For anyone who wants to break into a programming career, coding “boot camps” can offer a lot of benefits: In exchange for a few weeks of your time, you learn a new programming language that can eventually translate into a well-paying job. But which boot camps are worth the time and money? Switchup, which collects data on boot camps and programming courses throughout the country, has a new list of what it considers the top 32 coding boot camps. In rating each institution, Switchup took into account everything from price and location to job support, alumni reviews, and instructor quality. Check out the latest developer jobs. Anyone Can Learn to Code (Chicago), App Academy (New York, San Francisco), BitMaker Labs (Toronto), Bloc (San Francisco and online), and Code Fellows (Portland, Seattle) composed Switchup’s top five. Before signing up for any boot camp, it’s worth taking a look at your broader career and education goals, and evaluating whether the language(s) offered by the boot camp align with those goals. You should also make sure you’re comfortable with the boot camp’s instructor-student ratio, schedule, and curriculum. It may also be helpful to ask an instructor or representative to walk you through a typical day at the boot camp, so you can get a better sense of its culture. Despite the rising popularity of boot camps, some employers aren’t convinced that 10 weeks’ worth of lessons are enough to handle the rigors of a full-time programming job. “Two months doesn’t prepare you for identifying serious problems and overcoming them,” Jason Polancich, CEO of SurfWatch Labs, recently told the Wall Street Journal. But as the first step to a potential career in coding, it’s hard to beat boot camps for their intensiveness. Image: Malll Themd/Shutterstock.com