What To Know About Front End Web Development Coding Bootcamps

Introduction

Coding bootcamps are an amazing way to pick up much-wanted coding skills in a short period of time. A far cry from the days of needing a four-year degree to become a developer, coding bootcamps can take as little as four-to-six months to teach you the fundamentals you need to get your first job in the tech sector.

A major challenges when exploring coding bootcamps is understanding which one is the best fit for you. If you’re weighing your options, one of the best ways to get started is by exploring front end web development bootcamps. Usually considered the bootcamps type that lets you learn how to create engaging, user-friendly web and mobile app experiences, these bootcamps provide a strong grounding in the languages and tools employers expect from junior-level developer hires. And, as the starting point for more in-depth full-stack bootcamps, they can be the ideal way to begin exploring if coding is right for you.

What Is Front End Web Development

Front end web development refers to the work that’s done to make web and mobile apps look great and work really well across devices. In essence, it’s coding work that makes it easy and enjoyable to use a website or app.

A helpful analogy to help understand where front end development fits within web development in general is to consider a house. There are a lot of things behind the walls that are vital for making a house feel livable, everything from pipes and electrical to insulation and even a cement foundation. You can’t see any of these things, but they’re critical for having a great home. This is all the back-end.

In contrast, there are the parts of a home that you interact with every day that actually let you use your home, things like your kitchen and bathroom faucets or your heating and air-conditioning knobs. And, of course, there are the things that make your home look great like attractive siding and landscaping. All of the things that you can touch and feel are the front end.

As you can see, front end and back end developers work together to make any digital experience work smoothly. While front end developers make sure the experience is engaging, back end developers ensure that the nuts and bolts are in place to make sure it runs smoothly.

Front End Development Terms You’ll Learn About In A Coding Bootcamp

Because front-end development tackles everything about the experience of a website and app, you’ll usually see a set of terms used time and time again, including:

• Responsive Design: This term relates to developing web experiences that look and perform well across a wide variety of devices and screen sizes. It’s the practice of considering both content and performance when creating a digital experience. When you consider the host of devices people have—phones, tablets, desktops— and wide range of screen sizes that come with them, mastering responsive design means you’ve mastered giving all users a great experience no matter how they access your site.

• User Experience: This refers to a person’s emotions and attitudes when using a particular product or service. It can include everything from the practical aspect of the experience (e.g. did it solve the user’s needs) to the experiential aspect of the experience (e.g. was it easy to use). Front end developers aim to create user experiences that tick off everything a user expects when interacting with a website or app.

• User Interface: Related to user experience, the user interface is the process used to make to make it easy and efficient for an individual to actually use the website or app. In essence, it is the foundation or roadmap that is used to ultimately create a positive user experience.

• Client-Side Scripting: Think of a “client” as an individual’s computer. This means that client-side scripting relates to all of the code that takes place within an individual's computer browser like Chrome or Edge to actually make a website appear correctly. It’s the code that tells a computer how a user’s behavior should impact their experience.

You’ll note that all of these terms have one thing in common: giving an end user a website or app that they want to use. Keeping these terms and ideas top of mind means a front end developer cares about speed, performance, ease-of-use, approachability and effectiveness when creating any digital experience. It’s a lot of priorities to juggle, which is what makes front end development so engaging.

Programming Languages & Tools In Front End Web Development Coding Bootcamps

A quick search at the variety of languages used in front end development can be overwhelming at first. Yet, while this may seem daunting, a front end coding bootcamp should be focused on teaching only those languages that prepare you for a role as a front end developer after you graduate. As a result, these bootcamps will align their coding and tool training with the languages most in-demand by top software companies.

Front end development bootcamps will likely include some of the fundamental languages used across web development. In fact, while students will often be expected to have some command of these fundamental languages before beginning their bootcamp, they will become second-nature after finishing their bootcamp experience. These include languages like: 

• HTML: This language lets you create structured, formatted text. The heading, paragraphs and bullet points you see online are all determined by HTML. Additionally, this is the language that tells sites where to lay out images and other visual elements.

• CSS: While HTML is all about structure and order, CSS is all the actual ‘look & feel’ of the site. CSS will give you mastery over color, font and visual effects, everything you need to control how content is actually presented. This is what you need to make a website or app look great.

• JavaScript: This is the glue that holds HTML and CSS together. JavaScript lets you build dynamic web experiences by letting you develop user interactions such as capturing user data in forms or playing simple games.

To get into true front end skills and developer richer web sites, front end web development bootcamps will likely also include:

• Bootstrap: As a major library of HTML, CSS and JavaScript code, Bootstrap lets you more easily create responsive mobile experiences. By leveraging this library, you won’t have to create code from scratch. Instead, you can take advantage of publicly-available blocks of code to build your sites faster. However, you’ll still need HTML, CSS and JavaScript knowledge to customize this off-the-shelf code for your needs.

• React & React Native: React is a JavaScript library that will help you build functional user interfaces. It allows developers to build dynamic digital experience that don’t have to constantly reload content and information. It means building easy-to-use and faster experience, and therefore experiences users will actually want to use. Meanwhilte, React Native is just React’s mobile cousin. It lets you do all the great things React does but in the mobile realm so you can create mobile apps that can be shared on major app sites like Apple’s App Store or Google Play.

What Do Front End Coding Bootcamps Cost

The truth is, the cost of a front end web development coding bootcamp varies widely, based largely on the type of bootcamp you’re considering.

Traditional front end coding bootcamps have been full-time, in-classroom experiences. With these types of bootcamps, students are expected to give up their jobs to attend a fully immersive coding experience. Students go to class every day and work with full-time instructors. These offline bootcamps often take place in just a few large, metropolitan areas and the locations themselves are in pricier downtown areas. The overall structure of these bootcamps makes them fairly expensive, with many costing $10,000 or more for a complete bootcamp experience. They are effective, but pricey.

On the opposite end of the spectrum are purely online bootcamps. As the name implies, these bootcamps happen online only, and students can take courses at their own convenience. This makes online bootcamps extremely flexible, meaning students can learn while working, taking care of children, or fulfilling other responsibilities. Sometimes just a few hundred dollars, these bootcamps are certainly the most affordable solution out there. However, very few students actually graduate. The lack of structured lessons and peer or instructor accountability results in just a small percentage of students going through the entire bootcamp.

A fairly new bootcamp model has emerged to be both affordable and flexible while also offering students the high-quality training and accountability they need to actually complete the bootcamp. Called a hybrid model or a community coding bootcamp, this new model has students learning online during the week and attending an in-person workshop with peer and a dedicated instructor every weekend in their local community. One example is Nucamp, a community coding bootcamp. By leveraging best-in-class open-source content for their training modules, using co-working and other public spaced during their “off hours” for weekend workshops, and bringing on part-time instructors who are often full-time developers, these programs are able to keep costs down while ensuring high quality instruction. As a result, students can pay as little as $1,300 while still graduating with the skills they need to get an entry-level role in tech.

Prepping A Front End Web Development Portfolio

Any front end development coding bootcamp you select should include building a portfolio as part of your training. After all, once you graduate you still need to interview to get a job and begin a true career switch. The portfolio is your way of showcases to prospective companies that you have the right coding foundations in place to get the job done. By going through the coding bootcamp experience, you should be able to build a portfolio that lets you showcase your programming language knowledge, demonstrate how you problem solve and troubleshoot, and offer employers insight into how you explain your work.

A variety of different projects can be part of a strong front end development portfolio, including:

• One responsive page layout: Being able to build websites with responsive pages starts with being able to build just one single responsive page out of the gate. Developing your first page, and making sure it works well across browsers, devices and screen sizes shows true mastery of responsive design, a key trait of a strong front end web developer.

• Small JavaScript game: Even a seemingly straightforward game involves complex processes, everything from creating the desired user experience to simple data management. Building even the smallest of games shows that you know how to put these pieces together to create an interactive experience.

• A simple mobile app: Front-end developers are expected to have mobile know-how. Building a very simple mobile-app, like a tip calculator, will show that you can build experiences across mobile devices, and do so with standard front-end languages.

Of course, when you’re just out of a front end development bootcamp, you’ll have a far smaller portfolio than seasoned professionals. That’s to be expected! This is your chance to show potential employers that you have put the time and effort into learning the fundamental skills you need to hit the ground running. Just make sure your front end coding bootcamp includes portfolio-building so you have the must-have resource when you graduate.

How Much Can You Make After A Front End Coding Bootcamp

A lot of factors impact the kind of salary you’ll make after completing a front end development coding bootcamp. One main factor hinges on location. Organizations based in cities with a higher cost of living will of course have to compensate their developers more. Another key factor that plays a major role in salary expectations is a student’s pre-existing skills. Some students graduating from coding bootcamps will have spent years in related industries, meaning they’ve developed valuable skills that employers want and are willing to pay more for. In contrast, some coding bootcamp graduates are still relatively early in their working lives, Naturally, this means they’ll have fewer skills under their belts and their compensation will be based solely on the web development skills they’ve built over time.

That said, we can certainly look at data to begin understanding the types of salaries students can make after finishing a coding bootcamp. Bootcamp evaluator Course Report found that the average starting salary one year out of a coding bootcamp was $71,000. Notably, this was about $25,000 per year more than these students were making before their coding education. The research also pointed to one surprising finding: students who self-taught before, during and after their bootcamps made more on an annual basis than their peers who did not do this additional work. What this means is that students who are committed to learning and growing their skills will see that commitment pay off with a better salary.

In fact, looking further into a front end developer’s career, you see that salaries grow very nicely. Glassdoor publishes typical salaries for senior-level front end developers and has found that experienced front end developers can make a six-figure salary. In cities like Boston and New York, front end developers with five to ten year’s experience are likely earning around $120,000, and that’s before factoring benefits like health insurance and retirement funds!

Do Front End Coding Bootcamp Job Guarantees Work

While not all front end coding bootcamp students intend to switch careers after attending a bootcamp, the majority either plan to, or are actively using the bootcamp experience to test if it would be a career they would enjoy. As a result, many students find peace of mind when bootcamps guarantee that graduates will find a job after completing the bootcamp or will receive their tuition money back.

It can sound like a great guarantee. But, reviewing some of the fine print can often uncover criteria that make these guarantees far less valuable. For instance, you’ll often see guarantees that:

• Require A Certain Number Of Job Applications A Week: It sounds reasonable that bootcamps want to make sure graduates make a focused effort to find a full-time job. However, if you’re seeking out a particular type of role or live in a region with a limited tech industry, applying to a required number of roles may not make sense. Yet if you don’t do so, you won’t be eligible for the guarantee.

• Don’t Let You Turn Down A Job: You may have a certain type of job in mind, or a certain salary you feel is fair. However, if you are offered a role that is outside your focus or that is paying a non-competitive wage, you often can’t turn it down while still being eligible for the guarantee. This even includes jobs that are completely outside of coding or technology altogether.

• Consider Internships A Job: Coding internships are a fantastic way to get on-the-job training. But, they are by no means a full-time job. They can often be unpaid, and they don’t offer benefits. Unfortunately, some coding bootcamps will count an internship you have as a “real job” meaning if you don’t secure a full-time job after graduation, you’re no longer eligible for your money back.

As a result of all of these loopholes in front end bootcamp guarantees, a better way of evaluating a program is to see how well it prepares students for a new job after graduation. Is it teaching in-demand front-end languages employers want? Does the program include a chance to build a front end portfolio that will let you showcase your skills? Does it support networking with front end professionals so you can get your foot in the door? Using these approaches to assess a bootcamp will help you better evaluate programs that will truly support a career switch.

WANT TO LEARN MORE? For more on coding bootcamps in general, check out our Ultimate Guide To Coding Bootcamps.