. The material itself is almost filler (but I need this job so please no one tell @heatherpayne)

If content was all that mattered, the smartest people would be the best teachers. I took undergrad physics, and let me tell you, that isn't how it goes. My profs were brilliant minds, but one once literally yelled "HOW DO YOU NOT GET IT??" at me about a quantum mechanics problem.

An *unsolved* quantum mechanics problem.