I recently signed up for a four-week coding boot camp to bolster my coding skills. The course isn’t intended to fully prepare a noncoder to enter the software development job market, especially in a cooling economy. Still, I wondered if it would give me enough skills to land a job.

Nucamp’s Web Development Fundamentals course introduces noncoders to HTML, CSS and JavaScript. While it is beneficial to have some coding background, the only prerequisite is knowing how to use a computer, according to Nucamp, a company that was founded by an ex-Microsoft educator and developer.

Those were boxes I could check: In addition to solid computer skills, I have a mathematics degree and experience with analytical programming languages such as R, an open source predictive analytics language. But even if I pass the class, the recent downturn in the software developer job market means that I’ll face an uphill struggle if I want to get hired as a developer, said Madison Roth, vice president at Glocomms, a tech recruiting agency headquartered in London.

“Given the current climate, a four-week web development boot camp will not be sufficient to land a role with a big tech company,” Roth said. “These companies are typically looking for both years of experience and degrees from a top-level university.”

The Web Fundamentals course isn’t necessarily designed to prepare people to get a job, but as an introduction and a way to prime you to continue your education, according to Ludo Fourrage, founder and CEO at Nucamp, who added that there might be small companies that will consider candidates with four-week boot camp certificates.

The number of weeks or months or years of experience that anyone has doesn’t get in the way of being successful as a developer.

Ryan SalvaVice president of product, GitHub

One such company is GitHub, a San Francisco-based internet hosting service and Microsoft subsidiary. Ryan Salva, vice president of product at GitHub, majored in philosophy and English and is a self-taught software engineer. He said he would hire boot camp graduates.

“The number of weeks or months or years of experience that anyone has doesn’t get in the way of being successful as a developer,” Salva said.

One thing that won’t factor into hiring decisions: my age, protected from employer discrimination under a law enforced by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

“If you are able to succeed in an interview, age will not affect any hiring decisions,” Roth said.

A demanding course

Fourrage founded Nucamp in 2017 after leading digital learning platforms at Microsoft for 18 years. He experienced firsthand the lack of geographical diversity in software development and thought coding boot camps could provide opportunities for people who live in rural areas.

Nucamp’s Web Development Fundamentals course packs a lot into a four-week time frame: HTML informs a browser about content such as written text; CSS styles an HTML document with effects such as fonts, colors and spacing; and JavaScript creates and controls more complex features such as dynamic content updating, image animation and form submissions. Lulled into a false sense of security with some competent HTML skills, I thought I would be learning to create buttons with JavaScript, add a video control or perform some other simple tasks with a few lines of …….

Source: https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMia2h0dHBzOi8vd3d3LnRlY2h0YXJnZXQuY29tL3NlYXJjaHNvZnR3YXJlcXVhbGl0eS9mZWF0dXJlL1doYXQtSS1sZWFybmVkLWF0LWEtNC13ZWVrLU51Y2FtcC1jb2RpbmctYm9vdC1jYW1w0gFxaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGVjaHRhcmdldC5jb20vc2VhcmNoc29mdHdhcmVxdWFsaXR5L2ZlYXR1cmUvV2hhdC1JLWxlYXJuZWQtYXQtYS00LXdlZWstTnVjYW1wLWNvZGluZy1ib290LWNhbXA_YW1wPTE?oc=5

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