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> A developer and a computer scientist are two different things. No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to

> A developer and a computer scientist are two different things. No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS, must be good in CS as well. It's ok if you're not a CS person, but stop generalising and saying no dev has to be. > There are awesome developers who are terrible computer scientists. They can build a great website/small web application in RoR or Django, fast and get the job done. The site will never scale tho. No. These are people who are good at gluing together a framework. If that's your definition of a developer, I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but you are mistaken. Web development is not the be-all/end-all of Software development. Scalability is a very very specific topic, but it's not the only one. CS includes a vast number of things. Good developers write things like compilers, infrastructure tools, operating systems, libraries, the frameworks that you so like to use - someone wrote them, and chances are, they knew their CS. Video Games - try writing one without knowing much about Linear Algebra. See how far you get. > Most companies want developers, not computer scientist. You might get asked all sorts of questions about algorithms ^& data structures, but in reality day to day problem is CRUD. Partly agreed here. The thing is - as the CRUD things become more and more common, everyone wants in on the next stuff - Analytics, Data Science, Machine Learning! Who is going to provide that for the companies? The guy who did dev bootcamp or the guy with a CS degree under his belt who says he can learn it? Who are you going to hire?

whiteboarder 11y ago
My definition of a "software engineer" is someone who gets paid 6 figures for writing code, any code. And it just so happens there there are quite of lot of 6 figure jobs that solely involve building crud apps by gluing together frameworks. You can shit it on all you want, and talk about how "us real computer scientists are solving the Hard Problems by building compilers and OSs". But at the end of the day, the person going to the bootcamp doesn't care about this opinion. All they care about is that they were able to spend 3 months of there time in order to double or triple their salary. And the only other price they have to pay is having to put up with people like you shitting on them for not working on Hard Problems. And to me, that seems like a very small price to pay.
- bko 11y ago
  Parent's argument reminds me of a No True Scotsman fallacy. Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." Person B: "But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge." Person A: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." I feel the much of the negativity towards bootcamps is partially due to people feeling threatened by new entrants. Kind of like black cars in London claiming that to be a cab driver you'd have to know the streets by memory, while in most cases GPS would be good enough. To me, it seems like a lot of bootcamps get you to good enough. That doesn't take away from all the years of investment and learning that other developers might have gone through to get where they are. There's room for both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
  - manish_gill 11y ago
    Would you be willing to extend the same logic to the medical profession? What about law? Or perhaps architecture? Would you let a 12 week bootcamp graduate design your home? Or really, any other type of engineer. After all, the argument about "theory" differing from "real world practice" and becoming "good enough" can be made for those as well. You don't need to know about how germs work in order to treat a cold. You just need to know which medicine to prescribe. The only difference between the above mentioned professions and Software Engineering is that there is no formal "examination" that you have to pass to demonstrate your qualification - which is the barrier that is there to ensure quality students. It comes down to qualification. Unlike doctors and lawyers, the barrier to entry in our industry is much, much low. Which most assuredly leads to a decline in quality. So yeah, thanks for the passive aggressive attacks about me feeling threatened, but no. I've never seen a 6-figure salary, I don't live in US/Bay Area. I just like quality code and working with quality people. Bootcamp devs aren't those. Can they be? Sure, but as some graduates in this thread themselves admitted, it took them 2-3 years to reach that position anyway.
    - bko 11y ago
      > Medical Yes. There is plenty of work that can be done by a nurse that doesn't need to be done by a doctor. It seems silly that someone gets sent to school for over a decade to talk to me about whether I can take a drug to bring back the spark in my relationship. > Law Yes. There are plenty of routine legal procedures that should be allowed to be performed by someone that doesn't have to go through the costly process of going through law school (routine divorce comes to mind) > Architecture Don't know much about architecture :-/ Didn't mean to be passive aggressive. So for that I apologize.
jpadkins 11y ago
> Video Games - try writing one without knowing much about Linear Algebra. See how far you get. Trivial in Unity or UDK. Good frameworks / game engines make non CS people productive in building apps. There are thousands of successful mobile game developers with little to no CS background.
bduerst 11y ago
The difference is semantics - one is a software engineer and the other a software programmer. You don't need to know classical mechanic physics as a construction worker to build a structure, but you do need to know it as the architect designing it. The bigger the structure, the more important.
- walshemj 11y ago
  Not so much the architect the Consulting Engineer ( a proper one with their PE CE status) has to. And in fact the basics of structures is taught to Technicians as well.
  - bduerst 11y ago
    Right, but they're not taught the reasoning behind the structures. The difference is knowing how to build a Spandrel braced arch and knowing why you would use it instead of a trussed arch.
enraged_camel 11y ago
>>No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS, must be good in CS as well. It depends on the problem domain. Most problems solved by software developers today do not require a CS background, or even any technical background. Just like in other fields, we have the advantage of building on the shoulders of giants. A smart person invents Ruby, another smart person builds Rails on top of that, and the next thing you know, a ton of people are writing web apps. This doesn't mean that the web app developers are "bad" developers. It just means they can focus on other types of problems.

whiteboarder 11y ago

My definition of a "software engineer" is someone who gets paid 6 figures for writing code, any code. And it just so happens there there are quite of lot of 6 figure jobs that solely involve building crud apps by gluing together frameworks. You can shit it on all you want, and talk about how "us real computer scientists are solving the Hard Problems by building compilers and OSs". But at the end of the day, the person going to the bootcamp doesn't care about this opinion. All they care about is that they were able to spend 3 months of there time in order to double or triple their salary. And the only other price they have to pay is having to put up with people like you shitting on them for not working on Hard Problems. And to me, that seems like a very small price to pay.

bko 11y ago
Parent's argument reminds me of a No True Scotsman fallacy. Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." Person B: "But my uncle Angus likes sugar with his porridge." Person A: "Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge." I feel the much of the negativity towards bootcamps is partially due to people feeling threatened by new entrants. Kind of like black cars in London claiming that to be a cab driver you'd have to know the streets by memory, while in most cases GPS would be good enough. To me, it seems like a lot of bootcamps get you to good enough. That doesn't take away from all the years of investment and learning that other developers might have gone through to get where they are. There's room for both. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
- manish_gill 11y ago
  Would you be willing to extend the same logic to the medical profession? What about law? Or perhaps architecture? Would you let a 12 week bootcamp graduate design your home? Or really, any other type of engineer. After all, the argument about "theory" differing from "real world practice" and becoming "good enough" can be made for those as well. You don't need to know about how germs work in order to treat a cold. You just need to know which medicine to prescribe. The only difference between the above mentioned professions and Software Engineering is that there is no formal "examination" that you have to pass to demonstrate your qualification - which is the barrier that is there to ensure quality students. It comes down to qualification. Unlike doctors and lawyers, the barrier to entry in our industry is much, much low. Which most assuredly leads to a decline in quality. So yeah, thanks for the passive aggressive attacks about me feeling threatened, but no. I've never seen a 6-figure salary, I don't live in US/Bay Area. I just like quality code and working with quality people. Bootcamp devs aren't those. Can they be? Sure, but as some graduates in this thread themselves admitted, it took them 2-3 years to reach that position anyway.
  - bko 11y ago
    > Medical Yes. There is plenty of work that can be done by a nurse that doesn't need to be done by a doctor. It seems silly that someone gets sent to school for over a decade to talk to me about whether I can take a drug to bring back the spark in my relationship. > Law Yes. There are plenty of routine legal procedures that should be allowed to be performed by someone that doesn't have to go through the costly process of going through law school (routine divorce comes to mind) > Architecture Don't know much about architecture :-/ Didn't mean to be passive aggressive. So for that I apologize.

jpadkins 11y ago

> Video Games - try writing one without knowing much about Linear Algebra. See how far you get. Trivial in Unity or UDK. Good frameworks / game engines make non CS people productive in building apps. There are thousands of successful mobile game developers with little to no CS background.

bduerst 11y ago

The difference is semantics - one is a software engineer and the other a software programmer. You don't need to know classical mechanic physics as a construction worker to build a structure, but you do need to know it as the architect designing it. The bigger the structure, the more important.

walshemj 11y ago
Not so much the architect the Consulting Engineer ( a proper one with their PE CE status) has to. And in fact the basics of structures is taught to Technicians as well.
- bduerst 11y ago
  Right, but they're not taught the reasoning behind the structures. The difference is knowing how to build a Spandrel braced arch and knowing why you would use it instead of a trussed arch.

enraged_camel 11y ago

>>No, they are not. A good developer is someone who, by virtue of the fact that he or she has to write software whose theoretical underpinnings are rooted in CS, must be good in CS as well. It depends on the problem domain. Most problems solved by software developers today do not require a CS background, or even any technical background. Just like in other fields, we have the advantage of building on the shoulders of giants. A smart person invents Ruby, another smart person builds Rails on top of that, and the next thing you know, a ton of people are writing web apps. This doesn't mean that the web app developers are "bad" developers. It just means they can focus on other types of problems.