Update: That free coding bootcamp I laughed at actually got me hired

I kept seeing ads for a free 8 week Python bootcamp through City College and thought it was just a scam to sell me something. But after losing my job last month I figured I had nothing to lose. The instructor, Mark, walked us through building a real weather app using an API from OpenWeatherMap. Has anyone else tried a free course that actually paid off?

2 comments

2 Comments

anderson.gavin6d ago

Mark's a solid teacher, those weather apps are surprisingly useful.

dylanh972d ago

Actually Gavin, I've been tracking this stuff since before those apps got popular and there's a BIG issue nobody's talking about. Mark's lessons on barometric pressure and wind patterns are solid, but the apps are just guessing half the time. I compared three of them side by side for a month last fall and they all disagreed on what was happening 12 hours out. One said rain, one said sunny, one said clouds. That's not useful, that's just confusion. The real problem is these companies use different weather models and don't tell you which one they're pulling from. Mark should be teaching people to look at the raw data instead.