The Iron Yard announced that it is closing all of their campuses. The current cohort is the last cohort. These are my thoughts on boot camps and degrees. As before, since this is my entry for 750words.com, I do not edit. I’ll add links, but I’m not poring over and wrangling these words to better reflect what I meant. Stream-o-consciousness, baby! Swim up with the salmon and avoid the bears!

With the closing of The Iron Yard, I find myself reading tweets and threads on boot camps. They always end up addressing the boot camp v. computer science degree decision. I used to feel that this was my first boot camp experience, but in a thread, I remembered The Goethe Institut.

The Goethe Institut and a coding boot camp are similar beasts. One could attend the GI and get intensive and immersive language instruction in, but it is not the same as majoring in German. It is not better or worse. It’s just a part of the whole. If one majors in German, there’s the history, literature, and culture addressed. One could say that culture is addressed if immersed in a city in Germany, but it will be a culture gleaned. Narrow to that zone and the family one’s staying with. Some historical topics will come up in the reading, but for the most part, the subject matter is business-oriented. There is no discussion of how German has changed. There’s no class time dedicated to old German or Sturm und Drang. It’s all about the language. The code of German.

I did not get a CS degree. I majored in German, as I said. I don’t know what is involved in a CS degree, but I imagine there are classes on history and theory. The whys and the hows. The structure. The planning. Bigger stuff. Wider stuff. Broader stuff. Stuffy stuff. And I am sure there’s coding. One is not better than the other, really. Who is to say that I got a better deal majoring in German than the physics professor who attended a Goethe Institut ahead of a sabbatical? I certainly wouldn’t recommend that she enroll at a community college or four-year institution. I feel the same way about coding boot camps. Hell. I am done with university. I loved it. I went to Miami for 4 years, Central College of Iowa for my junior year abroad for a full year (plus The Goethe Institut), another two years for the Master’s (*cough* never wrote the thesis *cough*), one year Grad Cert in conservation biology, and two years Grad Dip in writing, editing, and publishing. I! Am! Done!! I’ve written essays upon essays. Group projects where we live all over the place with different schedules to come together several times to create something that isn’t chaotic is a thing of the past. No. I am done with university. … unless you want to sponsor me for 2-3 years, then I’m on it!

Places like The Goethe Institut and The Iron Yard, Dev Bootcamp, and other … dev boot camps serve a purpose. They’re not to replace a university degree at all, and they were never sold to me as being such. They are an option. They’re not cheap, but university education isn’t either. I would not want to be taught by instructors who don’t value what they do. Pay them well. Have a decent location, and there’ll be tuition to support that. I understand.

I now keep up my education with tutorials online. I can do that with German, too. Online tutorials are great. I am making my way (after months off) through Free Code Camp. I also “attend” tutorials by Wes Bos, Andrew Mead, Daniel Shiffman (Coding Train), and Maximilian Schwartzmüller. I also engage in challenges (Daily CSS Images and Daily SVG Images by The Coding Artist, 100 Days of Code, etc.) I have to vary these tutorials and challenges. To focus on one too much is like not having a schedule. I did that with Free Code Camp and became burned out. Variety.

I did not attend or leave The Iron Yard thinking I had all that I needed. No. I had now a network of people who would help me and understand my struggles. “Why won’t it runnnnnnuh!?” I have instructors one Slack channel away. I have an understanding, not expert knowledge, and with that, I teach myself more. I could not have done this on my own. I am a hermit enough. I would not have known whom to turn to for help when I got stuck. Meet Up? Yeah. No. Not for me when I’m super new. I attend many now, but I wouldn’t have known how to phrase my questions. I do my best to say “This is what I wanted to do; this is what I did; this is the result; and this is why I’m cracking the shits.” Listen to me. Talk to me. Tease it out of me. Send me back. Rinse, lather, repeat.

Thank you to everyone at The Iron Yard for giving me what I need to do to help teach myself. I don’t know what will happen to all the instructors and campus directors around the country. I hope they’re taken care of. The campuses in Dallas and Austin have been wonderful to me.