Best Coding Certificates Portland, OR: Find Courses & Onsite Training

Learn More About Portland Coding Certificates

What is Coding?

To code is to write instructions for a computer to execute. Although computers will eventually become self-aware and take over the world, for the time being, humans can still push computers around and tell them what to do. Lacking human brains that can understand things from context and see past grammatical mistakes, computers need to be told precisely what people want from them. Natural (human) languages lack this sort of precision, which means that you can’t use Dutch, Danish, or Dagbani to program a computer. Even invented conlangs like Dothraki are too ambiguous for computers to understand.

That led to the creation of languages that computers can comprehend. In their embryonic form, such languages go back to the era of mechanical (non-electric) computers, and, once electricity revolutionized the computer, programming languages came into their own. Computers have a mother tongue in binary code, that is to say very long strings of 1s and 0s, but, while a human could possibly write commands using only the two words “on” and “off”, programming in binary code is highly impractical even for simple tasks, and just about impossible with the kind of complex programs today’s computers have to execute. Thus, the development of languages that represent something of a compromise between computers’ laconic two-word vocabulary and the vocabulary and syntax of natural languages. The first high-level language—a language whose syntax is intelligible to humans—was Fortran, which dates back to the 1950s and is still in use today, primarily for scientific purposes. Over the intervening almost 75 years, the digital world has gone through hundreds of languages, with names ranging from ALGOL through to ZOPL. Today’s programmers tend to gravitate towards high-level languages, the most popular of which are JavaScript and Python. Other languages in current use include Java, Ruby, C#, Rust, and Go. And, just as French is the Language of Love, computer languages generally have a predilection for one purpose or another, although some have outgrown those boundaries and become multi-purpose languages suited to the development of entire software applications.

Why Become Certified in Coding?

Unless there’s a massive failure of technology that transports everyone back to the heyday of the town of Bedrock, computers are going to remain a part of daily human life for the foreseeable future. Coding is a big piece of that future. To get an idea of how much code projects involve, the Human Genome Project, which concluded in 2003, succeeded in mapping 92% of the human genome to the tune of more than three trillion lines of it. That completely dwarfs Google’s entire codebase, which occupies an already gargantuan 2 billion lines. Windows takes up a modest 50 million lines, while the average app takes up 50,000 lines of code. Compared to the 14,233 lines in the Divine Comedy, that last figure almost seems manageable. True, code libraries abound, and they are chock-a-block with ready-made code that you can put into your app without having to write every line, but, even with these specialized repositories of computer instructions, people who can write code are still extremely necessary to civilization’s technological future.

Such people are called coders, or, if they’re involved with other aspects of the software creation process as well as writing code, software developers. And the already urgent need for them is only going to increase. Society has become too dependent on computers for coders to become obsolete any time soon, and that’s even factoring in the frightening progress being made by AI. (An example: ChatGPT can be used to debug Python computer code.)

To become a coder, you have essentially two options: a four-year computer science degree and the diploma that goes with it, or the far more financially expedient option of a concentrated program that focuses on how to code and the certificate that accompanies it. Certificate programs, which are also known as bootcamps, teach you in a matter of months, not everything you’d learn in college in four years, but, rather, the coding skills necessary to get a job. Part of what makes that possible is eliminating required courses such as the advanced math required of computer science majors, and things like general studies courses and the five-page papers on “The Knight’s Tale” they involve.

What You’ll Learn While Becoming Coding Certified

There are some 700 computer languages out there (compare that to 7000 natural languages in use somewhere on the planet), but most programming today is done in a couple of handsful of them. The job of a bootcamp is to get you fluent in at least a few of the most popular languages, so don’t expect to learn ZOPL, a low-level language from the 1970s that is nearly extinct, at a bootcamp for beginners. What you almost certainly will learn is how to use HTML, CSS, at least some (and more likely a lot of) JavaScript, and perhaps Python, Java, and, in rare instances, even C#. Not all certificate programs teach the same languages; you’re thus going to have to do some research into which ones will best suit your professional needs before signing up for a bootcamp.

HTML and CSS

Pretty much every coding certificate program is going to start off by teaching HTML (hypertext mark-up language) and CSS (cascading style sheets.) Virtually every webpage is constructed of these two languages, the first of which gets your text and images onto the screen and the second of which styles the text into something appealing and attractive. Beware, however: although HTML and CSS are means of giving a computer instructions, neither is a programming language strictly speaking. The occasionally heated online debate as to whether HTML and CSS are programming languages may seem like so much splitting of hairs, but, from the standpoint of someone brand new to the writing of code, when you write instructions in HTML and CSS, you’re still coding, and it is thus that you’re probably going to get your first taste of typing stuff into a code editor and seeing whether your computer can turn it into a webpage.

JavaScript

HTML and CSS are rarely encountered as a pair, as they are only capable of creating static webpages. If you want your webpage to actually do something, you’re going to need something that can make a webpage interactive and dynamic. That something is a programming language (and, this time, it is a language) called JavaScript. Practically every web browser contains a JavaScript engine that allows it to execute JavaScript code and allow for everything from drop-down menus to shopping carts. While that’s how you’re going to get your first taste of JavaScript, it has expanded into an extremely popular multi-purpose language that can be used for front- (the part you see) and back (the part the server sees) end development alike. JavaScript was cooked up in only ten days by programmer Brendan Eich for Netscape, the browser that was the Chrome of its day. The language first hit an unsuspecting world in 1995, and was promptly reverse-engineered by Microsoft for use with its internet Explorer browser. This led to the need for an established standard scripting language that could be used across browsers, a war that was won by JavaScript, under cover of ECMAScript, the ECMA standing for European Computer Manufacturers Association. JavaScript is extremely popular, not too difficult to learn, and can be used for most programming needs. Small wonder that it factors into most bootcamps, oftentimes to the exclusion of further languages.

Python

The other big programming language of the moment is Python, which, like JavaScript, is both high-level and has become multi-purpose. Also like JavaScript, it was invented by one person, Guido van Rossum, who named his 1991 creation, not after snakes, but after the comedy troupe Monty Python, which was popular at the time for zany sketch comedy and full-length movies, including Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Python even comes with its own philosophy: the Zen of Python, which establishes the language’s prioritization of legible, lightweight code in such dicta as “explicit is better than implicit.” As a result, Python isn’t overly complex to learn (although it is notoriously tricky to master), and is taught in bootcamps, especially those that center on data science, as the language is well-suited to performing complex computations. Originally a back-end language, it is now used for front-end programming, and, indeed, you can build an entire application using nothing but Python.

Java

A further high-level multi-purpose language that appears in bootcamp curricula is Java. While the name sounds a lot like JavaScript, the languages aren’t related, something that has confused many aspiring programmers. At the time that JavaScript was released, Java was all the rage, and someone thought it would be terribly clever to piggyback onto Java’s success and call the new scripting language JavaScript. Java was the product of a team at Sun Microsystems that drank many cups of joe while coming up with the language. Java can be used for both software and web development, and comes in especially handy when you’re trying to invent an app to run on Android mobile devices. You can even use Java for Big Data projects. It’s not too terribly difficult to learn, which explains its place on some certificate program syllabi, although it’s definitely not considered a first language.

MERN Stack

The MERN stack is one of the reasons why JavaScript has become so popular. It’s a combination of tools and technologies that enable developers to use what was once a scripting language for so many of their programming needs. Stacks generally comprise a database and the necessities for creating both front and back ends of applications, and MERN is no exception. The acronym stands for MongoDB, Express, React, and Node. MongoDB is used to set up non-relational databases (i.e., a database that can accommodate all manner of data in all kinds of shapes and sizes), as, sooner or later, an application is going to require a place to store data. The E is for Express, which comes second because it starts with a vowel; in reality, it’s a framework that is built on top of the N in the acronym, Node, which is a runtime environment that permits developers to use JavaScript to create the back ends of applications. Finally, the R is for React, a library of ready-to-wear code that is used to create user interfaces for the front ends of applications. Although MERN is the most popular of the JavaScript stacks, there are variations on theme, including the MEAN stack that doesn’t involve a digital Burn Book, but which does switch out React for Angular, a more all-purpose front-end framework that is, however, clunkier in practice.

Coding Industries in Portland

The predominating industrial fields in Portland can be broken down into eight macro categories: apparel (Portland is the home of athletic footwear), bioscience (computational biology is a thing and one that’s alive and well in Portland), climate tech (the city is ranked #1 in the United States for sustainability; investment has followed), computers and electronics (semiconductors are the city’s most important sector), design and media (Portland has 1.5 times the number of architects, engineers, and artists than the national average), food and beverage (Portland is the city of food carts and microbreweries), metals and machinery (parts for everything from Daimler trucks to Boeing aircraft are manufactured in Portland), and (most importantly for the topic here) software. Such is the nature of modern commerce that all these areas rely on software to do what they do. Even Yoshi’s food cart in the Multnomah French Quarter requires the technology to take phone orders for its nigiri, rolls, and sashimi. And be forewarned that the technology works so well that phone orders are the only way to get Yoshi’s sushi.

You can go down the list and, without causing injury to your brain, discover how essential software is to all these industries. That applies rather obviously to sectors like bioscience and the manufacture of computer parts (Intel is one of the biggest employers in Greater Portland), but you also can’t just sketch out a sneaker anymore with just a pencil and pad of paper and put it into production. Nike and adidas are both located in Portland, and both firms have brought considerable scientific bearing on athletic footwear that would be impossible without software that wouldn’t be possible without coders. In other words, the entire Portland industrial complex is built on code.

Big firms can develop their own software in-house; other companies farm the coding work out to software companies. The sobriquet Silicon Forest has been attached to Greater Portland (an area comprising multiple counties spread across two states), and not without reason. The forest part is easily explained by the city’s lush vegetation and profusion of trees. The silicon aspect is a nod to Northern California’s Silicon Valley, the world’s premier hotbed of technological innovation. Portland’s software industry comprises over 4200 establishments that employ over 35,000 people in one of the most educated cities in the country (53% of the citizenry holds at least a bachelor’s degree.) The city also offers a deep concentration of incubators, working spaces, and accelerators, i.e., the ecosystem necessary for software firms to thrive. And thrive they do: few localities can offer a similar landscape (both figuratively and literally) to software developers and coders.

Coding Careers in Portland

Portland’s software sector currently stands at 53% larger than the national average, and projections take the sanguine viewpoint that 29% growth can be expected in the sector over the five years from 2023 to 2028. Navex Global (compliance management software provider to the world) and Zoominfo (a business-oriented search engine) lead the list of employers in the sector, and are both headquartered in the City of Roses. This combination of innovation, novelty of thought, and predicted growth all make Portland an excellent place to pursue a career in coding, especially if you like food trucks and microbreweries.

Salary numbers courtesy the Bureau of Labor Statistics for the Greater Portland area, or the Portland/Vancouver (Washington)/Hillsboro statistical region, show that, out of the 1.81 million people employed in the area, 49,000 of them are directly involved with computer operations. That results in a location quotient – a measure of the concentration of employees in a given field in a given locality – of 1.22, which supports the other optimistic forecasts for the sector.

For the BLS purposes, the fields that most involve coding are Software Developers and Computer Programmers. The difference between these two is that Software Developers occupy themselves with the entire lifecycle of a software product, while programmers are concerned more specifically with just the coding portion of that lifecycle. The numbers continue to tell a positive story about coding in the area: the 17,000 Developers in Portland command an annual salary in the $120,000 to $125,000 range, with a location quotient of 1.39. You can compare that figure to the national average salary for Software Developers, which is just under $132,000, while also figuring in Portland’s high cost of living (24% higher than the national average, with housing a whopping 62% higher than the average, and a quart of milk costing $2.62.) The 1,200 Computer Programmers in the area earn mainly in the $110,000 to $115,000 range (the national average of approximately $103,000 confirms that Programmers are paid less than Developers, although – this is significant – they are considerably better paid in Portland than the average, indicating a need for good coders in the city. The 1.13 location quotient here can be seen to confirm that hypothesis and indicate that there aren’t enough coders to go around and yield a higher location quotient.)

Should You Pursue a Certificate or Certification

Although the words certificate and certification are even more similar than pilot and pirate, they mean different things in today’s workplace (and to HR departments.) Certificate programs in coding result, tautologically, in certificates for those who have completed an exacting course of bootcamp-type study. As these programs don’t confer degrees, someone had to come up with an alternative to diploma to describe the document you receive at the end of your studies, and the lot fell on the word certificate. Certifications, conversely, come from third parties that administer examinations that objectively test your technological knowledge. You needn’t have a certificate to get a certification (indeed, in those circumstances, a certification would be a necessity), and vice versa (which is the situation for most people starting out in the coding field.)

Certifications and certificates are both important to a coder’s career, although generally not at the same point. Hiring directors don’t expect people applying for Junior Developer roles to hold advanced certifications, but they do expect a certificate to show that you know how to do what the role in question entails. If you’re lucky and advance through the hiring process, you’ll get a technical interview to show off your skills, but you’ll still need that certificate to get your foot in the door and your resume past the Applicant Tracking System. When the time comes for a Senior Developer role, on the other hand, your resume is going to need an advanced certification to show, not only that you went to school for coding, but that you’ve learned a great deal about the subject from several years’ work experience and regular use of the coding language(s) in which you’re certified. Like all rules, this one has exceptions. Here, they come in the form of entry-level certifications you can stand for when you’re right out of school, and for which your bootcamp may even prepare you. An example of this type of certification is to be had from the International JavaScript Institute; taking the exam and obtaining the certification, while not necessary, certainly won’t hurt your chances of landing a job.

Top Coding Certificate Programs in Portland

A certificate program will train you to be a successful coder. You’ll discover that there is no shortage of such programs, which, for Portlanders, will need to take place online, as the in-person bootcamp in an actual school building has become a thing of the past in just about every market that isn’t New York City. Online classes can be synchronous, meaning you’re following a live session, just like an in-person class, or asynchronous, meaning you’re going to be watching video tutorials at your convenience, but without direct contact with the teacher. Either way, the class comes to you, so you’ll need to find a quiet place where you won’t be disturbed. Or you can go in for a change of scene and take your laptop somewhere relatively peaceful, either to do homework or, if you’ve chosen an on-demand class, watch a few video modules.

University of Oregon/EdX: Coding Bootcamp

The University of Oregon Continuing and Professional Education division, by arrangement with edX, an ed-tech concern that partners with major universities to present its bootcamps, proposes a 24-week part-time coding program. The course meets online and is fully remote, despite its origins in Eugene, although that does mean that the thrice-weekly classes take place on Pacific Time. The program starts predictably with HTML and CSS before tackling JavaScript, the chief language the bootcamp teaches. Students will get to work with the MERN stack, and the capstone project calls upon students to create an entire single-page application using the technology. (The program also makes a slight detour through MySQL relational databases as well as NoSQL non-relational ones.) Instruction combines live classes with self-study modules, making the course into something of a hybrid of live online and self-paced. The fee for the bootcamp is $12,745; 0% financing, loans, and prepayment discounts are all available.

Human support for students is available at all hours by chat or email; 1-to-1 assistance is available should students get stuck anywhere in the course of their studies. The program includes the services of a Career Engagement Network that assists participants with their portfolios, resumes, and profiles. Assistance with interview skills is also included. These career resources remain available to graduates throughout their professional lives.

The Tech Academy: Software Developer Bootcamp

Portland’s own Tech Academy has been teaching bootcamps since 2014, and currently offers a dozen such self-paced programs. Classes are entirely online, and give participants the ultimate in flexibility when it comes to when and where they study: learning materials are available around the clock, so, if you want to learn to code at 2:00 a.m., your program is available to you. And, if you fall asleep at 2:05, you can pick up exactly where you left off when you wake up. The program is also wider-ranging than many other bootcamps, and teaches HTML, CSS, JavaScript, SQL databases, Python, and C# (a further multi-purpose high-level language that powers everything from Windows Installer to a variety of video games) with. NET (a redundantly cross-platform developer platform developed by Microsoft.) The curriculum requires students to execute projects in both Python and C#. The exacting program can be completed in as few as 22 weeks (full-time) and as many as 40 weeks (part-time.) The price of the endeavor, $23,320 full-time or $28,000 part-time, is discounted by 50% if paid upfront; otherwise, students have the option of a 0% interest series of $299-monthly installments until the total price is paid (yes, that comes out to six-and-a-half years of monthly payments.)

A job placement course forms the last module of the curriculum that prepares students for the job market upon completion of their program. The flexibility of the program means that you can study, not only at home, but anywhere in Portland. True, the leprechauns have yet to install wifi in Mill Ends Park (a bench would be handy, too), but Director Park does have wifi, fresh air, and a fountain. You can also try such locales as Stumptown Coffee Roasters or Fehrenbacher Hof (opposite the Goose Hollow MAX station; the corned beef breakfast sandwich is a specialty), or even, if your wallet can risk a trip there, The City of Roses’ jewel, Powell’s City of Books.

Noble Desktop: Software Engineering Bootcamp

Situated on the “other” coast in New York City, and a provider of IT education since 1990, Noble Desktop’s Software Engineering Bootcamp is an intensive 20-week journey into live online hands-on schooling to prepare you for a new career in coding. You’ll learn HTML, CSS, and JavaScript together with the MERN stack; also on the menu is Python with its Django framework. Classes meet all day long, five days a week; you’ll also have 10 to 20 hours’ worth of homework to complete every week. The price is $10,995, and 0% financing is to be had. If you’re in the market for something a bit briefer, Noble also teaches a Full Stack Web Development Certificate that does not cover Python; its price is $7,995.

The school is almost Croesus-like when it comes to the extras included. Along with the in-person instruction, you’ll receive a dozen 1-to-1 mentoring sessions that you can use for everything from questions about material covered in class to advice on polishing your resume, developing your portfolio, setting up online profiles, and even acing for those booby-trap-filled interviews. You’ll also get a free retake option that gives you a year to repeat either part or all of the course for whatever reason. Classroom session recordings are also available within 30 days of the class, so you can go over anything you might not entirely have grasped during classroom hours. Class sizes are small, usually fewer than 12 students, so you’ll receive plenty of attention from the instructor, and a custom schedule can be assembled. Finally, you can round out your education with either Noble Desktop’s WordPress or SQL bootcamps.

Coding Dojo: Software Development Bootcamp Online

A branch of Colorado Technical University, which has been teaching degree-track courses in management, business, and technology since 1965, Coding Dojo offers its Software Development Bootcamp in both full-time and accelerated part-time versions. The full-time iteration takes 16 weeks to complete, with daily classes and a workload estimated at 70 to 90 hours per week. The part-time bootcamp can be completed in anything from 18 to 34 weeks; its workload is estimated at 30 hours per week. Coding Dojo teaches a three-stack curriculum, choosing to expose students to a maximum number of languages rather than concentrating on only one. Following the inevitable HTML and CSS classes, the three stacks the curriculum is built upon are Python with MySQL (for databases) and Flask (for web development); JavaScript with the MERN stack and a further library, Socket.io; and, finally, a choice between Java and C#. Note that the part-time version calls for a certain quantity of self-paced study as well as three one-hour early evening lectures. Part-time students have the choice of studying any combination of one, two, or all three stacks. The full-time bootcamp comes with a price tag of $16,995. The part-time program is priced according to the number of stacks studied ($9,995 for one, $13,495 for two, and $16,995 for all three.) A large number of financing options is available.

Extensive career services are included with the cost of the bootcamp. Students work with a career services manager whose role is to provide assistance with resumes, GitHub portfolios, and LinkedIn profiles. The career services manager also functions as a guide through the job search process, and prepares students for personal and technical interviews, as well as salary negotiations. Career services remain available to students throughout their lifetimes. Note also that, unusually, Coding Dojo credits can be used towards a CTU degree.

General Assembly: Software Engineering Bootcamp

The bootcamp-providing branch of the Adecco Group, an international staffing and recruitment firm, General Assembly has been teaching students to code since 2011. Its full-time only Software Engineering Bootcamp lasts 12 weeks. It combines live online learning with asynchronous modules and lengthy daily practice sessions with instructors available to pilot the students through the shoals of their own confusion. Students eventually begin to code in pairs, as they would in an actual workplace. The program entails a good amount of homework with which night teaching associates are available to assist. Following 14 hours of on-demand pre-work, which covers HTML, CSS, and the fundamentals of JavaScript, the live course is basically a full-stack JavaScript bootcamp, with technologies such as Angular, Ember, and AJAX thrown in for good measure. The course also takes in some aspects of AI, including the way in which ChatGPT can be used to debug code written in Python. Cost of the package is $16,450. Financing, loans, and prepayment discounts are all available.

A dedicated career coach is assigned to every participant in the bootcamp. The coach’s brief is, beginning with the first day of classes, to help the student find a job. That includes GitHub and personal brand development, along with coaching for interviews, both personal and technical. Given its international roots, General Assembly has a wide network of contacts of which to avail itself to get its graduates hired. Graduates are also entitled to discounts on future GA courses.

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Key Insights

Learn More About Portland Coding Certificates

What is Coding?

Why Become Certified in Coding?

What You’ll Learn While Becoming Coding Certified

HTML and CSS

JavaScript

Python

Java

MERN Stack

Coding Industries in Portland

Coding Careers in Portland

Should You Pursue a Certificate or Certification

Top Coding Certificate Programs in Portland

University of Oregon/EdX: Coding Bootcamp

The Tech Academy: Software Developer Bootcamp

Noble Desktop: Software Engineering Bootcamp

Coding Dojo: Software Development Bootcamp Online

General Assembly: Software Engineering Bootcamp

Portland Coding Corporate & Onsite Training Noble Desktop

Coding Training Locations in or Near Portland

Portland Careers & Salaries Related to Coding

Related Classes

Portland Coding
Corporate & Onsite Training