Are they worth the investment?

My story is about trying to learn JS to be able to create web applications and have a degree of understanding of what's under the hood in the tech world.

First of all I was an almost absolute beginner. I was 37, and have a created a professional track record as a Business Consultant specialized in Business Modeling and then as an entrepreneur who created 2 startups and failed one, bad. I come from Accenture and Coca Cola, but the more dynamic tech world always attracted me. Although Mexico City where I live is starting to grow as a tech hub, we're still far away from more tech havens such as SF, Kathmandú (met so many developers from there lately) or Santiago.

Knowledge is out there. Available in so many forms or shapes, in audiobooks, webcasts, youtube tutorials, platforms but also in more traditional forms such as bootcamps and universities.

Let's get back on why I chose the code path. My current startup, SOY is a platfom such as Fiverr, currently on a smaller scope and in mid development and we have a small team of developers. We're not in any sort of fundrasing (for personal reasons) but maybe in the future we will be. Being in LatAm, the funding scene is very scarce, VC firms ask that the founder is either a Stanford CS degree major or a Harvard BS graduate, or that has worked previously in JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley. Unfortunately, I'm neither three of those. And

I do believe a founder has to have a tech background if he's going to create & manage a tech startup.

So let's say it was more on the ego side of things and I honestly believe I can be a better founder and create better startup if we all speak the same language and understand the problems different areas go through.

The thought process I had was: first understand my constraints which means, when, what and how I wanted to learn. My constraints where as followed:

1. Overall time needed to learn the basics (to the level of a jr webdev)
2. My own available time to learn, which is in average from 7 pm to 10 pm. Mornings are my most productive time so I needed time to work and earn $$.
3. Interactiveness: Whatever path I decided to take, it was very important to get a real time tutor or answer.
4. Support system (community): Is there anyone out there to bounce ideas, study, etc?

As you can see, most of my constraints would take you straight to a bootcamp choice, but it wasn't that obvious. There are so many mixed options out there that the selection process was getting more and more complicated. I first discarded the option of "self taught" as so many youtubers claim (for reference please visit: "I taught myself 5 languages and a 6 figure salary in a week tutorial-buy-my-course"). My main reasons where that it didn't meet my criteria in any way. Although it has tutorials from absolute beginners that can barely create a google account to more advanced users, using youtube as a sole source of knowledge for my purposes, was out of the question. I did start many tutorials. And during the first 5 minutes had to pause. Look for more context in google, end up watching another tutorial for that tutorial. It felt like a never ending rabbit hole maze. I realised that it was so much easier to ask someone. Live. And get an answer in that moment. It might not be the "coder mentaility" where google is the god with all the answers which are mostly rants in stackoverflow, but I didn't know that yet.

Another problem is that when you decided to learn via youtube tutorials, there is no exact path. Or path at all. You really need to know what you are going to learn next, and what videos are the best to teach you that, etc. It just felt awfully complicated and I didn't feel in the mood or that it was the most productive use of my time.

I then started looking at learning platforms such as Coursera and Udemy for their courses. I bought some full stack ones that had amazing reviews. And I did started learning. Even finished the HTML portion of a coursera course and it was amazing, but that's when things started to get tricky. I started motivated, on a winning streak. Everyday for the first week, I took at least 1 hour of "class". But then, life gets in the way, and some days I didnt take the class. The problem, or my specific problem was, that although commited to learning, sometimes work takes priority, and then other things started to take a higher priority. I feel more responisble when there are other parties involved.

At the end, after 3 weeks, my learning was a bit stalled and realised that it was not the best place to go.

I then tried Platzi, which is such an amazing platform and has a massive amount of courses or career paths. It's like an all you can eat buffet of tech, marketing and UX knowledge. I already had the account for my dev team but hadn't actually used it myself. I loved almost everything about it and such a dedicated platform with comments embedded, questions, etc, was really good. Also, there were clear learning paths, like a career mode. Not only do you have the courses like: Basic Javascript or React components, but they have a detailed outline of all the courses to get where you want to go. Although all the learning was amazing and the platform makes you feel like you're in a "live class" with the UI, it wasn't live. I had many questions that were not easily found on google, like: can javascript warm my coffe?. But seriously, I started posting questions on the questions section, seeing so many answered by tutors, teachers and also other students. But time passed, days, weeks and I had no answers. That's when I decided that this wasn't working for me. Sometimes there are questions you can roll over, and then there are others that you need answered to get a full understanding. Like javascript promises. Or http request. Many questions are not in the "how do you do it category" but more on the "why do it like that instead of with ajax & jquery and be faster" or "why use postman instead of learning this".

So the next option was to find a bootcamp. I talked with pretty much all bootcamps available in Mexico and at least 5 in the US. The US bootcamps were discared inmediatly because they were half the price of a Stanford MBA (seriously, wtf). I actually thought before calling: money is not a constraint. But damn cuz, those gringo bootcamps sure cost a pretty penny.

So I decided to look inside Mexico. I ended up settling with Kodemia, an amazing school, relatively new, that takes thing seriously, very. Although most of the teachers are not full time (actually they don't have a full time bootcamp but part time), they are talented developers that are working in top tech companies in Latam. So they do keep it real, and there's a ton of knowledge to be shared there. The schedule is brutal though. Monday to friday, from 7 pm to 10 pm, and every other saturday. But what I can say now that it's finished is that it was an amazing engulfing experience.

Never thought I would like it so much. And lord did I question the fuck out of every subject I learned. I was so frustated of not being able to get real time answers, that I didnt keep any for my self.

Also, the curriculum in bootcamps are already settled, and already knew what I was going to learn and how that would help me achieve my goals.

And talking with live students in different parts, and also doing team work is quite enriching. Specially when you're github-ing. (it could be a thing). One of the most valuable things is creating projects. We did a Medium clone and it was hard as f*. But also you realize that even if you're Very good, doing everything on your own is kind of senseless and not always a very realistic choice. I mean, you can do your website and create API's to give you the beer of the moment, but creating a full responsive webapp CRM with full login-Auth0, it ain't gonna be easy.

One of the best takeaways, was that after the bootcamp, I did start again the youtube tutorials-coursera-udemy-Platzi learning buffet, and then, it made SO MUCH more sense. I knew what to learn, how to learn it, what would challenge my self to grow and what I needed to go over and over again to get the full grasp (yeah, I'm talking to you JS promises).

The bootcamp also taught me to have a slotted time every day. So now from 7 to 8 or 9, is when I start learning more or even work on side projects, just to get the gears and juices flowing.

So far this has been my adventure. I hope you find your way and let me know in the comments how you are learning or learned to code.