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Being a software developer in the modern world (web, mobile) has little to do with computer science. These skills can be taught but aren't in most modern unive

Being a software developer in the modern world (web, mobile) has little to do with computer science. These skills can be taught but aren't in most modern universities. Mostly, there is argument that university is not vocational training. At the same time, most people implicitly feel the need to go to university to get a job. These developer boot camps create a new path. It's a good thing.

santaclaus 11y ago
Which is funny, as those exact Computer Sciencey type questions are what Google likes to throw at candidates.
toomuchtodo 11y ago
Excellent point. If you want to waste 4-6 years of your life on theory, go to college. Bootcamp it or learn yourself if you want to spend 6-18 months learning and then jump into a junior position to get real experience (and get paid for it). EDIT: See my post further down for clarification on this idea. I shot this comment from the hip a bit too fast.
- eropple 11y ago
  I don't want to rip on you, because I think you're a pretty sharp dude from your posting here, but if you think theory is a waste, I really question what sorts of Actually Hard Problems you've had to tackle. :/
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    Thanks for the kind words! I'm a high school dropout and have started/ran/sold a startup, managed a division for a well-regarded consulting firm, and worked on data taking for a detector at the LHC. Perhaps the problem is that I minimize the amount of effort that goes into being autodidactic (determine the problem, determine what information and skills are needed to solve the problem, acquire said information/skills, execute, repeat). Let me correct/clarify my above post: Theory isn't a waste, per se. Is it best to spend a significant amount of time front loading knowledge one may not need? And paying a substantial premium for that experience? That's my problem with the college experience for tech professionals. I'm not a huge fan of bootcamps, but I do believe there is much to be gained by Google's efforts here. There is value we've lost in the old apprenticeship system, and I hope to see it revived over time (I owe my skill and career progression to the luck of finding quality mentors along my way). There are hard problems I want to solve that I want to have the resources (mostly time) to solve. College would not teach my those skills, but me trying to solve those problems are lessons in themselves.
    - eropple 11y ago
      YMM, of course, V, but I've used almost everything I ran into in my collegiate CS-related courses in some form or another. And I find that the stuff that I haven't directly used has contributed to my ability to solve problems--having the prerequisites to be able to assimilate into my corpus of knowledge pretty random stuff has served me extremely well. Much more importantly to me, however, I was exposed to things outside of "that computer stuff" that have made me better at being a manager, a leader, and (as hokey as it sounds) a human being. I literally can't put a price tag on it, but I would be vastly poorer as a person without a liberal education that I think gets aggressively discounted when attempting to view college in purely transactional terms. It is a much greater criticism of college, to me, that a student has to go looking for this stuff; the existence of bachelor's degrees that are functionally trade-school materials is troubling to me. I deal with a lot of technical people who are pretty aggressively ignorant of things that don't involve keyboards or oscilloscopes, and I think that is the greater failure of the American collegiate system. Don't get me wrong--I'm self-taught too, I'd been writing code for a decade-ish before I went to college, but this stuff changed my life profoundly, and I think minimizing it out of hand is downright tragic. Maybe if there was a better way to get people to acquire this a few years on (calling to mind the idea that people should have a few years of experience before getting an MBA), but there isn't right now. As far as paying a premium goes--I graduated with about $20K of debt, mostly because it was effectively free money (my total interest payments before I paid them off were less than $2K), and was getting paid through school (did Google Summer of Code twice, ran my own web dev shop, etc.). Bad choices can be made with regards to college, but that's a criticism of overly expensive (private) colleges.
  - whiteboarder 11y ago
    Who gives a shit? The tech industry currently doesn't need any more people to work on the Actually Hard Problems. The tech industry currently pays people 6 figure salaries to build CRUD apps. There is such a huge shortage of tech people, that the industry can't even get the "Easy", low hanging fruit work done. It doesn't matter how many PHDs work at Tesla designing space cars if the world has a cronic shortage of car mechanics. And right now the car mechanics get 6 figure salaries.
    - toomuchtodo 11y ago
      > Who gives a shit? Could you make your point without that?
    - eropple 11y ago
      > The tech industry currently doesn't need any more people to work on the Actually Hard Problems. I dunno, more people keep offering to pay me to do them than I have time to take up...
    - s73v3r 11y ago
      There is not a shortage of tech people. There is only a shortage of good tech people willing to work for peanuts.
wh-uws 11y ago
"Being a software developer in the modern world... has little to do with computer science." Is a categorical falsehood that has cost me alot of time and money. There is not one top tier technology company software team that you can get on without having a strong grasp of at least the basic fundamentals of CS (namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math.) You will ALWAYS get passed on if you only focus on domain specific knowledge (ie. web development or mobile) to the complete detriment of theory. Why? because because eventually said tech/language/toolchain/development target/ or platform will become obsolete and good companies want to know your skillset won't die with them. I've written about this before http://www.quora.com/I-am-quite-bad-at-algorithms-but-good-with-Android-and-iOS-Is-there-a-place-for-me-at-companies-like-Facebook-Palantir-Google-etc/answer/William-Harris http://www.quora.com/I-am-quite-bad-at-algorithms-but-good-w... Anyone reading this who is interested in being a software engineer for the long haul please DO NOT discount the importance of a strong CS foundation as I did early in my career. Edit: If you downvote please explain. I have strong evidence to back these claims in the form of missed jobs opportunities at multiple name brand tech companies. You can stick your head in the mud if you like but it wont make you anymore correct.
- ken47 11y ago
  "(namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math)" If you're smart and perceptive, then you can learn enough of these things, for the average job, by osmosis or by day-to-day exposure over the course of a career.
- whiteboarder 11y ago
  If what you say is true, then how come the dev bootcamp hiring statistics say otherwise? Look at any of the statistics. These bootcamps graduate people making 80k-100k. That is a good salary for someone who didn't graduate with a CS degree from a top 5 tech school.
- quaunaut 11y ago
  > There is not one top tier technology company software team that you can get on without having a strong grasp of at least the basic fundamentals of CS (namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math.) This just in: Getting on a top tier team requires being top tier. This doesn't mean you can't teach for the rest of the industry, nor does it mean you can't go into the top tier work later. Just the path to top tier changes, from college to having solid experience and code out there. This can come from blog posts, open source, or simply working on hard problems at whatever gig you can get.

santaclaus 11y ago

Which is funny, as those exact Computer Sciencey type questions are what Google likes to throw at candidates.

toomuchtodo 11y ago

Excellent point. If you want to waste 4-6 years of your life on theory, go to college. Bootcamp it or learn yourself if you want to spend 6-18 months learning and then jump into a junior position to get real experience (and get paid for it). EDIT: See my post further down for clarification on this idea. I shot this comment from the hip a bit too fast.

eropple 11y ago
I don't want to rip on you, because I think you're a pretty sharp dude from your posting here, but if you think theory is a waste, I really question what sorts of Actually Hard Problems you've had to tackle. :/
- toomuchtodo 11y ago
  Thanks for the kind words! I'm a high school dropout and have started/ran/sold a startup, managed a division for a well-regarded consulting firm, and worked on data taking for a detector at the LHC. Perhaps the problem is that I minimize the amount of effort that goes into being autodidactic (determine the problem, determine what information and skills are needed to solve the problem, acquire said information/skills, execute, repeat). Let me correct/clarify my above post: Theory isn't a waste, per se. Is it best to spend a significant amount of time front loading knowledge one may not need? And paying a substantial premium for that experience? That's my problem with the college experience for tech professionals. I'm not a huge fan of bootcamps, but I do believe there is much to be gained by Google's efforts here. There is value we've lost in the old apprenticeship system, and I hope to see it revived over time (I owe my skill and career progression to the luck of finding quality mentors along my way). There are hard problems I want to solve that I want to have the resources (mostly time) to solve. College would not teach my those skills, but me trying to solve those problems are lessons in themselves.
  - eropple 11y ago
    YMM, of course, V, but I've used almost everything I ran into in my collegiate CS-related courses in some form or another. And I find that the stuff that I haven't directly used has contributed to my ability to solve problems--having the prerequisites to be able to assimilate into my corpus of knowledge pretty random stuff has served me extremely well. Much more importantly to me, however, I was exposed to things outside of "that computer stuff" that have made me better at being a manager, a leader, and (as hokey as it sounds) a human being. I literally can't put a price tag on it, but I would be vastly poorer as a person without a liberal education that I think gets aggressively discounted when attempting to view college in purely transactional terms. It is a much greater criticism of college, to me, that a student has to go looking for this stuff; the existence of bachelor's degrees that are functionally trade-school materials is troubling to me. I deal with a lot of technical people who are pretty aggressively ignorant of things that don't involve keyboards or oscilloscopes, and I think that is the greater failure of the American collegiate system. Don't get me wrong--I'm self-taught too, I'd been writing code for a decade-ish before I went to college, but this stuff changed my life profoundly, and I think minimizing it out of hand is downright tragic. Maybe if there was a better way to get people to acquire this a few years on (calling to mind the idea that people should have a few years of experience before getting an MBA), but there isn't right now. As far as paying a premium goes--I graduated with about $20K of debt, mostly because it was effectively free money (my total interest payments before I paid them off were less than $2K), and was getting paid through school (did Google Summer of Code twice, ran my own web dev shop, etc.). Bad choices can be made with regards to college, but that's a criticism of overly expensive (private) colleges.
- whiteboarder 11y ago
  Who gives a shit? The tech industry currently doesn't need any more people to work on the Actually Hard Problems. The tech industry currently pays people 6 figure salaries to build CRUD apps. There is such a huge shortage of tech people, that the industry can't even get the "Easy", low hanging fruit work done. It doesn't matter how many PHDs work at Tesla designing space cars if the world has a cronic shortage of car mechanics. And right now the car mechanics get 6 figure salaries.
  - toomuchtodo 11y ago
    > Who gives a shit? Could you make your point without that?
  - eropple 11y ago
    > The tech industry currently doesn't need any more people to work on the Actually Hard Problems. I dunno, more people keep offering to pay me to do them than I have time to take up...
  - s73v3r 11y ago
    There is not a shortage of tech people. There is only a shortage of good tech people willing to work for peanuts.

wh-uws 11y ago

"Being a software developer in the modern world... has little to do with computer science." Is a categorical falsehood that has cost me alot of time and money. There is not one top tier technology company software team that you can get on without having a strong grasp of at least the basic fundamentals of CS (namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math.) You will ALWAYS get passed on if you only focus on domain specific knowledge (ie. web development or mobile) to the complete detriment of theory. Why? because because eventually said tech/language/toolchain/development target/ or platform will become obsolete and good companies want to know your skillset won't die with them. I've written about this before http://www.quora.com/I-am-quite-bad-at-algorithms-but-good-with-Android-and-iOS-Is-there-a-place-for-me-at-companies-like-Facebook-Palantir-Google-etc/answer/William-Harris http://www.quora.com/I-am-quite-bad-at-algorithms-but-good-w... Anyone reading this who is interested in being a software engineer for the long haul please DO NOT discount the importance of a strong CS foundation as I did early in my career. Edit: If you downvote please explain. I have strong evidence to back these claims in the form of missed jobs opportunities at multiple name brand tech companies. You can stick your head in the mud if you like but it wont make you anymore correct.

ken47 11y ago
"(namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math)" If you're smart and perceptive, then you can learn enough of these things, for the average job, by osmosis or by day-to-day exposure over the course of a career.
whiteboarder 11y ago
If what you say is true, then how come the dev bootcamp hiring statistics say otherwise? Look at any of the statistics. These bootcamps graduate people making 80k-100k. That is a good salary for someone who didn't graduate with a CS degree from a top 5 tech school.
quaunaut 11y ago
> There is not one top tier technology company software team that you can get on without having a strong grasp of at least the basic fundamentals of CS (namely data structures, algorithms, and some college level math.) This just in: Getting on a top tier team requires being top tier. This doesn't mean you can't teach for the rest of the industry, nor does it mean you can't go into the top tier work later. Just the path to top tier changes, from college to having solid experience and code out there. This can come from blog posts, open source, or simply working on hard problems at whatever gig you can get.