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> I have noticed there is a massive disconnect from the reality of just how complicated modern software is. There's also a massive disconnect from the reality

by clarry 7y ago

> I have noticed there is a massive disconnect from the reality of just how complicated modern software is. There's also a massive disconnect from the reality of just how complicated modern software needs (not) to be. That said I agree that some 3-month bootcamp probably isn't enough time to really internalize the basics of programming (unless you're really smart or have prior exposure), let alone learn to design and write nontrivial programs.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
TeMPOraL 7y ago
Well, if the bootcamp is going to spend 3 months teaching you how to make a website using the industry-standard tools and frameworks, you're going to know absolutely shit at the end. Consider a typical front-end developer setup - with IDE/smart editor, linters, transpilers, packers, package managers, project generators. These are all useful tools, but to be even a marginally competent developers, you have to know what they do and why. Otherwise, you'll be completely lost when some default changes. You'll be flabbergasted when you discover that the project structure you're used to isn't "how the web is made", but just an opinionated pattern that was sort-of fashionable at the time you were learning. I've seen this problem happen with code camps teaching people RoR some years ago; I believe it now happens with Node/React.
- Kalium 7y ago
  I encountered a particularly egregious example of this recently. I was running a group of recent(-ish) hires through a training course recently. Part of it is penetrating-testing a dockerized application on their machines. One of the things the application is vulnerable to is various forms of form tampering attacks. One of my students just stared helplessly at this. They were absolutely stuck. I had no idea why. I came to find out that one of my students had managed to make it through a bootcamp, and an interview process, and be on the job for several months all without learning a Chrome or Firefox developer console could be used to edit a page's HTML. Or that a page could be saved and edited that way. I hadn't even considered the possibility that a professional engineer in a web development role might be ignorant of how to edit an HTML form by hand. It implies a shocking ignorance of how the whole thing works.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    I once observed a "become a web developer quick" RoR-based course, where they made people write their "hello worlds" as full-blown RoR apps with full MVC project scaffolding - meaning dozens of folders, and having to create 3 files (M, V, C) and write a lot of code to put something simple on the screen. I realized then that people finishing this course lack what I consider one of the most fundamental insights in writing client-server web software. I wonder if the person from your story lacked it too. The insight is this: a browser is a program that reads text that it gets from files or servers, and that text tells it what to put on the screen, how it looks and what can be done with it. When you're learning the basics of a (backend) programming language, you first learn how to put text on screen. The same way, you can put text into a file, or (with some more tricks) into a network connection. So if you write a program that prints HTML to stdout and make browser read from it, you get a client-server web page. Boom, that's pretty much all. Everything else you'll ever learn is just managing complexity. Modules, MVC, database connections, etc. - it's all serving the goal of generating the right text that gets shipped to browser. I was surprised by the ways people (sometimes junior programmers with little web experience) didn't get that. Some didn't know that browser simply reads text (happens when you're exposed to frameworks instead of raw HTML). Others thought MVC is something fundamental to web apps, instead of just being a way to keep your "print HTML to stdout" code from very quickly getting out of hand. So whenever I teach something the basics of web development, I always start with this - raw HTML as text, the connection to "your program can print text to stdout, so it can print HTML to stdout too", and we build up from there.
    - jfarmer 7y ago
      I can’t vouch for other programs, but I co-founded Dev Bootcamp (the first programming bootcamp) and the sequence you outlined is almost verbatim how we brought students into Rails. We’d explain it the way you described. We’d have them start with Sinatra apps after 3 weeks of modeling problems in CLI apps. After their 10th hand-written form with error handling, they’d see the value of Rails form helpers immediately once they hit the last few weeks. Similarly, they’d write lots of SQL queries by hand in their CLI apps. We’d push them to separate it behind method boundaries then class boundaries then build a mini-ORM. When ActiveRecord came along it was no problem because they had a model of the problems it was invented to solve. A bit of the flavor: http://bit.ly/dbc_activerecord http://bit.ly/dbc_activerecord It’s always sad to hear that the bootcamps that followed us didn’t try to give students the right mental models, but I believe you!
- megaremote 7y ago
  > you have to know what they do and why Ah, bullshit. No you don't. Most people only understand a small subset of what they use. They are junior devs.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    It's not about understanding everything thoroughly. It's about understanding, for most things they use, what does the thing do in general, what's the scope of it, and why that job needs to be done in the first place.

by clarry 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

TeMPOraL 7y ago

Well, if the bootcamp is going to spend 3 months teaching you how to make a website using the industry-standard tools and frameworks, you're going to know absolutely shit at the end. Consider a typical front-end developer setup - with IDE/smart editor, linters, transpilers, packers, package managers, project generators. These are all useful tools, but to be even a marginally competent developers, you have to know what they do and why. Otherwise, you'll be completely lost when some default changes. You'll be flabbergasted when you discover that the project structure you're used to isn't "how the web is made", but just an opinionated pattern that was sort-of fashionable at the time you were learning. I've seen this problem happen with code camps teaching people RoR some years ago; I believe it now happens with Node/React.

Kalium 7y ago
I encountered a particularly egregious example of this recently. I was running a group of recent(-ish) hires through a training course recently. Part of it is penetrating-testing a dockerized application on their machines. One of the things the application is vulnerable to is various forms of form tampering attacks. One of my students just stared helplessly at this. They were absolutely stuck. I had no idea why. I came to find out that one of my students had managed to make it through a bootcamp, and an interview process, and be on the job for several months all without learning a Chrome or Firefox developer console could be used to edit a page's HTML. Or that a page could be saved and edited that way. I hadn't even considered the possibility that a professional engineer in a web development role might be ignorant of how to edit an HTML form by hand. It implies a shocking ignorance of how the whole thing works.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  I once observed a "become a web developer quick" RoR-based course, where they made people write their "hello worlds" as full-blown RoR apps with full MVC project scaffolding - meaning dozens of folders, and having to create 3 files (M, V, C) and write a lot of code to put something simple on the screen. I realized then that people finishing this course lack what I consider one of the most fundamental insights in writing client-server web software. I wonder if the person from your story lacked it too. The insight is this: a browser is a program that reads text that it gets from files or servers, and that text tells it what to put on the screen, how it looks and what can be done with it. When you're learning the basics of a (backend) programming language, you first learn how to put text on screen. The same way, you can put text into a file, or (with some more tricks) into a network connection. So if you write a program that prints HTML to stdout and make browser read from it, you get a client-server web page. Boom, that's pretty much all. Everything else you'll ever learn is just managing complexity. Modules, MVC, database connections, etc. - it's all serving the goal of generating the right text that gets shipped to browser. I was surprised by the ways people (sometimes junior programmers with little web experience) didn't get that. Some didn't know that browser simply reads text (happens when you're exposed to frameworks instead of raw HTML). Others thought MVC is something fundamental to web apps, instead of just being a way to keep your "print HTML to stdout" code from very quickly getting out of hand. So whenever I teach something the basics of web development, I always start with this - raw HTML as text, the connection to "your program can print text to stdout, so it can print HTML to stdout too", and we build up from there.
  - jfarmer 7y ago
    I can’t vouch for other programs, but I co-founded Dev Bootcamp (the first programming bootcamp) and the sequence you outlined is almost verbatim how we brought students into Rails. We’d explain it the way you described. We’d have them start with Sinatra apps after 3 weeks of modeling problems in CLI apps. After their 10th hand-written form with error handling, they’d see the value of Rails form helpers immediately once they hit the last few weeks. Similarly, they’d write lots of SQL queries by hand in their CLI apps. We’d push them to separate it behind method boundaries then class boundaries then build a mini-ORM. When ActiveRecord came along it was no problem because they had a model of the problems it was invented to solve. A bit of the flavor: http://bit.ly/dbc_activerecord http://bit.ly/dbc_activerecord It’s always sad to hear that the bootcamps that followed us didn’t try to give students the right mental models, but I believe you!
megaremote 7y ago
> you have to know what they do and why Ah, bullshit. No you don't. Most people only understand a small subset of what they use. They are junior devs.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  It's not about understanding everything thoroughly. It's about understanding, for most things they use, what does the thing do in general, what's the scope of it, and why that job needs to be done in the first place.