The bootcamp culture for beginner programmers is often looked down upon in the community and sometimes rightfully so. A bootcamp generally picks up a trendy language/framework and teaches beginners how to code a few trendy apps like a todo list, a shopping cart, etc.
But what beginners should learn is how to break a large problem down into manageable chunks and write functions in a language to solve those tasks and finally integrate them to solve the bigger problem with as few points of control as possible.
Assuming the bootcamps is a few months long and is residential (attendees have no other engagements), what other things should a beginner bootcamp cover according to you?
For total beginners the quicker they can get into mathematical thinking/programmatic thinking the better, so whatever makes that fast for the batch is good imo. Also +1 if it can spark more curiosity about what's about to come.
Also I think the most important aha is when you can see the difference between an implementation and the original idea and then you see the same idea implemented differently in different places, being able to see the abstract things gives a confidence boost
If they've done stuff, getting hands dirty is the way to go with something like https://bradfieldcs.com/csi/ syllabus.
if not looking for fast paced stuff, better to sit down, checkout what kind of jobs/work they look forward to doing once the preparation/study phase is over, reverse engineer the job description of relevant companies into the comp sci fundamentals and then go from there.