5 Tech Cities You Should Consider For Your Coding Bootcamp

Table of Contents

• Cleveland, Ohio
• Miami, Florida
• Wilmington, Delaware
• San Diego, California
• Charlotte, North Carolina

We’ve picked five cities which are up-and-coming in the tech scene and have a great range of coding bootcamp options. When you think of coding bootcamps you might first think of cities like San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle and Austin. But those aren’t your only options. There are now bootcamps in almost 100 cities across the U.S.
 

• Cleveland, Ohio
• Miami, Florida
• Wilmington, Delaware
• San Diego, California
• Charlotte, North Carolina

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland Ohio may not seem like an obvious place for joining the tech community. It’s known for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the successful steel manufacturing industry, the NASA Research Center, and for having some of the best healthcare facilities in the US. But in the early 2000s, former Cleveland mayor Jane Campbell decided to make the city a technology hub, and appointed a technology czar. From there Cleveland was named by Intel as a “Worldwide Digital Community” in 2005, and now attracts so many startups that the Cleveland area is calling for more investment from the wider community.

Thriving local Cleveland startups include expense processing app Expensebot, startup accelerator Flashstarts, and apartment finder app Quo. Nonprofit business incubator JumpStart is also offering $500,000 in funding to entrepreneurs who move their startups to Ohio.

And with all those tech companies, comes a need for developers.

“The city of rock 'n roll is an ideal place for a bootcamp student,” says Andria Loczi of Cleveland coding bootcamp Tech Elevator. “For one, it's an affordable place to live with a variety of housing options in or around the city. Cleveland has really hit its stride with downtown renovation and lakefront development supported by unwavering excitement from local Clevelanders. The city has proven it deserves its ranking as one of the top 50 best places to live in America.”

• Tech Elevator launched in October 2015 and offers a choice of two immersive 14-week bootcamps in .NET or Java. Both bootcamps also cover client side web programming including JavaScript, JQuery, and Bootstrap. All Tech Elevator instructors have at least eight years of development experience. Jim, a student at Tech Elevator, points to the connections that the school provided in Cleveland: “Pathway Program Tech Elevator provided us gave me great insight into the field and prepared me amazingly well in finding a beginning to my new career. The ability to hear from and ask questions to leading professionals in the Cleveland area, allowed me to understand what exactly I was getting myself into and how I could accomplish my goal.”
• Boole Institute will start its first cohort in June 2016. The 16-week program covers full stack technologies including JavaScript, Node, and agile development.
• We Can Code IT was one of Cleveland’s first full stack coding bootcamp, launching in 2013. It offers 3-month full time and 6-month part time programs covering the .NET framework. With a focus on diversity, We Can Code IT offers grants to women, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Native Americans.
• Cuyahoga Community College (Tri-C) is launching Cleveland Codes in March 2016, a 24-week immersive coding bootcamp teaching C# and .NET. Tuition is subsidized for those who meet eligibility requirements.

Miami, Florida

Miami is known for its beautiful weather, beaches, tourists, and diverse culture. But it’s now the second fastest growing startup scene in the country, after Austin, Texas. Entrepreneurs are tapping into the South American and European markets, and established companies like Google, Twitter and Facebook now have offices there. CareCloud, Kairos, Clutch Prep, Flomio, LiveNinja, and Magic Leap are just some of the nearly 1000 different tech startups in the beach city.

Miami coding bootcamps have you covered in all the major technologies needed to jumpstart a career in web development. Whether you are interested in web design classes, programming schools, web application development or simply just looking to learn to code, Miami programming camps have a lot to offer.

There are currently five different course providers in Miami.

• Wyncode was one of the area's first coding bootcamps. They offer 9-week bootcamps in iOS app development and web development. Wyncode graduates work on projects for nonprofits in an effort to give back to the greater Miami community. Angel graduated in 2015 and says, “The nine weeks of the bootcamp were jam-packed with challenging projects, insightful and well-planned lectures, and drink-from-the-fire-hose abundance of opportunities to join the vibrant tech community of Miami.”
• Codecademy Labs is a part-time in-person coding program offered by online tech learning powerhouse Codecademy. The lab model has an emphasis on individual online learning, and over 12 weeks students learn HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Ruby on Rails.
• IronHack originated in Europe and was one of the first bootcamps to open its doors in Miami. They have 8-week bootcamps in both web development using Ruby on Rails, and iOS development using Objective-C.
• 4Geeks Academy is a coding bootcamp first started in Venezuela. They offer four unique 8-week learning journeys. Their digital marketing course covers front end-development and WordPress. Their digital products course covers Node, JavaScript, and Mongol. They also have iOS, Android, and internet of things courses
• Florida Vocational Institute offers a 9-month bootcamp designed to turn beginners into full stack web developers. The curriculum covers HTML5, CSS3, and vanilla JS, LESS, jQuery, .NET and PHP.

Wilmington, Delaware

Wilmington is having a self-proclaimed tech boom, and in December 2015 was named the fifth best US city to launch a startup. Local startups and tech companies such as DeliveryCircle, Trellist, Tech Impact, IndieGameStand and Futurelytics already have many local and national clients. And tech incubator 1313 Innovation is helping even more startups get their feet off the ground. Plus, Delaware is a corporate tax haven.

People wanting to learn to code in Wilmington can take advantage of coding bootcamp Zip Code Wilmington which opened its doors in September 2015. And national women’s coding organization Girl Develop It has a chapter in Wilmington, offering short courses and information sessions.

• Zip Code Wilmington is Delaware’s first coding bootcamp, and offers a 12-week, full time bootcamp learning Java and JavaScript. Graduates are funneled into a 26-week paid apprenticeship with Zip Code’s partner companies such as Bank of America, Barclays, Capital One and JPMorgan. Zip Code Graduate Wayne says “Zip Code Wilmington is a great start if you are looking to jump into software development. It has been an entirely worthwhile experience where I not only had a lot of fun and made a lot of cool developer-friends to network with, but I also got a job that is satisfying and rewarding.”
• Girl Develop It offers WordPress classes for beginners and support and advice from women coders in the community.
• Delaware Tech Meetup is a monthly gathering where tech professionals and anyone interested in the tech community can come and hear about new ideas, new startups, new technology, and meet others with similar interests.  

San Diego, California

San Diego is home to the largest concentration of military in the world. The defense industry represents one out of every four jobs with a heavy emphasis on robotics, and cyber security. San Diego has a thriving tourism industry as well as a healthy ecosystem of tech startups. Web development jobs are definitely on the rise in the area. Startups like education software CourseKey, 3D printing software AstroPrint, stock trading app SPARK Finance, data analytics service sensemetrics, and many more are looking for talent capable of filling positions in software engineering.

San Diego coding bootcamps include LEARN Academy and Origin Code Academy.

• LEARN Academy is a three-month intensive training program where students learn test-driven development using Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript and many other current languages. The course is followed up by a one-month internship where students will get genuine real life coding experience at a San Diego-based company. KC was impressed by LEARN’s network in the San Diego tech industry, “A big plus with LEARN is that they're well connected in the programming industry so you're exposed to meeting a lot of developers from around the world.”
• Origin Code Academy is a .NET focused coding bootcamp. The 12-week program is located in the startup incubator EvoNexus in downtown San Diego. They are currently offering guaranteed placement for their students with the companies that helped them shape their curriculum.

Charlotte, North Carolina

Charlotte may make you think of NASCAR and the Panthers, but it’s always had a thriving and changing economy. In the 1800s, North Carolina was known for its textile production, but as production was moved overseas, these closed down to make way for finance and tech companies. Charlotte is now the second largest banking center in the US after New York City, home to the corporate headquarters of Bank of America, the Wells Fargo East Coast headquarters, and other financial institutions.

Established tech companies like Cisco, Red Hat, Siemens and IBM have offices in Charlotte. And Charlotte is attracting new tech companies too, such as nonprofit edu-tech startup Digi-Bridge, app developers Punch Technologies, live music software shomolive, and M&A software DealCloud. And business incubators CityStartupLabs and Revtech Labs are now helping more entrepreneurs launch innovative companies in Charlotte.

To meet the technology needs of all these tech and finance companies, a number of coding, data science, and IT bootcamps have sprung up in Charlotte over the last three years.

• Tech Talent South offers 8-week full time and part time immersive web development bootcamps covering Ruby on Rails, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, and APIs. Students graduate with the skills to get a job in tech or start their own business. TTS graduate Scott says, “What I found particularly amazing was the willingness from others to help the newly found members of the coding community. I would have never known about certain events, people in the community, and how great the Charlotte tech scene is without Tech Talent’s help.”
• Level launched in 2015 and is a 2-month data science coding bootcamp, developed by Northeastern University. The bootcamp teaches data analysis visualization skills and technologies including SQL, R, Tableau and Excel.
• Base10 Academy is 4-week part time beginner coding bootcamp, which trains students in HTML, CSS, JavaScript and Object Oriented code. The aim is to equip students with the knowledge and skills to build their own simple websites and apps.

Have you done a bootcamp in one of these cities? Tell us about it in the comments below or write a review of your school.