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Teaching someone with a physics background to code while on the job is doable if you are willing to throw the code out. Programming is as much of a learned skil

Teaching someone with a physics background to code while on the job is doable if you are willing to throw the code out. Programming is as much of a learned skill as any skill and expecting someone with no programming experience to quickly catch up to someone who has been studying and actually coding for a few years is not realistic.

dogma1138 9y ago
I haven’t met anyone with a physics degree in the past 10 years that cannot program. Programming is required today to attain a post graduate and even graduate at physics since you’ll be programming a lot of math problems and more importantly simulations. We have 8 CUDA programmers at my work place and only one of them has a degree in computer science/SE the rest got post grads in Physics Chemisty or Biology. On a grad/undergrad level for the most par CompSci students would not have much advantage in programming today over Physics or other exact science/engineering students.
- tchaffee 9y ago
  Then they really aren't being trained on the job are they? Thanks for the info about the programming experience they get. I know a few graduate level physicists, but they never talk about programming.
  - dogma1138 9y ago
    They are, everyone is being trained on a job to some degree. If you are hiring graduates you are going to be training them on the job for a while even if you hire SE/CS students only there is a big difference between knowing how to program and having experience in software development and delivery. But some things can be trained while others realistically cannot, you can train people on the job rather quickly to develop using a given framework and toolset but giving them background in fields that require nearly decade of dedicated education is a different story. The truth is that unless your bootcamper has had proper education they would not be able to catch up on the theory. Forget algorithms maybe 1 out of 10 bootcamper I've interviewed understood basic mathematics like vectors and scalars, were talking about High School level Calculus here. But again if you only build basic web applications and implement pre-defined UX/user stories there isn't much need for this. Bootcamps aren't new I remember the Java/C++ 8-12 week night schools from the 90's which were later supplemented by .NET schools that was huge in the early to mid 2000's Microsoft was pushing Windows 2000/2003 MCSE and MCPD to highschool students in my country. My older brother effectively use a bootcamp in the late 90's he had a masters in electrical engineering he had some programming experience mostly in FORTRAN but effectively in .com boom of late 90's he switched to programming after doing one of those JAVA and C++ evening courses. That said I don't think he would've gotten to IBM and now into Redhat without his previous education, that course was effectively just a seminar for him.
    - tchaffee 9y ago
      The initial comparison was between someone with little training in a discipline and someone educated in a discipline. Of course every graduate needs plenty of mentorship at their first or first few jobs. That's not the same as training someone with no exposure to a discipline. As far as bootcamp graduates go, I would be careful about assuming that's their only exposure. I'll take someone who has been obsessed with coding since they were a kid over a uni graduate who is just in it for the money, went to class, and only wrote code to pass the classes.
      - dogma1138 9y ago
        Yes but it really depends on what you need. If you only need coders for standard applications there likely won’t be much difference. If you need them to work on more complex things say computer vision it might be more tricky unless they only consume existing libraries. It’s much easier to learn RoR than it is the lean the math needed to say understand what a Fourier Transform is. It really depends on what the programmers actually do; implement a known solution or come up with one.

dogma1138 9y ago

I haven’t met anyone with a physics degree in the past 10 years that cannot program. Programming is required today to attain a post graduate and even graduate at physics since you’ll be programming a lot of math problems and more importantly simulations. We have 8 CUDA programmers at my work place and only one of them has a degree in computer science/SE the rest got post grads in Physics Chemisty or Biology. On a grad/undergrad level for the most par CompSci students would not have much advantage in programming today over Physics or other exact science/engineering students.

tchaffee 9y ago
Then they really aren't being trained on the job are they? Thanks for the info about the programming experience they get. I know a few graduate level physicists, but they never talk about programming.
- dogma1138 9y ago
  They are, everyone is being trained on a job to some degree. If you are hiring graduates you are going to be training them on the job for a while even if you hire SE/CS students only there is a big difference between knowing how to program and having experience in software development and delivery. But some things can be trained while others realistically cannot, you can train people on the job rather quickly to develop using a given framework and toolset but giving them background in fields that require nearly decade of dedicated education is a different story. The truth is that unless your bootcamper has had proper education they would not be able to catch up on the theory. Forget algorithms maybe 1 out of 10 bootcamper I've interviewed understood basic mathematics like vectors and scalars, were talking about High School level Calculus here. But again if you only build basic web applications and implement pre-defined UX/user stories there isn't much need for this. Bootcamps aren't new I remember the Java/C++ 8-12 week night schools from the 90's which were later supplemented by .NET schools that was huge in the early to mid 2000's Microsoft was pushing Windows 2000/2003 MCSE and MCPD to highschool students in my country. My older brother effectively use a bootcamp in the late 90's he had a masters in electrical engineering he had some programming experience mostly in FORTRAN but effectively in .com boom of late 90's he switched to programming after doing one of those JAVA and C++ evening courses. That said I don't think he would've gotten to IBM and now into Redhat without his previous education, that course was effectively just a seminar for him.
  - tchaffee 9y ago
    The initial comparison was between someone with little training in a discipline and someone educated in a discipline. Of course every graduate needs plenty of mentorship at their first or first few jobs. That's not the same as training someone with no exposure to a discipline. As far as bootcamp graduates go, I would be careful about assuming that's their only exposure. I'll take someone who has been obsessed with coding since they were a kid over a uni graduate who is just in it for the money, went to class, and only wrote code to pass the classes.
    - dogma1138 9y ago
      Yes but it really depends on what you need. If you only need coders for standard applications there likely won’t be much difference. If you need them to work on more complex things say computer vision it might be more tricky unless they only consume existing libraries. It’s much easier to learn RoR than it is the lean the math needed to say understand what a Fourier Transform is. It really depends on what the programmers actually do; implement a known solution or come up with one.