Hi all,

It looks as though my tenure in my current job position (network/laptop administration) is nearing an end. I'm looking to change up my career path and pursue web programming. Reading about the so-called developer "boot camps" (here, for example) has given me hope that I might be able to learn the necessities for these skills in a short amount of time.

Can any of the brain trust here (especially around the SF bay area) render an opinion on taking this path?

It seems almost all these boot camps are training using Ruby on Rails, is that preferable to PHP or Python? I'm assuming that their decision is based on the demand for RoR in the area; a quick scan on Craigslist in my area (Sacramento) showed much less demand. A permanent move, while not preferable, may be in the cards.

I'm 38, and earned an AS degree in Computer Science back in 2000. I have done a fair amount of VB scripting since then when my job called for it. I also had loads of fun with BASIC on the trusty Commodore 64 back in the day. I had a fairly easy time getting top marks in my computer programming classes, and mostly enjoyed them.

Some factors give me pause. I am a PC guy, and have completely shunned Apple products. All the dev boot camps that I have seen use Mac OS X workstations, and recommend a Mac laptop. I also wonder if my age would work in favor of my being hired, assuming I completed the course. Are most companies looking for younger programmers?

If anyone could share some wisdom about their own web development/programming career, I'd be all ears. I'm not expecting anyone here to have attended a boot camp course, but I'd like to hear opinions on them if they're out there.

Macs tend to be popular in the web development circles due to a few factors:

1. Out of the box to up and coding is very quick. Ruby as well as PHP and Python, are installed by default. The OS also has the Apache web server built in to test with locally.
2. Very easy to test in various browsers, including iOS using the XCode simulator, and Android via it's development environment. With a few Windows VMs, you can cover IE testing needs.
3. Unix OS under the hood with enough parallels to the Linux servers the code is likely to be deployed to. Or just run a Linux VM to get the full test setup locally.

I can't speak too much to the languages. I do know Ruby was the hot thing in 2011 for web developers, not sure if it's already shifting yet. Essentially though, if you want to get into web development, you need to also develop Linux/Unix skills. A Mac can also be a more gentle introduction into this world then a pure Linux machine, or trying to graft Cygwin and other bits into Windows.

If you do go the bootcamp route, please share the experience here. I'm curious to see how effective they really are. For you, it sounds like you have some of the basics already for programming, so mapping your past knowledge to the newer languages shouldn't be too painful.