{"id":2163,"date":"2020-09-11T11:13:00","date_gmt":"2020-09-11T09:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/?p=2163"},"modified":"2020-09-11T11:13:00","modified_gmt":"2020-09-11T09:13:00","slug":"what-coding-courses-dont-teach","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/blog\/what-coding-courses-dont-teach\/","title":{"rendered":"What coding courses DON\u2019T teach \u2013 and why it really matters"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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In my mind there is a little tally counter that keeps track of how many days I\u2019ve gone without coming across the same question:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why should I pay to study coding, if I can learn it by myself for free?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And if you know anything about the educational side of programming, you won\u2019t be surprised to learn my counter rarely makes it to 20.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, I work in a coding school, and I want to be absolutely clear from the outset \u2013 that is a good, legitimate question which I would expect any smart student to ask herself. After all, the world of programming \u2013 and of tech in general \u2013 has been developing much, much faster than that of education, to the point that a university textbook published within the last couple of years may already include some outdated applications. And the internet is flush with free videos, blogs and tutorials with titles like \u2018Build a Professional Website in 24 Hours\u2019 or \u2018Become a Front-End Developer in 4 Weeks\u2019. So why shouldn\u2019t you \u2013 or anyone \u2013 explore these options?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026And this is the point where almost every conversation starts going in the same direction: yes, you should<\/em> explore free tutorials, though depending on your profile and your style of learning, you should also consider other options that let you work in a team, build a network, get access to content, and so on so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bizarrely, as long-winded as some of these discussions can get, they never seem to zero in on what may be the single greatest advantage professional bootcamps have over some 99% of the free material out there. You\u2019d almost think it was some kind of secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As someone who knows this business from the inside, I want to take a moment to let you in on that secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finding Your Own Path<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s what nobody is telling you: the greatest strength of professional bootcamps lies not in what they teach, but in what they don\u2019t<\/em> teach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does that sound counter-intuitive? It should absolutely sound counter-intuitive. That\u2019s probably the reason you haven\u2019t heard it before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you want me to be more precise, I\u2019ll be precise: professional bootcamps do not teach you to be a coding monkey.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing about free online courses, by comparison, is that they are all formatted as something you read, watch,<\/em> or listen to<\/em>. This means that there is very little they can do beyond giving you a set of step-by-step instructions and asking you to follow them. Creative instructors can tinker a little with the order of these steps or include all sorts of addenda on questions of method, but essentially that\u2019s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This is not to say that these courses are worthless \u2013 far from it! There are so many good and useful things that can be learned by following instructions. But it\u2019s like studying the \u201chow\u201d without bothering to learn the \u201cwhy\u201d. You will have gaps in your knowledge, and worse \u2013 you might train yourself to believe that those gaps are supposed<\/em> to be there. You might normalize ignorance, which is the opposite of learning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A professional bootcamp designed by people who know what they\u2019re doing will keep students from straying that way by providing something that free online courses by their very nature can\u2019t offer \u2013 critical feedback.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Educational feedback is something that does not have a syllabus, does not have a module, does not have a textbook. An instructor can\u2019t \u2018plan\u2019 the feedback she will provide, because it has to be tailored to what each individual student has submitted. (This is also why these bootcamps are usually so heavy on complex, first-hand, creative assignments).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In at least one sense of the word, it is accurate to say that giving feedback is not \u2018teaching\u2019. Rather, it is preventing others from teaching themselves the wrong things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This, I feel, is the most valuable and simultaneously the most underrated quality of professional courses over free tutorials. There is much to be said about what they offer in terms of content, networking, and career prospects, but whenever I am asked why to take a paid course, what I always come back to is this, critical feedback. Find the learning path that works best for you. But whatever you do, make sure you always follow your own path, and not just somebody else\u2019s step-by-step. Don\u2019t be a coding monkey when you can be so much more.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professional coding bootcamps have one crucial advantage over free courses \u2013 it\u2019s the one that nobody is talking about.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":2160,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-coding"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2163"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":62649,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2163\/revisions\/62649"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2160"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wbscodingschool.com\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}