You evah been to Bahston? It’s home to a rabid fan base, exceptional seafood, the crown jewels of America’s college campuses, and some of the most important historical landmarks that materially shaped U.S. history.

Over the last few years, it’s also been home to some of the best coding bootcamps in the Northeast. As New England’s startups try to meet their insatiable demand for better coding talent, and their legacy counterparts undergo their own digital transformations, the need for software engineering talent in Beantown has never been higher. As Boston’s startup community continues to thrive despite the serious headwinds of the pandemic, companies are prioritizing securing talent -- a need that can feel more pressing than the completion of the Big Dig. (Beware: Longtime Boston residents may experience a twitch if you bring this up.)

Depending on which civil engineer you ask, Boston’s ambitious Big Dig project only became that much of a headache because the city didn’t ask the right questions. The same can be said about coding bootcamps. “What’s the best coding bootcamp” is too lofty a question to start your search. Realistically, you’re asking “What is the best coding bootcamp for me?” You need to consider the costs of attending, your return on investment, and what’s the most attractive to you: Job placement, core competencies of the coding bootcamp (data science, web development, UI/UX, cyber security), and what eventual jobs the bootcamp can set you up for -- in Boston and beyond.

As we begin an analysis for choosing the best coding bootcamp in Boston, you have to ask some questions that that will put you on the right coding journey for your career:

• What’s driving your interest in coding? What are some of the projects you’ve dreamed of working on that a bootcamp will help you gain the skills to do?
• What is your current coding proficiency? Coding bootcamps offer programs to different abilities, and the introductory exercises in Boston-based coding bootcamps will help you answer this question.
• Consider your budget. Depending on the bootcamp you choose, this may become a factor. While the average Boston bootcamp has different costs, most have several financing options for their students. We’ll discuss this in more detail later in this article.

If you’re interested in making Beantown your destination for a coding bootcamp, grab a Dunkin’ and hide your Yankee swag. Here we go.

The Benefits of Attending Coding Bootcamps in Boston

For so many industries strategically located in the backyard of world-renowned colleges and universities, Boston offers the richest talent hubs for coding in the world. Startups can lure talent from top-ranked universities like Harvard and MIT, as well as from top-ranked bootcamps like General Assembly, Coding Temple, and Launch Academy. And on the other side, Boston mainstays like Dunkin’ and GE who need fresh entrepreneurial thinking can source from both recent bootcamp grads and the wealth of professionals nearby. This is arguably the most target-rich environment for data science, computer science, and software engineering talent in the country. The city is packed with arts and entertainment, while not being as pricey as nearby

Boston’s attraction is more than professional. Those who have Boston on their shortlist for their coding education have a positive perception of its important history in The American Revolution, beautiful parkland, proximity to the natural wonders of Maine & Vermont, substantial salaries commensurate with the higher cost of living, and the increasingly diverse talent the city attracts. There are several other reasons why Boston is an attractive option for the aspiring software engineer:

• Coding professionals are in high demand. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the employment for software developers will grow 21% through 2028. This is four times higher than the average industry in the U.S. A software engineer earns a median six-figure salary, just under double the median income of a Boston household , and why the city is a good starting place for the aspiring coding professional.
  
  Coupled with HackerRank’s findings that full-stack developers are among the toughest jobs to find qualified candidates for, selecting an immersive bootcamp with a program that specializes in your area of interest can be invaluable in the marketplace.
• Loads of opportunities to contribute directly to the Boston community. Boston’s commitment to equity and workforce training for its citizens is commendable and it’s Smart Cities Council is working to connect underserved parts of the area with better connectivity. It might be a city famous for its New England clam chowder, but it’s also carving out some cred for its tech accelerators and incubators. Resiliency, proactivity, and community are undeniably a part of its reputation.
  
  The same is true for its bootcamps. The coding bootcamps in Beantown attract personalities with one core aspect in common: they are hyper-focused on addressing big and small challenges in areas like web development, data science, and UX design that can unlock value for public and private sector employees. The coding bootcamps in Boston facilitate the type of coding courses where students can code, collaborate on, and deploy projects that prepare them for real-world development teams.
  
  Choosing the right bootcamp will offer you more than just a good coding class. It will create an opportunity to learn how to position yourself as a respected programmer, work collaboratively with a team, and ideally be a catalyst for building solutions that change the world, no matter the programming language that solution is built in.

What makes a Boston coding bootcamp a great place to get started?

Boston is the largest and most famous city in New England. It ranks sixth on CBRE’s list of tech talent, ahead of tech hotbeds like Austin, Atlanta and Los Angeles. They’ll need them. Massachusetts has the third-highest venture capital value in the United States at $17 billion. This valuation is four times higher than the next highest state.

With an overflow of capital hitting Boston, the city is a solid recruiting pool for large and small companies looking for full stack web developers and other web development roles. Students gravitating more toward careers in data science also have opportunities to network with companies looking for expertise in Python, SQL, and more.

Lifestyle. Coding professionals in Boston work hard and see the fruits of their labor. The city is home to a few tech unicorns (most notably Circle and Cyberreason) that hire extensively in the Boston area. While coding bootcamp grads who get hired by some of these companies work hard, they also enjoy one of the better cities for work-life balance in the United States.

That means Bostonians play hard, too. Perhaps the most important personal investment a developer does outside of coding is eating, and there are plenty of options across all neighborhoods. The North End, one of the most famous neighborhoods in the country for Italian food, treats its neighbors and visitors to red and white sauce with both northern and southern influence. Not in the mood for pasta? Beantown’s Chinatown is home to stand-out dumpling destinations like Dumpling Cafe as well as Shabu Zen for hot pot. From the famous nets of New England fisherman to the fryers of an Irish pub, Boston has something for everyone.

Yes, Bostonians are proud, but they’re also welcoming provided you respect their sports fervor. The city has a deserved reputation for both working hard and playing hard. Craft beer has a strong presence in the city. Following in the footsteps of one of its most famous brands and brewers - Samuel Adams - the city’s home to a host of new upstarts. There’s nowhere like the epicenter of Boston Sports, the intersection of Lansdowne and Van Ness, to enjoy a craft beer and a game in one of the oldest stadiums in America, Fenway Park.

Boston’s reputation for nightlife, food, and history is rising along with its coding prowess.

Bootcamps that fit your style. While we’re seeing some positive indicators following the pandemic, future software engineers and developers naturally have different work styles and levels of comfort with an in-person working environment. Currently, most of the on-ground experiences have moved entirely online until coding schools feel they can guarantee the safety of their students, a mentality we can get behind. However, Boston offers similar on-ground opportunities as other large cities in the United States.

Immediate Accessibility. On-ground boot camp instructors have the ability to provide quick feedback on questions or projects, whether it be questions on coding challenges, specific information about the curriculum of a coding course, or their advice for applying to that dream data science or web development job you’ve been researching. This hasn’t changed as schools temporarily transition to an online learning format.

Reputation & Prestige. Boston’s coding courses also compete with the best engineering schools in the world, so it’s understandable that they’re in the shadow of the MITs and Harvards. However, being able to work and learn under world-class software engineering minds in your first (or mid-level) coding job is a benefit most other places in America (outside of the Bay area) don’t get to enjoy. Growing bootcamps like General Assembly are fully immersive, on-ground programs that have a strong on-ground presence in or within driving distance from downtown Boston.

Before Attending a Coding Bootcamp in Boston: Preparation is Key

Coding bootcamps in Boston offer several directions for their students. Depending on the chosen programming language, data science immersion, and/or design tracks you choose, curriculums will vary both on content, breadth, and on length. A “typical” bootcamp curriculum will have several paths that require a base knowledge of the concepts. Let’s explore what skills an aspiring software engineer, full stack web developer, or data science professional will need prior to entering the bootcamp.

Prior to enrolling in your bootcamp, you’ll typically need to complete a short interview around your coding ability and what’s motivating you to code. Most quality bootcamp curricula want to make sure you don’t feel overmatched in a coding class and don’t want you to struggle to keep up with the material. You’ll need to revisit the fundamentals of coding (e.g. the Python or Javascript logic you may not have used for a while). Highly reputable programs like General Assembly or Launch Academy will offer tutorials and support for less experienced, aspiring software engineers. allows each student to dive into the basics of coding in some of the most commonly used programming languages: HTML, CSS, Javascript, and Ruby.

One of the benefits of this important step before applying and then enrolling in the boot camp is that it allows you to assess your current skill level, and choose the programming course that best suits your budget and proficiency. Perhaps more importantly, preparing for your boot camp allows you to understand the nuances of coding languages, prepare for your boot camp interview, and engage in introductory projects with other students.

Preparing for the coding bootcamp and the evaluations you’ll complete will help ensure that you receive a return on investment from the time and money you put toward your coding education.

Cost of Coding Bootcamps in Boston

The cost of a full stack coding bootcamp in Boston isn’t that different from the national average. According to Nerd Wallet, the average cost for a bootcamp is close to $14,142, but several different payment options are available should you be exploring different ways to pay for a coding school.

If you’re considering paying for a coding boot camp upfront with a credit card, you can consider opening a travel card to meet the minimum benefits of a bonus card while earning miles. However, several other options exist. Many students use third-party financing options like Meritize or Ascent, two popular bootcamp loan options that provide a loan and feature grace periods for repayment. This may not be a bad option for a student projecting to earn a software engineer salary and budgeting after the course is completed.

Considering the high cost of living in Boston, there’s belt-tightening opportunities for all bootcamp students. Here are three great tricks to funding your coding bootcamp enrollment:

• Apply for every coding scholarship. Several coding bootcamps offer scholarships geared toward increasing the number of underrepresented coding professionals in the tech sector. Many offer scholarships incentivizing underrepresented LGBTQ+, BIPOC, and military veterans (through the GI Bill) to apply and attend the bootcamps. Several need-based scholarships are also popping up across different coding schools nationally.
• Research income-share agreements. Some bootcamp graduates pay for their tuition using income-share agreements (ISAs). An income share agreement is a written agreement between you and a bootcamp provider that says you’ll commit to paying the provider a percentage of your income for an agreed amount of time. This deferred tuition model is becoming increasingly more popular.
  
  A hidden advantage of ISAs is that they force you to calculate how much you will need to be paid per year in order to be able to live, commute, pay back your tuition, and save. Pay careful attention to the minimum salary you need to make before an ISA kicks in and that you don’t accept a web development job for too low of a salary. If your agreement stipulates that you must pay back the online coding bootcamp if you land a job making above $35,000 to $40,000 per year, that doesn’t leave you much room for living expenses. (The good news: The average salary for even an entry-level programmer is $50,000 per year, but those of you in high cost-of-living cities should be doing the math closely.)
• Project your salary earnings. Carefully evaluate the tech job you can realistically land and the median salary of your desired position. Is that desired position going to be paying you significantly more than your current role? Will it earn you a higher multiple several times over than the cost of the bootcamp itself? For example, if you want to be a full stack developer and or are also seriously considering data science roles, know the market rates for each of those positions.

You can also take a deeper look at the cost of coding bootcamps in our guide here.

Best Coding Bootcamps in Boston

If you’ve done your research and properly calculated the costs of attending a Boston coding bootcamp, it’s time to get matched to one in the area. Here are some of the best bootcamps to learn a coding language below the Charles River:

General Assembly. Similar to General Assembly’s fifteen other on-campus locations, this recognizable national program is one of the first schools researched for those looking to attend a Boston coding bootcamp. Conveniently located a short walk from South Station for every type of commuter, this coding school offers the prospective bootcamp graduate a full-time immersive, part-time, and online coding bootcamp option. Despite their impressive roster of partners they list as recruiting their alumni, you’ll probably find a handful of students that list the school’s proximity to some of the better food trucks in the city as another welcome benefit.

Coding Temple. A short walk from the Boston waterfront, Coding Temple offers full-time, part-time, and self-paced coding courses for its prospective bootcamp grads. This school offers a host of payment options, including for veterans eligible for GI Bill Benefits. They’re a little light on information on their student outcomes and job placement, so be sure to have a list of questions ready for the enrollment advisor should you be matched to this school.

Launch Academy. Launch Academy Boston has the most rigorous preparation phase we’ve seen from almost any bootcamp. The program recommends 11-weeks of guided preparation prior to the 10 week bootcamp immersion. Also located in downtown Boston central to the commuting option, In their pre-flight phase, Launch Academy offers foundational programming in Ruby and Javascript as well as HTML/CSS & the Document Object Model. Once you have the foundational knowledge, the ten-week intensive kicks off and completes with a career kick-off and six months of support for graduates applying to jobs in software development. We highly recommend asking the boot camp counselors to provide first and third-party outcomes and job placement metrics for students who have been hired full-time.

Deciding to Attend a Coding Bootcamp in Boston

There’s no place like Boston. It’s a town that’s proud of its heritage despite a few bad apples. The city that Ben Affleck and Big Papi call home is known for its competitive streak and overcoming adversity. Despite the global pandemic, major companies like Dunkin, The Boston Consulting Group, Liberty Mutual, and the TJX companies are reinvesting in their office space and continue hiring full stack developers, data scientists, and software engineers at highly competitive salaries.

If you’ve been thoughtful about what drives your interest in coding, analyzed the benefits of attending a bootcamp in Boston, performed a conservative earnings calculation to project your salary after becoming a bootcamp grad, and have a strong sense of what you want to pursue, we can match you with the right program.

Click here to find your match. Then run on ovah and pahk ya car. (You knew it was coming eventually.)