> "I learned more real-world skills in 12 weeks than my Stanford degree taught me."<p>I'd hope the author of that quote was paying very little attention, because I find this hard to swallow.<p>My problem with these programming bootcamps is that they seem almost more focused on a shallow but fun dive than teaching people thoroughly. That's not problematic in it of itself if it gets people interested, but I'd hunch a guess that most of the graduates of these bootcamps are not going on to self-study more intensely after.<p>In my opinion, these bootcamps generally teach you to be a barely average web developer. If you are sufficiently self-motivating, self-study is a great idea, but you don't need a bootcamp for this.<p>I'm not one to judge people on whether or not they have a degree, but I think there is real value in an equivalent curriculum for self-studying.<p>If I have the choice to hire someone fresh out of a web development bootcamp and someone who was self-studying compiler design, I'm hiring the compiler design person every time, even if it's a web development job.<p>I don't know why this is teaching jQuery anymore. But why do you need this course for JavaScript when you have the excellent MDN guides for beginners to use? I think people are afraid of reading and prefer to be spoonfed.<p>If you want mentorship, there's usually a good subreddit, Discord or Slack server that doesn't cost you $30 / month.<p>I'm just extremely skeptical of the value that any of these bootcamps bring. AppAcademy appears to bring good results for hiring, but I don't believe that it's the most effective method of learning.