I'm a graduate of App Academy in SF coming from a background in mechanical engineering. Before going to App Academy, I was doing some of the free online tutorials, but without a real curriculum or direction, I was trying bits and pieces of information and never really progressed into knowing much of anything. Most of this self studying was done in about 6 months.
Not really knowing App Academy's name because I was outside the area, I only read reviews that said it was a good program, so I applied. Bootcamps are only emerging in Los Angeles at the moment with General Assembly being the only one there last time I did reaearch.
Day 1 of App academy covered more than I had covered in the previous 6 months. Covering the fundamentals of Ruby/rails and javascript/backbone. Also, App Academy is very rigorous and if you fail more than 1 test of about 7 or 8, you will be dismissed from the program.
I am now working as a backend Engineer in SF starting at over 100k.