Other Tech, Huh? - Happy Bootcamp Story 51 of 100

"Sure, if that's the tech you are using..."

TL;DR: Students are no different than seasoned developers, tugged and pulled between more familiar, on one hand - and easier to use or more performant, on the other.

Cranky Tech Makes People Happy

Familiar tech is good. You want to use the same as "everyone else" or you code will be ignored and replaced because that's easier than figuring out something new.

So we get stuck with decades old tools that have long since been replaced by stuff that works better, and is easier to code. This is a constant battle, because coders also like replacing things, especially cranky tech that they have to work with every day.

A bootcamp is a microcosm of this constant battle. Familiar tech is our bread and butter - learn the familiar stuff that the enterprise already favors - that's the best chance of getting a job.

Free Choice Makes People Happy

Students come into a bootcamp and immediately start making their own choices, different than the ones we teach with. Eclipse was a dominant coding environment 10 years ago, so that's what our founder chose. to teach in.

IntelliJ seems to work better now, so our students tend to use that, instead. Not something we can, or should, fight. It all works out. Learn in Eclipse, work in IntelliJ. Your choice, any day.

Or, We teach server side full stack - it is simpler and easier to grasp for the initiate. But most of our students tend to choose client side for their Final Project even though we don't even teach it, and it is much more complex.

Time and again, it has proved best to teach an older tech, allow a newer tech, and not take sides.

Interviewing Employers Happy, Too

Who places our graduates? Overwhelmingly, it is companies using completely different technologies than the ones we teach with.

Turns out that when you hire one of our graduates, you are wanting someone who can figure stuff out and moves fast through a set of options with a great attitude.

"If you can do ... tech - you won't have any problem with the tech we use, you'll probably find that it's easier anyway," says a typical employer.

Not Always What You Think

Layout of an app or site can work with Flex or Grid. They are both horrendous, one takes a little less time to learn, so that's the one everyone tends to use, despite the advantages of the other.

Last week we ripped out an entire Grid layout and replaced it with Flex, live. No one there knew how to use Grid, so easier to just replace it. "But but but..." Nope, just trash it.

The happy story is that coders learn to be flexible. Rule number 1.