2020-2021 Alpha Male v.6

[apollolux]

Good to read that you plan on studying programming!

I am also "in the field" with a similar length of time of professional programming experience (close to 15 years) as lano1106 has said for himself, but have been studying for much longer (since 1998, so a little over 20 years total). Having only recently obtained a bachelor's in computer science after many trials and tribulations, so far I can say that I've used very little of that formal education in the professional work that I've done since then. While there is some legitimate difference between "coding" vs "programming" vs "software engineering," the distinction only becomes more apparent based on how much of the development process you become involved with, especially the "design" aspects, and for the majority of the actual grunt work of writing the code independent study and directed, focused, real world practice go a surprisingly long way towards preparing you and increasing competency. The formal education will certainly offer theory and explanations behind the "why" of aspects of programming, but the practical aspects like timing still need hands-on experience, and all the theoretical knowledge in the world matters little on a project in a real world company, Fortune 500 or not, if it can't be implemented reasonably properly in their workflows of choice and/or doesn't work well enough in real world conditions. Example: real-time pricing info for stocks, bonds, loans, etc for banks beyond just throwing hardware at the problem.

From my own history and experience, I can certainly +1 lano's suggestions regarding the benefits of studying and experimenting with existing projects. When I started, regardless of how many programming books I borrowed from the public library, some of the most beneficial practice I did early on was printing out the source code of the projects I saw online that I liked and recreating them at home (didn't have internet so had to use the library's or my school's). Once I got the thing working then I drilled down into the guts of the code, reverse engineered piece by piece and matched them up with what the books were saying each piece was supposed to do.

I would hope that having both the informal experience and the formal education, I've become competent at "teaching" the thing in ways that are understandable to a reasonable chunk of people who decide to go into programming. While you go through this bootcamp, if there are any one-off questions you'd like help with understanding I'd be willing to provide a small bit of time towards that. Anything deeper than that I would likely charge for, and I would prefer you spend your money on the thing you're already spending on first and seeing how that plays out before committing any money towards extra instruction.