Why would someone that doesn't want to code as a career path go to a coding boot camp? I'm sure there are a few managers that want to understand the technology they are managing, but by and large, I can't believe that non-coders make up a significant fraction of attendees.

If you don't measure the success of a coding boot camp by "employment as a developer", what would you measure it by?

I was running a brick and mortar business. I just wanted the coding skills for more leverage. After finishing a bootcamp, I did take a job at a large tech company and then one at a YC startup but I never had any intention of a "coding career". I just wanted to continue learning and see the industry from the inside and to assess what the level of competition truly was in SF/SV.

It's been 4 years since my bootcamp experience and I very, very much doubt I'll ever seek "employment as a developer" again except in the case of failure as an entrepreneur.

I just met two vets at a makers faire. One was a cop for 8 years, the other doing sales for his small biz. They both are now enrolled in a local code camp (sorry, spacing name). They LOVE it. They're both deeply chagrinned they had never tried that "math geek" stuff before.

Now they're talking about starting code camps targeting other vets, help with transitioning to civilian life, build community, mitigate PTSD, work with kids, etc.

That's awesome! I'm glad it's working out for them.

You could be strict and limit this conversation to formal boot camps, but the reality is that this training is happening in a lot of different places.

I've been mentoring a number of our senior support folks on coding, and they've been doing something along the lines of a boot camp. My management finds that support team are able to better understand how things work, attempt to debug things they'd have been afraid of, and ask better questions of software engineers. Support engineers get to do something different and are building skills. They have seen "coders" move quickly through support to the engineering team. Another group manages our tools, but I hope they'll be able to hack on some tools for our team. Some people will stay in support, but it should be less stressful because they can understand how things work better. From a distance you can see how the online communications have changes between the two organizations.

From my past experience in Pharma I know there was similar interest from scientists to learn to code (if they didn't already). I also know that some of the designers working on electronic detailing apps for sales at the time really wanted to learn to code because they had to transition from Flash to HTML 5 and JS.

For these reasons, I think that the make up of coding boot camps may surprise some. A differentiation may be related to where someone is in their career. Someone laid off, or without a job is probably more like to jump to a boot camp than someone who has a job. Quitting to take part in a boot camp is probably a huge jump for people, if they are in the tech sector because they may have more awareness of what is involved, or other means to make the jump to coding.

No bootcamp myself, but I think more people learn to code than are employed as developers, although it may not be widespread. I switch between Product Design, development, and Program Management, based on market opportunity. Development is my least favorite, and I know many PMs and designers who take a short course with no intention to strictly switch gears (becoming a higher paid technical PM is a good example).

You are missing the point. It's not whether there are a trivial number or not. It's about the relative sizes of the groups in the population versus the sample.

The fact that there is not a single negative response is basically proof positive that people who don't succeed at coding boot camps do not read HN. Unless you happen to believe that almost everyone does succeed after coding boot camps. I find that notion incredible, personally.