Coding Certificates Charlotte, NC

Coding is writing out instructions for a computer to follow. Until they become self-aware and take over the world, computers need to be told what to do before they can do it. They are also very particular and need to be told exactly what to do and how to do it. They’re no good at interpreting things from context, overlooking grammatical errors, or distinguishing metaphors from literal statements. As the three aforementioned factors are distinguishing features of natural (i.e., human) languages, you can’t use English, French, or one of the Khoisan languages to program computers.

Thus, there is a need for languages that computers can understand and execute without the inconvenient ambiguities of inter-human communication. The first computer languages date back to the earliest mechanical computers, although the modern programming language dates back no further than the 1940s and the early days of electrical computers. The language native to computers is binary code, long strings of 1s and 0s. The challenge of inventing programming languages was to create something intelligible to both humans and computers. In theory, one could write a computer program in binary code, but it’s an extremely painstaking process that is very hard to debug and maintain. The alternative was the emergence of higher-level languages, the first of which, Fortran, was introduced in 1957 and remains in use today, chiefly for scientific computing. Today’s prevailing languages include Python, JavaScript, Java, Ruby, C#, Rust, and Go. Each has its strengths and weaknesses, which explains why large software projects are often polyglot projects constructed with multiple languages. Google’s code, for example, is written in a combination of C, C++, Java, Python, and Go.

Why Become Certified in Coding?

Unless there’s a catastrophic tech failure in which all the computers fail and we have to go back to oil lamps for light, horses for transportation, and abaci for calculating sales tax, computers are here to stay. As a result, there will always be a need for people who can write computer code, and write lots of it. The longest computer program on record is from the Human Genome Project. Concluded in 2003, it decoded 92% of human DNA with over 3 trillion lines of code. In comparison, the 2 billion lines of code in Google’s codebase are more manageable, or the proportionally scant 50 million lines of code that power Microsoft Windows. An average app is going to come in at closer to 50,000 lines, some of which can be borrowed from code libraries that exist to make coders’ lives less repetitive. As for the rest, that’s where coders come in.

The need for coders is only going to increase (at least until the computer apocalypse, after which the coders will probably be enslaved by their computer masters, so they’ll still have plenty of work), making coding into a growth industry in a career landscape in which technological developments threaten to eliminate more and more jobs. Fanciful dystopian scenarios notwithstanding, there is always going to be a need for coding and, thus, coders. Our society has become too dependent on computers for it to be otherwise.

There are essentially two paths to a coding career, defined by the time of document you get at the end of your training. A four-year college computer science degree is one way, and it ends with you receiving a diploma for your efforts. If you don’t have four years (or the money to finance four years in college), you can consider a certificate program. These prepare you for the job market by teaching the lean nitty-gritty of coding without the required classes and advanced math that usually figure as part of a four-year college degree program. You’ll study coding for several intense months (these certificate programs are often called boot camps for good reason), but you’ll be spared differential equations and writing an academic paper on Orwell’s view of dialectical materialism in 1984.

What You’ll Learn While Becoming Coding Certified

Coding languages abound, and the certificate program you select will introduce you to several of them. While some languages are too complex or not widely enough used to warrant being taught in a bootcamp, certificate programs regularly come back to some combination of HTML and CSS, JavaScript, Python, Java, and the slightly more advanced C#. These languages have different purposes, although computer languages can also be used off-label for purposes for which they weren’t originally intended. Before signing up for a certificate program, you should look into which languages are taught and decide which curriculum best suits you and your professional needs.

HTML and CSS

Virtually every coding certificate program begins by teaching students HTML (hypertext mark-up language) and CSS (cascading style sheets), the twin building blocks of the entire World Wide Web. Put as simply as possible, HTML is the language that gets your text up on the screen, and CSS is what styles it into something visually interesting (or headache-inducing, depending on how good the Web Developer’s aesthetic sense is.) Although HTML and CSS are means of feeding a computer instructions, strictly speaking, they aren’t programming languages stricto sensu. Although there is some debate as to whether HTML and CSS are what is called Turing complete (which can be oversimplified to mean that the language can perform any imaginable computation), there is agreement on the fact that HTML and CSS are not programming languages. They are, however, simple and do involve the writing of code, so most coding programs begin with them, both because they’re essential to any work with websites, and because they introduce students to the craft of telling a computer what to do.

JavaScript

Generally first encountered as part of a triad of languages together with HTML and CSS, JavaScript was initially conceived as a scripting language that makes webpages dynamic and interactive. Since then, however, it’s developed into an all-purpose language that can be used for both front- and back-end development. The front-end, or the client-side, is the part of a website you see when you access it. The back-end is the page’s or the application’s inner workings that connect to the server, hence the name server-side. JavaScript first appeared in 1995, when developer Brendan Eich concocted it in a mere ten days for the dominant web browser of the time, Netscape. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer made its début not long thereafter, and Microsoft’s developers reverse-engineered JavaScript to create a largely identical language called JScript. From the melee that resulted, JavaScript emerged victorious and, now under the guise of ECMAScript, was adopted as the standard scripting language by the European Computer Manufacturer’s Association (ECMA.) Since then, JavaScript has evolved into a general-purpose programming language and, as it’s reasonably easy to learn, a favorite of bootcamp curricula.

Java

Another language that is often taught in bootcamps is Java. Although Java sounds a lot like JavaScript, the two languages are, in reality, products of different companies and don’t have particularly much in common. The highly similar names were the result of JavaScript’s developers wanting to capitalize on the popularity of the Java language at the time of their product’s release. Java received its name because its developers consumed large quantities of coffee while they were working on a language that could be used for web and software development alike, especially for the creation of mobile apps on Android devices. You can do a lot with Java: its scalability (the ability of an application to manage increased data or user load, while maintaining functionality) and ability to process data make it even a good choice for big data projects. Versatile and not too challenging to learn, Java deserves the place it holds on some, but not all, bootcamp syllabi.

Python

Python is another high-level multi-purpose computing language. Invented in 1991 by Guido van Rossum (like JavaScript, but unlike most other languages, Python had only one developer), it’s named, not after Pythonidae, those giant snakes that make up for being non-venomous by swallowing 150-pound hyenas in a single gulp, but after Monty Python, a zany British comedy troupe that was responsible for such lunacy as the Spanish Inquisition sketch. Perhaps not as easy to learn as JavaScript or Java, Python is much taught in bootcamps, particularly those that focus on data science. Originally intended as a back-end language, recent trends and the development of frameworks such as PyScript and Brython have made it possible to use Python for front-end development as well. It has evolved into the language of the moment, and, given the high demand for Python developers, is well worth adding to your repertoire.

MERN Stack

One of the things that has made JavaScript development so popular and relatively easy is the so-called MERN Stack. Stacks are combinations of technologies, generally a database, something for the back-end of your application, and something for its front-end. MERN is an acronym for the four technologies it comprises: MongoDB, Express, React, and Node. MongoDB creates non-relational NoSQL databases, that is to say databases that can accommodate all manner of data and not just what can be squeezed into a rigid structure of required fields. Such database technology is necessary as the odds are that any website you construct is going to have some kind of database requirement, be it a list of customers, employees, or inventory. Skipping over the E for a moment, React is a collection of ready-to-wear bits of code that provide for front-end development of user interfaces. Node (don’t worry, the E is coming) is a runtime environment for JavaScript, which is a way of saying it’s a type of platform that makes it possible to use JavaScript for back-end development. Express, finally, is a framework built on top of Node that makes Node easier to use (as the speedy name would suggest). Put them all together, and you have a means for creating all manner of applications using JavaScript. Most bootcamps that teach JavaScript will teach all or at least some of the technologies in the MERN stack as a means of helping students get the most out of their JavaScript knowledge. Note that there are other stacks that can be used with JavaScript, including the MEAN stack that, far from being nasty to others, simply replaces React with Angular, a framework that is used for client-side development.

Coding Industries in Charlotte

Charlotte, as it becomes a leading tech destination for the second quarter of the twenty-first century, is already home to two of the world’s largest banks, Bank of America and Wells Fargo. Financial services companies such as Lending Tree and Truist also form an important part of the city’s industrial landscape. As financial concerns march forward, FinTech is becoming a more and more essential part of their daily existence. It can take many forms, from the latest payment schemes to cryptocurrency and software that can track it; all of them share one crucial aspect: they’re all built of code. FinTech apps are developed both in-house by large financial institutions or contracted out to external developers; in either case, coders are necessary to keep the economic zeitgeist marching onward.

FinTech isn’t the only field in which software firms in Charlotte do their dabbling. The city is home to a variety of development firms that create software for other companies in need of IT solutions. Moreover, the sector is growing as businesses and skilled workers alike migrate to the Queen City. Software firms exist in Charlotte in all sizes, from boutique operations to enterprises with getting on a thousand employees. And they all need coders.

A further tech area that requires the services of good coders is MedTech, a burgeoning sector in Charlotte that is home to over 100 startups in the field. Charlotte is home to an R1 research university in the form of Northeastern University, and overall, the healthcare sector is the largest employer in the city. Charlotte may not be there yet, but it is clearly moving in the direction of becoming an essential player in MedTech and healthcare overall. Once again, this type of progress is only possible with coders to make advances in software for everything from medical procedures to the more mundane world of billing into a reality.

These three substantial examples notwithstanding, the reality is that the ability to write code can come in handy in a very wide variety of jobs, extending beyond the limits of specifically IT development roles. That’s not to say that you’ll be called upon to debug a malfunctioning email program as an administrative assistant (but you never know); however, being able to communicate with a computer is a skill that is only going to become increasingly valued. If nothing else, the ability to cobble together a webpage by using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, while not the most intricate (or, perhaps, fulfilling) use of your coding abilities, is something that many a company will find helpful in a prospective employee. There are so many different facets of coding that work for coders, in Charlotte as elsewhere, is going to remain plentiful.

Coding Careers in Charlotte

In general, economic indicators for Charlotte and Mecklenburg County are positive, as figures gathered by the Charlotte Regional Business Alliance show. As relates specifically to the information industry, figures show an increase in jobs in the field of over 10% from pre-pandemic levels to mid-2023. Even greater is the increase from pre-pandemic levels for the financial activities industry: there, the number is around 21%, with a year-over-year increase of 2.7%. These figures confirm the fact that much of what you’ve heard about Charlotte as a growing employment hub is true. While numbers for the manufacturing sector are indeed stagnating, those for the sectors essential to Charlotte’s twenty-first-century industrial profile are all most propitious.

Meanwhile, salary figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the bistate Charlotte/Concord/Gastonia area (as the BLS defines the region) show that, out of the 1.2 million people working in May 2022, the umbrella Computer and Mathematical Occupations rubric accounted for approximately 56,000 jobs. The macro category also reveals a location quotient of 1.31, a favorable indicator of the fact that people are more densely employed in the field in the area than the national average.

The sub-fields that most involve coding are Software Developers and Computer Programmers. Among the former, there are almost 18,000 people employed, with a location quotient of 1.36. More to the point, their salaries primarily fall into the $125,000 to $130,000 range, which falls admittedly a bit below the roughly $133,000 figure for the country as a whole, but which is also mitigated by a cost of living that is 2% below the national average. When compared to other cities known for their financial and tech sectors, those figures should appear highly inviting. (Charlotte is second only to New York City for the importance of its financial sector, and New York has the dubious distinction of being the most expensive city in the world.) As for Computer Programmers, who are distinguished from Software Developers by their stronger concentration on coding-specific activities, their numbers are relatively small in the area: only 910 people subscribe to that job description; the field pays between $110,000 and $115,000 per annum. That’s more than the mean annual wage for the country (which is approximately $102,000 per annum), a factor that helps to balance out the relatively low location quotient of 0.80.

Should You Pursue a Certificate or Certification

Although the words are very alike, certificate and certification carry different meanings in the information technology and human resources spheres. If you attend a certificate program, you’ll be awarded a certificate of completion at the end of your class. In all but name, it’s a diploma and the thing that shows that you have an education in coding. Certification, on the other hand, is awarded to people who have sat for an exam that objectively tests their coding knowledge in a particular language or platform. The differences between the two should be apparent: one (certificate) shows that you’ve participated in a course, and the other (certification) tests your knowledge using an impartial barometer. There are a lot of coding certifications out there; you should do some research before forking over the money for an exam voucher.

Broadly speaking, certificates and certifications come into play at different stages in a coder’s career. For those starting out, a certificate is generally sufficient to awaken the interest of hiring directors and get you a job. Compare that to the autodidacts who learned to code from tutorials and books and have no certificate to attest to their labors. They may well know how to code at a very high level, but, with nothing to show that they’ve studied, they’re going to have trouble getting past the initial resume screening to get a technical interview at which they can prove that they know what they’re doing. Certifications very often don’t come into play until you’re further along in your career and require a credential that will attest, not only to what you’ve learned in school, but also to what you’ve learned from on-the-job experience. That said, entry-level certifications for those fresh from their training such as the one offered by the International JavaScript Institute, do exist, and some certificate programs will even prepare you for them.

Top Coding Certificate Programs in Charlotte

A certificate program will teach you what you need to know to secure employment as a coder. As far as the Charlotte landscape is concerned, you’ll have a generous selection of online certificate programs from which to select. The evolution of the bootcamp zeitgeist has caused nearly all educational activities to shift to online delivery platforms, be they with live instructors recreating a traditional classroom experience, or self-paced tutorial modules that you study at your convenience. The most immediate benefit of live online instruction is that you don’t have to commute to class and can study anywhere you’re comfortable and unlikely to be disturbed. If you’ve chosen a self-paced class (or want a change of scene to do the copious homework that comes with bootcamp study), you can always take your laptop on a field trip to locales such as the Wooden Robot Brewery or Resident Culture, both South End hangouts with plenty of space to work, plenty of coffee to drink, and beer on tap for when you’ve done with your studies and need to unwind from too much const, if and switch.

University of North Carolina at Charlotte/edX: the Coding Boot Camp at UNC Charlotte

In cooperation with ed-tech company edX, UNC Charlotte offers a coding bootcamp that is available in full- and part-time options. Despite the affiliation with a Charlotte-area school, both versions are conducted entirely online, with students participating in a live class that just so happens to be taking place in cyberspace. The curriculum begins with HTML and CSS, before moving on to JavaScript, which is the main focus of the bootcamp. Students learn to construct full-stack applications using JavaScript together with Node.js, MySQL, MongoDB, jQuery (a JavaScript library), and Bootstrap (a front-end development framework.) The full-time program meets from 10:00 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. weekdays, and also involves 20 to 30 hours of work outside of class. The part-time program meets three weekday evenings per week, from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. All times are Eastern. The application process includes a logical reasoning assessment and an interview. The price of either version of the bootcamp is $12,245. Interest-free payment plans are available, and there is a $1,000 early registration discount for those paying in full.

Students benefit from a variety of support networks. In addition to the in-class instructors, participants are able to work 1-on-1 with individual tutors when necessary. A student success network keeps in touch with students via Slack to handle procedural matters, and a career services team is at participants’ disposal to prepare them for the job market. The career services team provides resume review and interview coaching so that students are ready to look for work as soon as they complete their bootcamps. Graduates receive access to self-paced teaching materials that will allow them to begin learning Python, Java, Amazon Web Services (AWS), and even C++.

Wake Forest University/Fullstack Academy: Coding Bootcamp

Winston-Salem’s Wake Forest University’s School of Professional Studies has partnered with Brooklyn, NY-based Fullstack Academy to offer an online coding bootcamp that is available either as a full-time (16 weeks) or a part-time (28 weeks) undertaking. While Wake Forest is situated in North Carolina, the bootcamp takes place entirely online, with live classes that enable students to interact with the bootcamp faculty as well as with each other. The curriculum does, however, incorporate self-paced independent learning assignments. The syllabus covers HTML, CSS, JavaScript, React, Redux (a JavaScript library that can be used together with React to create user interfaces), and SQL relational databases. The course culminates in a full-stack capstone project. Full-time sessions run from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Eastern Time, five days a week; for the part-time program, classes meet three times per week, with a choice of times from morning, evening, late evening, or weekends. An assessment factors into the admissions process. The price of all versions of the bootcamp is $14,995, with an assortment of payment options available.

A complementary starter course is available to prepare students for success in their boot camp studies. The career services team covers all the requisite bases, from 1-to-1 sessions to phone chats prior to major interviews to workshops covering such topics as resume polishing and salary negotiation. The career services team also works to find opportunities for students. The teaching method stresses pair programming: participants are teamed together to solve coding challenges, mirroring the way in which real-life coders work.

Noble Desktop: Software Engineering Bootcamp

Situated in New York City, where it offers its classes live and in-person, Noble Desktop has been providing IT education since 1990. Its Software Engineering Bootcamp is a 20-week full-time online program of entirely hands-on, entirely live instruction with no self-paced modules. The terrain covered includes HTML, CSS, JavaScript, the programs of the MERN stack, and, for back-end programming, Python with Django, a framework that dramatically facilitates development with the last-named language. Classes meet from 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Eastern Time, five days a week, with some 10 to 20 hours per week of homework for most of the program. The cost of the program is $10,995; 0% financing is available. A somewhat shorter version of the program is available as well: the Full Stack Web Development Certificate omits the Python programming modules, and is priced correspondingly lower at $7,995.

Noble Desktop includes a generous variety of extras with your tuition. With the more extended program, you will receive a dozen 1-to-1 mentoring sessions that can be used for everything from drilling concepts learned in class to resume polishing to interview coaching. (Note that Noble Desktop does not provide job-search services, preferring to concentrate on teaching.) A free retake option is included that gives you the chance to take part (or even all) of the class again within a year of completing the program. Recordings of classroom sessions are made available for participants as well, should you have trouble assimilating some of the material covered in class. Class sizes are kept intentionally small (usually smaller than 12 students) to ensure sufficient attention from the instructor. Custom scheduling is a possibility as well. Finally, by way of a bonus, you are welcome to take either Noble’s SQL or its WordPress bootcamp (18 hours of class time each) to flesh out your education.

Coding Dojo: Software Development Bootcamp Online

Coding Dojo is part of Colorado Technical University, which is based in Colorado Springs and specializes in business, management, and technology degrees. CTU has been in existence since 1965, and, unusually, the credits from its bootcamp programs can be used towards a degree. Coding Dojo offers its Software Development Bootcamp in either full- or accelerated part-time iterations. The full-time bootcamp requires 16 weeks to complete, with classes meeting every weekday and a weekly workload estimated at 70 to 90 hours. The part-time version is more flexible, and can take anywhere from 18 to 34 weeks to complete with an estimated weekly workload of 30 hours. Unlike many other bootcamps, Coding Dojo teaches a three-stack curriculum, following the principle that, as with natural languages, the more coding languages you know, the easier a time you’ll have in learning others. The bootcamps are conducted online with live instruction and hands-on start-coding-from-the-first-day instruction. Following an introduction to basic programming concepts, the class continues to web development with the expected HTML and CSS, before tackling three full stacks: Python with MySQL and Flask (a “micro-framework” designed to assist with web development); JavaScript with the MERN stack and Socket.io, a further JavaScript library that connects servers and clients in real-time; and, finally, a choice between Java and C# for the last four weeks of the course. The part-time version involves a substantial amount of asynchronous self-study as well as three weekly one-hour lectures in the early evenings, Mountain Time. The application process involves a half-hour interview but no assessment. The price of the full-time bootcamp is $16,995; numerous financing options are available. The part-time option gives students a choice between studying one, two, or three stacks, the price varying accordingly ($9,995 for one stack, $13,495 for two, and $16,995 for all three.)

In addition to the unusual three-stack curriculum, Coding Dojo provides a suite of career services to the participants in its classes. These include preparing resumes, LinkedIn profiles, and GitHub portfolios. (GitHub is a developer platform that allows developers to manage and store their code.) Additionally, the career services program partners students with a career services manager, whose job is to guide them through the job search process. Mock interviews, technical interview guidance, and even help with salary negotiations are also offered. Coding Dojo makes its career services available to graduates throughout their lifetimes. The school holds virtual open houses for prospective students, and also has several free resources available on its website.

General Assembly: Software Engineering Bootcamp

General Assembly has been providing bootcamp and other IT classes since 2011, and, to date, has served a hundred thousand students worldwide. The school is a member of the Adecco Group, one of the world’s leading recruitment and staffing consulting firms. The Software Engineering Bootcamp is a 12-week online program (full-time only) that combines live in-class learning with self-paced modules and extended daily practice sessions with faculty available to help when problems arise. Eventually, students work in pairs, the whole teaching process mimicking the daily cycle of an actual workplace. After-hours homework is also required, with night teaching associates available to help as needed. The program begins with 14 hours of self-paced pre-work that introduces students to programming concepts as well as HTML, CSS, and basic JavaScript. The course proper essentially teaches full-stack JavaScript, with a few detours through such technologies as Angular, Ember, and AJAX. The program also takes a detour through AI, including showing how ChatGPT can be used to debug Python code. Total tuition for the program is $16,450. Prepayment discounts, payment plans, and private loans are available to finance the cost of the bootcamp.

Each participant in the bootcamp has a personal career coach whose role is to assist students from the first day to obtain employment. That includes developing a personal brand, a GitHub portfolio, and techniques for acing both personal and technical interviews. General Assembly has a wide and international network of professional contacts upon which to draw, the better to assist graduates in their job searches. Hiring panel discussions and guest speakers are included in the career services program. Graduates obtain discounts on further GA courses to deepen their coding knowledge and embark on a lifetime of learning.