DEV Community: Zulie Rane

Is a Coding Bootcamp Worth It Compared to a Computer Science Degree?

Zulie Rane — Mon, 29 Mar 2021 12:32:34 +0000

The post Is a Coding Bootcamp Worth It Compared to a Computer Science Degree? first appeared on Qvault.

When you’re in a position of wondering, “Is a coding bootcamp worth it?” you should look at several factors. Coding bootcamp costs, on average, around $13,000. This holds true no matter if you choose to attend coding bootcamp in person or online, though there’s a lot of variance in how much coding bootcamp costs, ranging from $3,000 to $20,000 depending on the language, the length, and who’s running it.

You should also look at alternatives. Maybe you’re asking “Is a coding bootcamp worth it?” because you’re at the start of your potential career in computer science. You’re looking at the obstacles in your way to learn computer science and you’re wondering if it’s worth surmounting them. $13,000 (or even $3,000) is a lot to drop on something that doesn’t work out in the end.

However, if you’re in the position of wondering how much coding bootcamps can cost, and whether or not a coding bootcamp worth it, you’re probably aware of the typical alternative: a Computer Science degree. Not only does it take a lot longer – at least two years, more likely four years – to complete, but it’s also usually much more expensive. A diploma costs more money than a coding bootcamp, normally.

This is part of the reason many people say yes, is a coding bootcamp worth it: because computer science employers have a problem with the price of computer science degrees. There is a sky-high demand for qualified, talented computer scientists. And the supply is low. In 2019, there were half a million job openings but only 72k graduates. Coding bootcamps helped fill that gap.

Computer science jobs are interesting because they’re some of the least traditional employers. What other subject can you imagine where a thirteen-week course could replace a four-year degree of structured learning? But they’re desperate enough – and open-minded enough – to judge applicants by skills, not by the name on a piece of paper that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and four years to accomplish.

And the good news is that for people wondering about the cost of a bootcamp, you have a lot more flexibility than you would with other subjects. As long as you can prove you know what you’re doing, you’re in an excellent position to secure your dream job, with your favorite employer.

Let’s get into how much coding bootcamp costs, how much a computer science degree costs, and whether they’re worth it for you. The short answer is that everyone’s circumstance is different, so everyone’s answer will be different.

How much do coding bootcamps cost? Is a coding bootcamp worth it when you look at price?

One thing not enough people take into account when thinking about how much a coding bootcamp costs is the opportunity cost. Yes, there’s a direct monetary cost associated with it – and coding bootcamp isn’t cheap! You’re looking at a couple thousand dollars as a minimum. $3,000 is considered on the cheap end for bootcamp.

But only comparing money ignores the much greater cost of coding bootcamp : what you give up when you choose a coding bootcamp.

No matter how much or how little coding bootcamp costs you in terms of money, the one you choose will also cost you in time, which is another factor to consider in the question of is a coding bootcamp worth it. Coding bootcamps take less time than a computer science degree, yes, but dropping your life and spending several weeks or months on this coding bootcamp will cost you, too.

While a degree is tough to balance with a job or life, it’s possible. Coding bootcamps are so mentally demanding that you’re forced to dedicate all that time to the single pursuit of completing the coding bootcamp. Every hour you spend grinding through lessons could be hours spent getting job experience, watching YouTube tutorials, or even just spending time with your dog.

Furthermore, coding bootcamps are specialized. Should you learn Go or Python? A computer science degree would give you a solid foundation with experience in many languages and technologies, while a bootcamp will instead focus on a single path to an entry-level job, even if that means cutting corners and making it harder for you to progress in the future. A coding bootcamp will cost you the option of learning other languages or skills, because you have to commit to a single topic early on. Most coding bootcamp students lack the fundamental knowledge to make the right decision.

Is a coding bootcamp worth it?

Honestly, it depends what you want. If you’ve done your research, and you’re dedicated to supplementing the streamlined education you get at camp with some online learning, then yes, a coding bootcamp is probably worth it, even with a high price tag. You can easily justify spending $20,000 and four months of your life to get your perfect job, paying $100k+ with amazing benefits and a fantastic work/life balance.

If not, then no, a coding bootcamp isn’t worth it for you. You run the risk of spending months and a ton of money on something that might get you an interview, but won’t prepare you for the actual interview’s demands. Worse, you might find yourself in the position of spending that time and money on a specific program, only to realize you actually want to learn a different skill or language.

It all depends on your personal circumstances. It’s also very important to consider the alternatives. If a coding bootcamp were the only path to getting your dream job, then it would be worth any cost. Luckily for you, the employment landscape is very favorable to applicants, which means there are multiple avenues of skill-learning you can use to snag a coding job.

How much does a Computer Science degree cost?

One such alternative is a computer science degree. Of course, if you’re reading this, you probably got a degree in another subject, or didn’t want a degree in the first place, which is leading you to research how much a coding bootcamp costs, and if it’s worth it. You might not even be considering a computer science degree as a possible alternative at this stage in your life.

But that would be a mistake. Computer science degrees are definitely an option, no matter where you are in your life, and should be considered as an alternative to a coding bootcamp.

It used to be that you graduated college and used your degree to get a job. But the modern landscape has jobs that fall outside the traditional bounds of what degrees offer, as well as job opportunities that far outstrip the number of diplomas being handed out. Computer science is one such field.

Employers won’t look down on you if you are 50 and getting your first computer science degree. They won’t turn you down if you didn’t get it from MIT. Many local community colleges offer computer science degrees – my sister graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Computer Science that cost $40,000 for 5 years of education, including tuition, room, board, and textbooks.

Computer science degrees cost more than coding bootcamps, of course, and they also take more time. But they offer two distinct cost advantages. First, they’re more flexible. A degree takes years, but you can complete your courses online while working, saving up, living at home, and more. Furthermore, they offer a greater degree of knowledge. You learn more than just one set of specialized skills – you get a much broader amount of information, and the option to specialize once you have that foundation to build on.

This website lists the cost of computer science degrees from top universities online – depending on if you’re in-state or not, a computer science degree costs between $15,000 and $67,400.

Like a coding bootcamp, is a computer science degree worth it? Yes, under certain circumstances. If you have more time, you’re less sure of how you want to use your computer science knowledge, and you need a thorough grounding in the basics, that cost is worth paying. If those circumstances don’t fit your situation, a computer science degree may not be worth it for you.

You run the risk of spending years and a ton of money when you don’t actually need to. Even worse, you run the risk of spending money and time and then still dropping out before graduating, like 40% of US undergraduates do.

Tweet image via @dinoman_j

Cheap and quick alternatives to coding bootcamp do exist.

If you’ve got this far and neither option is appealing to you, you’ll be glad to know additional alternatives exist. Again, I want to reiterate how open-minded computer science employers are. They don’t care how you got the knowledge or skills. These employers just want to know you have what it takes. A diploma or a certificate from a coding bootcamp is a helpful way to get those skills and prove it, but there are alternatives to coding bootcamps and degrees that take less time and money. Is a coding bootcamp worth it? Sometimes the cost is too high.

First, there’s always the option to become self-taught. Many universities offer lectures for free, and the wealth of information available on YouTube today is unimaginable. If you can put together a curriculum to learn computer science online for yourself, it’s extremely possible to receive free education and information from reputable and knowledgeable sources on the internet.

The advantages are obvious – it’s free, or very cheap. It’s entirely self-paced. You can pick and choose the topics you cover. The costs are also pretty straightforward: it will take some time to get to the standard you’ll need to be interviewing, plus you’ll have to motivate yourself to carry on, where a teacher or lecturer may have motivated you in a degree track or a coding bootcamp.

Plus, you’ll have to do a lot of the legwork proving you’re worth a chance. The diplomas and coding bootcamp certificates do a good job of proving to employers you have knowledge and will get you through to the interview. Being self-taught means you’ll have to find another way to demonstrate your knowledge on your resume to get your foot in the interview door. In that regard, is a coding bootcamp worth it? Yes.

There are also places to get a computer science certificate online that are much more accessibly-priced than both coding bootcamps and computer science degrees. For example, Qvault is an online computer science learning platform that offers courses in coding fundamentals, computer science basics, Go, practical cryptography, and more. Qvault charges on a monthly or yearly basis, which comes to between $144 to $480 for two years’ worth of access. It also hosts a portfolio where you can show potential employers the skills and experience you’ve gained.

What’s the right choice for me?

At the end of the day, only you can answer that. Is a coding bootcamp worth it? Should you aim for a diploma instead? Can you lean into a self-taught curriculum? Is an online certificate enough for you? I can’t answer that for you, because the right answer differs for everyone.

This guide is designed to help you provide an answer for yourself. By now, you should have a thorough grasp of the specific strengths and costs (monetary and otherwise) of each option. It’s worth thoroughly considering and investigating each option before you invest money, or time which is just as valuable.

You can choose to spend the cost of coding bootcamp in favor of relatively quick, extremely targeted knowledge. You can spend more time and money on a slower-paced, spoon-fed curriculum that gives you a degree and a thorough understanding of the basics of computer science from an accredited university. You can follow your own self-taught curriculum and accept the cost of proving your knowledge to employers. Or you can opt to go with a platform like Qvault that offers some certificates in fundamental areas of computer science that are self-driven.

No matter what, the crucial thing to remember is that you can be confident in the knowledge that employers are desperate to find qualified computer science employees. All you have to do is find the best path for you, and know how best to present yourself to that employer so they understand your skills and experience. That makes the answer to the questions of is a coding bootcamp worth it, or is a computer science degree worth it, into the proper context for you to make a choice.

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Where Can You Get a Programming Certificate Online?

Zulie Rane — Sun, 14 Mar 2021 20:36:21 +0000

The post Where Can You Get a Programming Certificate Online? first appeared on Qvault.

There are two main options to get a programming certificate online – online courses and universities.

There are two ways to get a programming certificate online – universities and online courses. In the simplest possible terms, a programming certificate is something that lets you walk up to an employer and say, “Hello, yes, I know how to SQL. Here’s a piece of paper that proves it. You should hire me.”

When described that way, you can instantly see how getting a programming certificate compares with getting a degree – they both act as proof from external sources that help demonstrate your competence. The real difference is that a programming certificate is usually more specific, while a diploma demonstrates broader expertise.

It makes sense that people are interested in getting a programming certificate online, rather than going to an in-person university or boot camp – it’s more flexible and convenient (not to mention much safer during a pandemic) to learn computer science online. Both online courses and universities are equipped to offer these to their students.

I’ve already written about the benefits and difference between getting a programming certificate instead of a diploma, so I’ll summarize:

Time. If – and this is a big if! – you know what you want, you don’t have to spend four years getting a broad base of knowledge to secure the evidence of your skills.
Money. A programming certificate (or even several) can be a heck of a lot cheaper than a diploma.

Let’s dive into the two ways you can get a programming certificate. The basic summary is that you can choose between getting a programming certificate from universities or online courses.

Option 1. Get a programming certificate online from a university

Not many people know that universities offer programming certificates online as well as diplomas. Even before the pandemic, the option to get a programming certificate online was appealing to a lot of students who didn’t fancy going in person, or wanted to hold down a job at the same time. Now, of course, many universities have doubled down on this.

While you do have the option to get a programming certificate in person from universities, I’ll focus on the online options here.

When you’re selecting where to get your online programming certificate from, you should start by looking at the options. Luckily you’re not limited by geography, so your choices will be pretty broad. Instead, focus on specialty.

The Best Schools website offers options on selecting the best university to get a programming certificate online from a course from ranking their list based on “the quality of the program, types of courses provided, faculty strength, school awards, rankings and reputation, including the reputation for providing online degree programs.” It’s worth noting that the last part – teaching online is a very different beast to teaching in-person, so you’ll want to choose a university that has a reputation for teaching effectively and engagingly online.

Many require that you apply to them to be enrolled in the online programming course. Once you’ve selected your university, you can take that next step and apply. Assuming you’re accepted, you’ll be enrolled in the programming course, where you’ll follow the instructor’s set curriculum. It typically costs anywhere between $500 to $9,000 according to Get Educated, and takes up to a semester to get one. You can also “stack” them to get closer to the equivalent of the full degree. Many offer multiple options – evening classes, weekend classes, and flexible office hours – to make it a more appealing option to remote students who may have other priorities in addition to getting their online programming certificate.

The benefits of enrolling in a university to get a programming certificate online is that it’s more structured and hands-on than online courses. You’ll have a lecturer, assignments, and a curriculum designed by people who have set up the curriculum for their full computer science degree, too. While a diploma may get you slightly further than a university-given online programming certificate, it’s certainly enough to get you in the door with an entry-level programming job.

Examples:

Madison Area Technical College: IT-Java Professional Developer Certificate. Perfect for students with a basic understanding of computer science who want to learn a specific language. Costs $1,395 and can be done part-time with just five credit hours.
Seminole State College of Florida: Technical Certificate in Computer Programming Specialist . For students who are after an entry-level programming job. Costs $2,000 for in-state tuition, or $7,000 for out-of-state students. At 18 credits long, you can expect this to take a semester if you go full-time, or a year if part-time.
Durham Tech Information Technology: Database Programming Certificate. Gives students a certification in an adjacent skill, database programming. Costs $912 and takes 12 credit hours.

In summary, it’s certainly cheaper than a degree, while offering more flexibility than a traditional degree. It has some hands-on teaching, too, which is good for students who benefit more from a structured approach.

Option 2. Get a programming certificate from a course online

This other option is growing more popular in recent years – to get a programming certificate online from an online course, rather than an accredited university. While some employers do prefer the structured learning offered by universities, many really don’t – they just want to hire someone who can do the job, and your online programming certificate from an online course can prove that just as well as from a university.

There are two real differences to get a programming certificate online from an online course versus getting a programming certificate from a university. First, it’s much more self-paced and self-driven – you are your own instructor, instead of having someone spoon-feed you the information. Second, because there’s no accreditation, you want to be totally sure it’s a source you (and employers) will trust. After all, I could ask my sister to issue me an online programming certificate from Paula’s Awesome Programming School after debugging her python bot, but employers probably wouldn’t be too impressed with that on my resume.

They also differ in that they can be much less expensive, as well as flexible because they’re self-paced. Many online courses have the option to contact real people with questions or feedback, but for the most part, you’re expected to complete the tasks and reading on your own without any prompting.

I’ve written before about how to get a programming certificate online from an online course, so I’ll summarize here:

Do your research on which certificate in computer science makes the most sense for you.
Understand the different types of certificates in computer science.
Focus on what a certificate in computer science will give you. Are you looking for a freelance boost, or a new job?
Find a source that will help you do the work. Self-motivation can be tough, so find a course that is built to whatever you need to motivate yourself, whether gamification or companionship.
Do the work. The more you do to make sure your choice is right in steps 1-4, the easier this one will be.
Proudly display your certificate. For instance, tons of students have gone through Codecademy to get a programming certificate online, so employers have an idea of the reputation, and what they can expect from an employee who got a certificate from them. Meanwhile, Qvault is a lesser-known example, but they offer the opportunity to create a public developer portfolio page you can link to on your resume.

Examples:

Codecademy. Offers several different course options from specific languages to skills for a career path, to topics such as web development. It costs $39.99/month or $240/year when billed annually for the standard plan.
Qvault. Offers a range of courses from intros to coding, to specific languages, to skill development such as data structures. It costs $20/month or $72/year when billed annually for the standard plan.
Pluralsight. This online course catalog is built specifically to help you get a job with the skills you learn. The standard plan costs $29/month of $299/year when billed annually.

In summary, the process to get a programming certificate online from an online course comes with real benefits – it tends to be cheaper, and more self-paced than getting one from a university. However, that can also be a disadvantage – it’s easier to be motivated to complete something when you’ve invested a lot of money, and someone is guiding you through the process. To combat those disadvantages, ensure you select an online course with a solid community that can help get you motivated to actually get the course done.

You should also ensure the reputation of your online course is unimpeachable – universities come with their own brand name aura, while online courses are seen as a little more fast and loose. Do your research to pick the certificate that will impress an employer, or select one that lets you prove your skills by displaying a portfolio.

You can get your programming certificate online from a university or an online course.

These two options to get a programming certificate online are great alternatives to both a coding bootcamp or a proper diploma for the same reasons – they’re cheaper, they’re faster, they’re more tailored to your specific and current needs. And increasingly, they’re accepted by employers who are desperate to get qualified employees in to do the work that desperately needs doing.

The main pros to get a programming certificate online from a university compared to an online course are that it’s more guided, it’s more structured, and the programming certificate will carry the weight of the university’s reputation, which can be a convenient shorthand for quality in an employer’s eyes.

The main pros to get a programming certificate online from an online course versus from a university are that it’s self-paced and it tends to be cheaper. As long as you’re careful about selecting one that has a good reputation, you can make the most of the advantages while dodging the disadvantages.

Depending on what you need from your online programming certificate, both online courses and universities can be great sources to get one. If you prefer a more guided and structured method, it makes sense to spring for an online programming certificate from a university. If you prefer to do things at your own pace and enjoy the challenges of self-motivation, you should find an online course to prove your chops.

Either way, the key takeaway is that an online programming certificate is a great avenue to prove your credentials to any employer. As long as you have the skills to back up your certificate, your future employer will be thrilled to have you onboard, no matter when your online programming certificate comes from.

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7 Ways for Beginner Coders to Monetize Programming Blogs

Zulie Rane — Wed, 03 Mar 2021 16:37:35 +0000

Why shouldn’t your hobby earn you money?

Programming is a very lucrative skill to have, whether as a professional career, a freelance gig, or even just a hobby. For programmers who know how, there’s a real opportunity to turn their knowledge and expertise into cold hard cash.

When you combine the ability to program or code with the ability to write in a way that resonates with an audience, that’s a jackpot. The best part is that you don’t even need to go to college or have five years of experience at Google to have a successful and lucrative programming blog – if you learn computer science online and set up a learning course for yourself, you’ll have all you need to turn your blog into profit.

The internet is full of readers who want to be entertained, educated, engaged. A programmer who can tap into that audience has a ton of options for monetization.

This guide won’t mention Google Ads for the simple reason that many programmers (your potential audience) are suspicious of ads and tend to use ad blockers, so it’s not a great income source. Furthermore, Google ads only begin to pay off if you have tens of thousands of visitors to your site. These seven methods of monetizing your programming blog don’t rely on huge amounts of traffic.

All you need is some programming knowledge, a desire to write, and a blog to put your thoughts on.

1. Monetize Your Programming Blog With Affiliate Links

Affiliate links are when a company or individual gives you a specific link to their product, service, or slates funnel. If someone clicks on that link and makes a purchase, you get a percentage of that revenue. The most common iteration you’ll see for this type of monetization is the Amazon affiliate program.

As a programmer, no matter what your expertise level is, you have valuable experience. That experience – whether it’s the keyboard you love for coding, the course that got you on your way, or the textbook that you reference every day, can be monetized on your blog.

By joining some affiliate programs and mentioning their products or services when you write, you can begin getting rewards from your readers. They won’t have to pay anything extra for taking advantage of your hard-won experience, and you’ll profit without having to make a single sale yourself.

The best part is that you don’t need to be an expert coder – even if you’re blogging about your beginning journey into coding, and you’re still in the process of learning to code, you can still make recommendations that others will value. For example, Qvault is a platform that provides computer science courses and certificates. When programmers refer others to the platform, they receive 50% of any payments, which is useful for beginner coders especially. You don’t need to be an expert coder – you can just say, “Hey, this course worked great for me.”

To maximize the potential of this, ensure you make a disclaimer about your affiliate links. As long as you’re honest about them, your readers won’t mind. Explain why you love what you’re recommending. This ensures your voice remains authentic on your blog and not too “salesy” which can turn readers off.

In sum, affiliate links mean that readers who click on your links and make a purchase pay nothing extra, you get the benefit of monetizing your experience, and you help support a platform you believe in.

2. Monetize Your Programming Blog With Sponsored Posts

Just like any other industry, brands may pay you to discuss their products or services with a sponsored post. If you have an audience, no matter if it’s small or large, brands will pay you money to get in front of that audience.

Sponsored posts are great for programmers monetizing their blog because as mentioned above, programmers are often an ad-adverse group of people. Seeing an ad is unlikely to work. Hearing about a brand or product from a source they trust, meanwhile, is much more likely to result in a positive result for them.

A common misconception is that you need to wait until you have thousands of monthly visitors. But the truth is that brands actually prefer to work with “micro-influencers” who tend to have a much more engaged audience. If you can prove that 100 people hang on your every word, that’s better than a casual audience of 10,000.

It’s also typical to believe that if programmers want to monetize their blogs, they have to wait for sponsors to come to them. It isn’t true – you can start reaching out immediately. For example, Dylan Israel started his programming YouTube channel and managed to secure his first sponsor at 2,500 subscribers. He proactively reached out to coding organizations and boot camps to be connected to their marketing department. Now, obviously, with 78k subs, they come to him. But you don’t have to wait.

With sponsored posts, the key is to ensure the focus is not on the brand, but rather on the value to the user. For example, if you have a sponsor who sells mechanical keyboards, you can write a post on doing pros and cons of mechanical keyboards versus membrane keyboards and your honest opinion. Even if you say something slightly negative about the brand, brands will prefer that to an overly promotional one. Programmers can smell inauthenticity from a mile away.

In sum, sponsored posts are a way for brands to pay you to write about them obliquely. You don’t have to wait until you have a huge audience – start when you have a modest, but engaged audience. As long as you stay honest and authentic, your readers won’t mind it.

3. Monetize Your Programming Blog By Selling Your Own Code

Your programming blog can be monetized by selling the code you write. Here, you’re using the blog as a way to prove expertise or at least some experience. Once readers have a chance to see how good you are at what you do, they may be tempted to buy from you.

Once you’ve established expertise, you can build and sell your own products to create scalable, passive income. Unlike sponsored posts that offer a one-off payment, selling a digital product is infinitely scalable. You can spend 8 hours creating something, and be reaping the rewards for months to come.

“You can write a PHP script, make a website template, WordPress themes, WordPress plugins, Android app source code, CSS source code, and so on,” writes Faruque Ahamed Mollick on EyeSwift.

Depending on what your blog is about, there are different ways to market and sell your code. For instance, you might write a post discussing how to do a cool thing with Ruby and title it, “How I Wrote a Script that Did XYZ Thing With Ruby.” You describe the process, then link to a marketplace like GitMarket or on your own website’s store for coders who want to take advantage of what you’ve already created.

This type of blog is multipurpose – it creates additional authenticity, explaining why your product is going to be good, which helps your audience if they want to go through the process of doing so themselves. But equally, you may catch some Google traffic of people who just need Ruby to do XYZ cool thing and want the shortcut.

In sum, selling your code is great because as a programmer, no matter if you’re a beginner coder or not, you’ll have produced some kind of hobby code that does a neat thing. You can document the journey on your blog, and sell the final product. This is an infinitely scalable source of income, and also doesn’t take a lot of additional work other than what you’d already be doing.

4. Monetize Your Programming Blog by Promoting Other Services

While Google ads are tricky to scale into a worthwhile revenue stream, your own service ads are likely to be much more convincing to a casual reader.

Many beginner coders think they have nothing worthwhile to sell to readers, but it isn’t true. Can you discuss the biggest mistakes people typically make in the coding language you learned, and how you’d recommend avoiding them? Can you suggest a list of resources to get started with a language? Can you review a script for bugs? Can you translate an indecipherable error message? These are all valuable and can be marketed as soon as you start coding.

A great example of this is Pawel Urbanek’s ad, which I came across during research for this article. On an article about how he writes and promotes his programming blog, he embeds an ad for his services at the very top:

It’s true that these opportunities will increase as your experience increases, but you don’t have to wait until you’re a bona fide programmer to start promoting your services.

The only thing you should watch out for is overusing ads. It’s true that you need to make a living somehow, yes, but readers won’t always understand that and get turned off from too many blatant ads, especially if they’re from you. Keep it limited – perhaps one in every five posts, or only on your best-performing posts. You should also try to match ads with blog post subject. That way you retain value for your readers whether they’re regular visitors or one-time readers, but you can still let people know the value you provide.

In sum, adding your own ads inline on your blog posts can be a great way to raise awareness of your other services and give you some extra income. Even as a beginner coder, there are many services you can offer.

5. Monetize Your Programming Blog by Coaching Beginner Coders

One of the unspoken rules of making money on the internet is that you should give away all your value for free. Why? Because no matter how valuable or tailored it is, you will still get readers who look at your tutorials, guides, reference sheets, and say, “Hey, this is great. Can you customize this for me and my situation?”

The internet is full of free and amazing programming information. If you try to withhold it in order to sell it, you won’t have clients because they’ll be able to get it for free somewhere else. Instead, offer full and free insights and ensure that you offer readers a way to book you for further and deeper consultation.

If you show enough talent at tutorials especially, you might find individuals want more of a 1:1 relationship with you, where you coach them through a particular specific issue they’re facing, for example an interview or thorny coding problem they’re facing.

A common mistake I see is coaches pricing themselves too low. Even as a beginner coder, your advice is valuable. By pricing your services higher than you think, you ensure that your clients take that seriously, as well. They’re more likely to listen, apply, and enact your programming advice. When they see it works, they’ll come back – or tell their friends.

As an example, take a look at (Dan Bader’s blog](https://dbader.org/), which is geared for novice Pythonistas. Along with tons of useful free advice that will help solve almost everyone’s problems, he has a whole section to sell his courses and one-on-one mentorship.

In sum, coaching readers is a great way to add additional value to the readers who really want to go that extra step. As long as you treat your coaching like the gold dust it is and offer as much value as you can up front, you’ll ensure your coaching business flourishes on your programming blog.

6. Monetize Your Programming Blog by Advertising Your Freelance Services

About a year ago, I wrote a blog post on the fastest way to learn to code. It ranked on Google’s front page, and as a result, I got a freelance client who read the post, enjoyed it, and wanted to hire me to do freelance programming blogging on the company’s behalf.

The truth is, if you can write about programming and coding on your own website, chances are someone is going to want you to do it for theirs as well. It’s a really good skill to have and to let others know you have it.

In my case, my client had to jump through a few hoops in order to find my contact information. Don’t make your clients do this – make sure you have a “contact me to write for you” section somewhere on your profile, portfolio, or GitHub page.

In sum, using your programming blog to show that you’re an able writer about programming, and let potential freelance clients know that you’re looking for this kind of work. It’s a great way to use your programming blog to earn money from something that isn’t programming!

7. Monetize Your Programming Blog By Getting a Job

While it’s great to use your hobby to make a bit of money on the side, it’s perfectly valid to want to use your coding blog to get a coding job. In this instance, having a coding blog in a particular niche can help raise your personal brand in that area. A website also works really well as a supplement to any coding portfolio you may have.

While it’s not as “monetizable” as selling courses, coaching or code chunks, it’s still a way to earn a steady income through your programming blog.

You can send it to prospective employers as proof that you’re passionate and knowledgeable about what you want to do. Many employers want you to evidence your interest in coding beyond the questions you get asked at interviews. A programming blog is also a good way to network, building a group of individuals who like what you do and who may mention your name, or let you know of a job opportunity. Just like any other part of the world, who you know matters. Cultivating a network of relevant individuals with your blog is a great way to tap into that fact.

In sum, your blog can be used to monetize your hobby by turning it into a fully-fledged job, both in proving your commitment and bringing your work to the awareness of that niche’s network.

Final thoughts on how you can monetize your programming blog
You can monetize your programming blog with any (or several!) of these seven strategies. Written communication is a highly underrated soft skill – it’s easy to underestimate the demand for well-written tutorials, opinion pieces, and information on trends.

If you know how to program in any language and you enjoy writing, there’s a huge opportunity for you to monetize your programming blog.

7 Critical Reasons Beginners Should Learn Go in 2021

Zulie Rane — Mon, 08 Feb 2021 14:40:56 +0000

Know why Golang is useful, especially for beginners

Image sourec: JÉshoots via pexels

There are many good reasons why learning Golang is a popular idea altogether — Stack Overflow’s 2020 developer survey saw it climb in popularity among developers from tenth in 2019 all the way to fifth in 2020. According to Insights Dice, a full 32% of developers want to learn it. It pays well, too: Globally, the Stack Overflow survey found that Perl, Scala, and Go programmers have the highest salaries.

It’s practical, too, as it was developed specifically by Google to “eliminate the slowness and clumsiness of software development at Google, and thereby to make the process more productive and scalable. The language was designed by and for people who write— and read and debug and maintain — large software systems.”

For those who want to learn computer science online, it’s also worth mentioning that Go is a good basic language that can help build foundational blocks that will be suitable for other languages you may go on to learn.

Beyond all the reasons that make Go a great language to learn, there are seven factors that make it a perfect language specifically for beginner coders. Let’s jump into the reasons.

1. Go Is an Easy Language for Beginners To Learn

Every beginner coder needs to start with a language. The second language is always easier to learn, so you want to start with something that’s easy to pick up.

Go is a great language for beginners because the syntax is small — you won’t have to spend ages paging through reference documentation. It’s clean and easy to read, meaning you’ll be able to understand what you and others are writing. It’s parsable without any type information or a symbol table as there is no type-specific context.

The reason it’s so easy is that Google as a company has been great about hiring many new programmers that are at the start of their coding career. Google developed Go to be easy for them to pick up and to not inhibit any future language learnings — perfect for beginners. The question “why learn Golang?” is answered first and best by saying simply “it’s easy to.”

2. Go Is a New Language on the Coding Scene

Why learn Golang if it’s so new? For two reasons. First, there are lots of legacy coding ideals out there for older languages. Because Go is relatively new (2009) the examples, tutorials, libraries, and frameworks will be mostly developed by experienced coders. While there may not be as many how-tos as for PERL, these tutorials and examples won’t contain legacy baggage that so many other language tutorials have. Basically, it’s simple for beginners to learn Go.

Second, because it’s a newer language built for purpose and not as an artifact or accident, it will teach you good habits if you go on to learn new languages.

One Reddit thread detailing why you should learn Golang explains that you’ll have to use a third-party library less often because Go is a self-containing language. Furthermore, it’s easily documentable using docstrings, and learning these code-documenting habits will give you immediate tangible benefits. Unlike languages like PHP, there’s often just one way to accomplish a task, a black-and-white mentality perfect for beginners learning their first coding language. And last, it’s built to be future-proof — no matter what comes down the coding line, Go was created to still be relevant to any future apps or frameworks.

3. Go Is a Concurrent Language

The benefits of this may be harder for beginner programmers to understand because it’s so intuitive, but many other programming languages don’t have this.

Essentially, Go is great for beginners because you can do multiple things at once easily. Most production software systems need to be able to do lots of things all at the same time. While other languages often have mechanisms to accomplish this, they can be overly complex, slow, or result in buggy code. Go is frequently recognized by the developer community as a leader in simplifying concurrent applications.

4. Go Can Help You Land a Job at Google (and Other Large Companies)

The most practical answer to “why learn Golang?” is that it can help you get a job faster. As stated further up in this article, Go was developed by Google. Getting a job at Google is desirable for just about any programmer, regardless of expertise level. Learning the language they developed and built specifically to help with the complex problems Google faces every day will give you a leg up.

Rob Pike, a creator of Go, explained in his 2012 keynote, “The Go programming language was conceived in late 2007 as an answer to some of the problems we were seeing developing software infrastructure at Google…[t]he problems introduced by multicore processors, networked systems, massive computation clusters, and the web programming model were being worked around rather than addressed head-on.”

Several big user-facing Google services use it, including YouTube and dl.google.com (the download server that delivers Chrome, Android, and other downloads). Google’s enormous influence means that other large companies have also seen the value Go provides and have adopted it themselves, including BBC Worldwide, Canonical, Heroku, Nokia, and Soundcloud.

5. Go Provides the Best Hourly Freelancing Rate

This is another reason Go is great for beginners to learn. Not all coding beginners are ready for a total career change and might prefer testing out their chops on a freelance basis before jumping into a complete career pivot. Go gives you excellent freelance rates as a beginner developer.

Upwork lists the average hourly rate as $64/hour, which is only topped by Objective-C. (Objective-C is Apple’s older language, soon to be replaced by their newer language, Swift. ) If you’re wondering why you should learn Golang, it makes sense to consider that even if you’re not ready for a job switch, you can still use the knowledge to earn money.

Unlike many of the other programming languages recommended for beginners like Python, Go is a specialty language and hence is in much greater demand. Learning Go in 2021 will give you the chance to test your coding skills and get paid well for them before necessarily taking the plunge and quitting your job.

6. Go Is Built for Software Engineers, Not Coding Academics

Most of us intuitively understand that it’s easier to learn something if you immediately grasp the value. Because Go is built to be a practical, problem-solving language, most of its features are intentional, and each decision in its creation is supported and outlined in the documentation. Unlike other languages, that have weird quirks that are legacy artifacts from when the language was designed to do something else, Go is intentional. This makes it ideal for beginners who want to understand the why and how behind rules.

For a start, you can look at Go’s naming conventions, which detail and lay out the case for each and every one of the naming convention decisions. The dependencies, semantics, and syntax are clear. The tooling that supports the language, including the go tool, gofmt, godoc, and gofix, is easy to use. In the words of the creator of Go, “Go is more about software engineering than programming language research. Or to rephrase, it is about language design in the service of software engineering.”

Why learn Golang? Because Go is a language where everything is done for a practical reason. This is what makes it so great for beginners to learn — there are few edge case exceptions, no historical quirks, and no unexplained legacy artifacts.

7. There Are Lots of Benefits Even if You’re Experienced

The final answer to the question of “why learn Golang?” in 2021 I’ll mention in this article is that once you’ve learned it as your first language, there is a whole heap of advantages you may not notice until you learn your second language or until you’re further on in learning Go. They may not be useful or noticeable now as a beginner, but as you go (pun intended) forward in your coding career, these will make coding in Go — and other languages — more enjoyable and rewarding.

For a start, it’s a fast language. As a beginner, you may not have a reference for comparison, but due to its compilation, static types, and efficient garbage collection, it’s one of the fastest high-level programming languages.

Secondly, it encourages good documentation habits. Google takes its responsibilities to document Go very seriously, of course, but it also helps and encourages coders to self-document. “GoDoc is a static code analyzing tool that creates beautiful documentation pages straight out of your code without the use of any extra languages, like JavaDoc, PHPDoc, or JSDoc to annotate constructions. Just English. It uses as much information as it can get from your code to outline, structure, and format the documentation,” writes KoFi Group in their write-up of Go.

Beyond speed and good coding habit-building, Go has a steady learning curve. While it’s possible to learn the basics in just a couple of hours, you get more out of it the more you put in.

For every beginner programmer wondering where to start with learning a programming language, a case could be made for several different languages. However, for the practical, efficient beginner coder who wants to spend their time wisely, there are fewer better languages than Go.

Go is easy to pick up, designed to be simple, built to purpose, and intuitive to run. Furthermore, it suits the vast majority of beginner coders who want to learn a language for practical reasons rather than academic ones.

In his keynote, Rob Pike says, “The computing landscape today is almost unrelated to the environment in which the languages being used, mostly C++, Java, and Python, had been created.”

“Why learn Golang?” is a great question to ask in 2021, as more and more languages crop up. It makes sense, particularly for novice coders, to pick a language that’s good for beginners and that will serve them in their career as programmers, whether it’s in a freelance gig, a project, or a full-time job. These benefits should make it clear to anyone that Go is an ideal language for beginners to learn in 2021.

Why So Many Coding Students Struggle Getting a Job After Coding Bootcamp

Zulie Rane — Thu, 19 Nov 2020 14:13:31 +0000

The post Why So Many Coding Students Struggle Getting a Job After Coding Bootcamp first appeared on Qvault.

Imagine, like so many folks, that you decide what you want to study when you’re just 18. You go to college, finish a four-year degree in mechanical engineering, and then realize what you actually want to do is get a job in coding. There are tons of benefits – pay, flexibility, personal satisfaction. It’s a no brainer.

There’s just one problem. The last thing you want to do is go back to school for another two or four very expensive years. After reading a bit online, you see that a possible route for you is getting a job after coding bootcamp. It seems like a sweet deal – you pay a fraction of typical college tuition and then are on your way to getting a coding job with no experience or degree.

There’s just one problem: the path of getting a job after coding bootcamp leaves you really underprepared a for the programming job market. “We see more and more students coming to Qvault because people are having a hard time landing jobs after taking a bootcamp or doing some web development courses,” says Lane Wagner, engineer and founder of Qvault, an online computer science education platform. That’s why so many coding bootcamp graduates leave their 15-week course, thinking they’ll glide into a job offer, only to find the process of getting a job after coding bootcamp is painful, arduous, and seemingly never-ending.

It’s frustrating because it can feel like you’ve done everything right: you’ve realized getting a programming job can be beneficial to your career and happiness, you’ve picked a language, found a course, and completed it – only to struggle getting a job after coding bootcamp.

Coding bootcamps don’t give a great understanding of the fundamentals underpinning how programming really works. Bootcamps are great for a lot of different reasons: they’re cheaper than a degree, they’re up-to-date on modern languages, but they tend to focus on practical skills over understanding theory, which means even after finishing one, you might still not really understand the mathematical and statistical theory that underlies that code you’re doing.

If you’ve graduated a coding boot camp and you’re tearing your hair out in frustration because you can’t seem to get a job without having job experience yet, stop applying to 20 places a day. Try to identify what’s causing you to get stuck at this last hurdle, and then work on a plan to overcome it.

Coding bootcamps and college degrees both have downsides.

There are so many good reasons to become a software engineer – the pay, the flexibility, the job security, not to mention the personal satisfaction. That’s why it can feel so disappointing to struggle after finishing a bootcamp: you feel ready and excited, and you don’t understand yet what’s holding you back.

As I mentioned above, bootcamps are a really fantastic way to get your feet wet in the programming world. They’re immersive, they walk you through a project like building a website or an app start to finish, and they can at least give you a sense for whether this is the work you’ll enjoy or not.

But they have serious downsides, too. First, the nature of bootcamps is outright exclusive for a lot of folks – there’s a huge upfront cost, and you have to be able to give up around 15 weeks of your life, full-time. If you have a family you’re supporting, a current job, or just don’t have bundles of cash lying around, this means you’re going to struggle to even get into a coding bootcamp.

Assuming you are somehow able to clear three months of your life to do nothing but attend a coding bootcamp, you’ve still got issues. Because it’s such a sanitized work environment, you won’t often get the chance to do the less-sexy sorting, aggregating, and storing data efficiently that companies will absolutely require you to do. And after you graduate, you might get to the interview stage for a job, only to find that you’re getting asked questions regarding data structures and algorithms that coding bootcamp just didn’t prepare you for. Plus, security and cryptography are almost entirely dependent on math knowledge that you won’t get from a bootcamp.

In short, even if you can attend a coding bootcamp, it’s not the complete solution many people think it is – you’re still lacking the fundamental computer science knowledge that helps you stand out at job interviews and will let you actually do the job you want to be hired for. People who try getting a job after coding bootcamp will find it harder than they expect.

The obvious answer to this is to study computer science at college, but that’s even more expensive and time-consuming, and plenty of folks don’t realize they want to do computer science until after they’ve already graduated college.

So what’s the solution?

Round out your abilities with a self-taught computer science study.

Your ideal solution is something that lets you learn these fundamentals, still get your applied practice, and do it all while still working, or raising a family. Luckily, the internet is an enormous place and there is an unending amount of content that can help you learn the fundamentals of computer science. YouTube, Reddit, and Wikipedia are all completely free and comprehensive resources that allow you to get to work.

First, it’s best to get a grasp of the holes in your knowledge. Make a list of computer science fundamentals that underpin the language you want to focus on (or use someone else’s list, like this one).

Then, try to complete a pet project that’s not in the same safe environment you’d get in a coding bootcamp. To make this a truly realistic experience, find some raw data to practice getting into proper shape. You can use datasets from data.gov, as an example.

Finally, if you have a solid idea of what job you want to go for, speak to as many of those people as you can. Read what they’ve written, what resources they recommend, what they do at work. The better sense you have of what tools actually got them to where they are today, as well as what their responsibilities are, the better you’ll be able to plan your own self-taught structure.

Ultimately, what you want is a way to create your own course, that you can learn at your own pace. If it comes with a community of like-minded folks who can help you on your way, even better. This is a perfect way to get around the common constraints of getting a job after coding bootcamp while avoiding going to college again.

Getting a job after coding bootcamp is closer than you think.

If you’re reading this article after graduating from a coding bootcamp and struggling to get a job, you might feel like you’ve just wasted a ton of time and money and you’re lost as to what to do next.

It’s true that folks who just learn to code with a coding bootcamp are missing out on the structural fundamental elements that bring them greater understanding. And yes, the consequence of this is that they may have a hard time getting jobs afterwards because their comprehension is patchy.

But there’s a solution, and all it takes is some grit. You already know you want to code. You already know it’s the right path for you. All you’re missing are the building blocks that will support you for the rest of your career. The solution is to invest more time in computer science learning, that focuses more on the math and fundamental concepts, on your timeline, and your budget. Your future as a programmer is closer than you think.

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