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Good article (yet to read the paper). I believe learning of software development is a glance at the future of education. Diverse paths for diverse people. A myr

by soneca 9y ago

Good article (yet to read the paper). I believe learning of software development is a glance at the future of education. Diverse paths for diverse people. A myriad of options: college, bootcamps, internet; free, cheap, expensive; lectures videos, tutorials, documentation, blog posts, coding in the browser; teachers, tutors, colleagues, coworkers; templates, boilerplates, open source. I think all of it is wonderful. Knowledge about software development is much more accessible than, eg, architecture. And much more aknowledged without a degree. But, with the myriad of paths, come more risks of one choosing the wrong path, both from honest mistakes or being mislead by dishonest people. And these mistakes can be very costly. I have a hunch that sometime in the future almost all knowledge will be able to be learned like this. It is a good thing to study the advantages and disadvantages of this environment.

partycoder 9y ago
The problem with self-guided learning are knowledge gaps. When you are learning on your own you will be biased towards things that interest you more. But the boring stuff is as important in the real world. You can interview a candidate that can impress you with fairly advanced concepts described in depth. But you may feel disappointed if probing for gaps... Sometimes having gaps in certain concepts come with risks. A simple example: If someone does not know how floating point numbers work (e.g: default number type in JS) for instance, they may want to use them for finance with disastrous results.
- alexashka 9y ago
  I'd rather someone have theory gaps, than toolchain gaps where the person googles how to do every other feature asked of them and ends up copy-pasting from stack-overflow in the interest of time. If a project calls for knowledge in theory - hire one person who knows that aspect, and can either handle it, or teach it to others. The rest should be people who know their craft. Finding those is hard enough.
  - partycoder 9y ago
    Not every upvoted or selected answer in StackOverflow is correct. And sometimes the questions themselves are wrong.
  - gaius 9y ago
    Too much theory and not enough practice is obviously a problem, but not having a solid mental model of the computation you want to do mapping to the underlying is far worse, or not knowing that want you want is a solved problem and trying to hack up your own rather than using it. Who would you rather hire, someone who knows what a logistic regression is but has to look up the API calls, or someone who doesn't and tries to write their own classifier from scratch, but doesn't need to look up any syntax?
    - watwut 9y ago
      That question can be answered only if I know what position you are trying to fill. Some jobs are more suitable for one kind then others. I don't mind new hire to not know API either way - senior programmers should be used to working with APIs they don't know. Tech changes constantly.

by soneca 9y ago

partycoder 9y ago

The problem with self-guided learning are knowledge gaps. When you are learning on your own you will be biased towards things that interest you more. But the boring stuff is as important in the real world. You can interview a candidate that can impress you with fairly advanced concepts described in depth. But you may feel disappointed if probing for gaps... Sometimes having gaps in certain concepts come with risks. A simple example: If someone does not know how floating point numbers work (e.g: default number type in JS) for instance, they may want to use them for finance with disastrous results.

alexashka 9y ago
I'd rather someone have theory gaps, than toolchain gaps where the person googles how to do every other feature asked of them and ends up copy-pasting from stack-overflow in the interest of time. If a project calls for knowledge in theory - hire one person who knows that aspect, and can either handle it, or teach it to others. The rest should be people who know their craft. Finding those is hard enough.
- partycoder 9y ago
  Not every upvoted or selected answer in StackOverflow is correct. And sometimes the questions themselves are wrong.
- gaius 9y ago
  Too much theory and not enough practice is obviously a problem, but not having a solid mental model of the computation you want to do mapping to the underlying is far worse, or not knowing that want you want is a solved problem and trying to hack up your own rather than using it. Who would you rather hire, someone who knows what a logistic regression is but has to look up the API calls, or someone who doesn't and tries to write their own classifier from scratch, but doesn't need to look up any syntax?
  - watwut 9y ago
    That question can be answered only if I know what position you are trying to fill. Some jobs are more suitable for one kind then others. I don't mind new hire to not know API either way - senior programmers should be used to working with APIs they don't know. Tech changes constantly.