9 ms·

Lambda School is 9 months long full-time (~2000 programming hours) and includes CS fundamentals. The assertion that those things must be taught/learned within

Lambda School is 9 months long full-time (~2000 programming hours) and includes CS fundamentals. The assertion that those things must be taught/learned within the confines of a CS degree is a little silly.

codingdave 7y ago
True, but the assertion that 9 months of a bootcamp that includes "CS fundamentals" is the same depth as 4 years of CS study is also a little silly. They are different beasts, for different purposes.
- lonelappde 7y ago
  An undergrad degree is only 18months (2 yetas minus summer) in a major, not 4years. And some of that is not-particularly-relevant electives. And if you already have a college degree you might have some overlap with the major.
  - track_me_now 7y ago
    well all those courses that aren't comp sci are still part of a degree, still require learning skills and still promote university-level thinking and production. I think bootcamps actually demand a far higher rate of output and often at a very high level within specializations. The problem is I don't want to hire someone who can crank out bleeding edge framework code 20 hrs/day for 6 months.
    - austenallred 7y ago
      As someone who dropped out of college after the first two years (before specializing in a degree), I'm not sure "university-level thinking and production" is actually meaningful.
      - barry-cotter 7y ago
        It isn’t. It’s like transfer learning generally, despite decades of research trying to find it there’s no real evidence for it. Learning Latin barely makes you better at learning Italian, never mind reasoning. People learn what they’ve been taught and overwhelmingly don’t generalize. University level work in physics, literature and chemistry are so different as to have basically no overlap. University level is as meaningful as high school level in a world where Calclulus II tells you the course covered calculus and is otherwise uninformative.
        username90 7y ago
        Physics and chemistry has plenty of overlap, you even have physical chemistry and chemical physics.
    - zeppelin101 7y ago
      From what I've seen, most people treat the university as a prerequisite to getting a decent job. Only a very small percentage actually treat all classes in a serious way. Most just skate by in a majority of classes that they deem to be filler.
- austenallred 7y ago
  Students don't study CS for 4 years full-time. They study CS modules for 18 months, some of which are things like chemistry and physics and pretty unrelated to CS (though valuable things to learn generally) and only a part of a day in each. You're not actually going 8,000 hours on CS - nowhere close to it. If you spent time looking at how much time students spent (in and out of class) on CS and math topics, it's way less than you'd assume.
  - codingdave 7y ago
    Well now I'm curious. What are you assuming that I'd assume? FWIW, I assume little. I have a degree and know the effort that went into it, and am well versed in how courses are distributed in and out of your major over 4 years of study. I'm not engaging in this discussion to say one is better than the other... I'm saying they are different. Different schools, for different purposes, serving different people.
    - austenallred 7y ago
      Fair enough. I'd guess on average 500-800 hours spent actually studying and writing code in CS-related topics & math.
  - learc83 7y ago
    There is a saturation point for learning. A 1 year program where you spend 20 hours a week studying a subject is not equivalent to a 3 month program where you spend 80 hours a week studying.
    - austenallred 7y ago
      That's not what the research shows, given a properly structured learning environment. Research actually shows the losses are much greater due to context switching than to saturation.
      - learc83 7y ago
        Please show me the research that says there is no saturation point to learning.
- anon9001 7y ago
  What exactly is the purpose of a CS degree? If you go into your CS degree as a young hacker, adept at *nix with a penchant for assembly language, with enough experience to appreciate the CS concepts, you're going to be disappointed. There's a strong chance that you'll know more than the professors. Alternatively, if you go in knowing nothing and really work hard to sponge up everything the degree program wants to teach you, you're going to think you've learned something but you won't actually leave with any useful knowledge. You'll have dated and often half-baked understandings about how computer systems should theoretically be designed. You might have an idea how a basic OS kernel works from your OS class, or how to write a sorting algo from your data structures class, or maybe a parser from a language design class. None of that is useful at all, other than maybe to get you interacting with your machine, in the hopes that you'll learn how to use a computer (which is a completely different set of knowledge) by the time you graduate. And if you did ever want to write your own programming language, you can throw out everything you learned in class and start over by Googling it and following the best practices of today, like we do for everything else. The only point I can see is to be able to say you have a CS degree, and hopefully that's losing value.
  - zests 7y ago
    If someone with no working experience knows more than the professors then they go to a poor university.
    - bshimmin 7y ago
      Coming from a strong hobbyist background, I did a "conversion" master's in computer science at a decent university, and definitely knew more than the professors on the topics that I already knew about. I didn't know anything about SDLC or requirements engineering, for example, though, so from that perspective a good third of it at least was very useful (and at the end of it I had a lovely qualification and had spent a generally enjoyable year, so I can't really complain). (This was slightly longer ago than I'd care to admit, so maybe things have changed... I would expect it's still something of a case of "YMMV", as we used to say.)
      - 7y ago
codesushi42 7y ago
9 months is short, and far less than that is spent on teaching CS. So yes, a CS degree would be far more comprehensive. A bootcamp is not a substitute for a CS degree.
mdellavo 7y ago
a cs degree is going to require you to cover a lot of math, which is required for cs proper. a bit of an apple and oranges comparison
- scarface74 7y ago
  If the purpose of the degree is getting your foot in the door at your average corporate dev job - it’s good enough for most people.
leonidasv 7y ago
Also, you can learn fundamental, intermediate and even advanced topics on CS without a formal degree via MOOCs, like the ones offered by Coursera - some of them taught by professors from universities that you may not even have the money/time/grades to get in for a formal degree. I was thinking about attending to a CS undergrad course some time ago, but since I'm full-time employed at a very big ("unicorn") startup - an opportunity too good to be wasted -, I opted to take some classes on advanced topics such as Discrete Optimization and Automata theory on Coursera . It has been the best use of my spare time ever.
tempsolution 7y ago
Sorry, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn the CS fundamentals in 9 months. Period. What you may be able to do is to teach people how to game interviews within 9 months, sure. Good luck once that performance review comes around... I was very interested in math and theoretical CS. It took the whole batch of students, including the ones in honors math bachelor a good 2 years of daily intense study alone to get the basic feeling for math straight (I was part of the IDEA league program in Europe and I would consider my CS studies among the best in Europe, especially when I see what students come out of Berkeley and Toronto). Then it took at least another year or two of algorithm studies to properly deal with algorithms and data structures. Also note the exam failure rate of about 90%. Sure, you can hack some knowledge together in 9 months. But it is biologically impossible for the brain to properly learn these things in 9 months. If you can do it, you are a genius and your talents are completely wasted in this bootcamp. You should instead apply for a PhD in astrophysics at MIT or something and start contributing to mankind...
- icelancer 7y ago
  >> biologically impossible for the brain to properly learn these things in 9 months [citation needed]
  - colmvp 7y ago
    I mean is that really a controversial statement? I've been doing self-studying for the past few years and there's no way I could possibly truly learn the bulk of CS in only nine months. Every skill needs many hours of practice and the brain needs time to process information. Unless you're part of the 1% of people who are extremely quick learners and have profound memory retention skills, most people need a lot of time to comprehend complex topics. It's not pure coincidence that some of the best performers of a lot of subjects started when they were young: by the time they were in college/adulthood they already had thousands of hours of practice.
    - austenallred 7y ago
      Could you learn all of computer science in nine months? No. Could you learn the necessary CS fundamentals that are included in a CS degree in nine months? Nine months of Lambda School full-time is virtually equivalent to the amount of time you'd spend in the CS portion of a four-year CS degree.
vonseel 7y ago
I can’t imagine why I would need or want to go back to something like this every 8 years. You don’t see people going back to university and relearning other trades every 8 years. Hopefully changing technology will be learned on the job as needed.

codingdave 7y ago

True, but the assertion that 9 months of a bootcamp that includes "CS fundamentals" is the same depth as 4 years of CS study is also a little silly. They are different beasts, for different purposes.

lonelappde 7y ago
An undergrad degree is only 18months (2 yetas minus summer) in a major, not 4years. And some of that is not-particularly-relevant electives. And if you already have a college degree you might have some overlap with the major.
- track_me_now 7y ago
  well all those courses that aren't comp sci are still part of a degree, still require learning skills and still promote university-level thinking and production. I think bootcamps actually demand a far higher rate of output and often at a very high level within specializations. The problem is I don't want to hire someone who can crank out bleeding edge framework code 20 hrs/day for 6 months.
  - austenallred 7y ago
    As someone who dropped out of college after the first two years (before specializing in a degree), I'm not sure "university-level thinking and production" is actually meaningful.
    - barry-cotter 7y ago
      It isn’t. It’s like transfer learning generally, despite decades of research trying to find it there’s no real evidence for it. Learning Latin barely makes you better at learning Italian, never mind reasoning. People learn what they’ve been taught and overwhelmingly don’t generalize. University level work in physics, literature and chemistry are so different as to have basically no overlap. University level is as meaningful as high school level in a world where Calclulus II tells you the course covered calculus and is otherwise uninformative.
      - username90 7y ago
        Physics and chemistry has plenty of overlap, you even have physical chemistry and chemical physics.
  - zeppelin101 7y ago
    From what I've seen, most people treat the university as a prerequisite to getting a decent job. Only a very small percentage actually treat all classes in a serious way. Most just skate by in a majority of classes that they deem to be filler.
austenallred 7y ago
Students don't study CS for 4 years full-time. They study CS modules for 18 months, some of which are things like chemistry and physics and pretty unrelated to CS (though valuable things to learn generally) and only a part of a day in each. You're not actually going 8,000 hours on CS - nowhere close to it. If you spent time looking at how much time students spent (in and out of class) on CS and math topics, it's way less than you'd assume.
- codingdave 7y ago
  Well now I'm curious. What are you assuming that I'd assume? FWIW, I assume little. I have a degree and know the effort that went into it, and am well versed in how courses are distributed in and out of your major over 4 years of study. I'm not engaging in this discussion to say one is better than the other... I'm saying they are different. Different schools, for different purposes, serving different people.
  - austenallred 7y ago
    Fair enough. I'd guess on average 500-800 hours spent actually studying and writing code in CS-related topics & math.
- learc83 7y ago
  There is a saturation point for learning. A 1 year program where you spend 20 hours a week studying a subject is not equivalent to a 3 month program where you spend 80 hours a week studying.
  - austenallred 7y ago
    That's not what the research shows, given a properly structured learning environment. Research actually shows the losses are much greater due to context switching than to saturation.
    - learc83 7y ago
      Please show me the research that says there is no saturation point to learning.
anon9001 7y ago
What exactly is the purpose of a CS degree? If you go into your CS degree as a young hacker, adept at *nix with a penchant for assembly language, with enough experience to appreciate the CS concepts, you're going to be disappointed. There's a strong chance that you'll know more than the professors. Alternatively, if you go in knowing nothing and really work hard to sponge up everything the degree program wants to teach you, you're going to think you've learned something but you won't actually leave with any useful knowledge. You'll have dated and often half-baked understandings about how computer systems should theoretically be designed. You might have an idea how a basic OS kernel works from your OS class, or how to write a sorting algo from your data structures class, or maybe a parser from a language design class. None of that is useful at all, other than maybe to get you interacting with your machine, in the hopes that you'll learn how to use a computer (which is a completely different set of knowledge) by the time you graduate. And if you did ever want to write your own programming language, you can throw out everything you learned in class and start over by Googling it and following the best practices of today, like we do for everything else. The only point I can see is to be able to say you have a CS degree, and hopefully that's losing value.
- zests 7y ago
  If someone with no working experience knows more than the professors then they go to a poor university.
  - bshimmin 7y ago
    Coming from a strong hobbyist background, I did a "conversion" master's in computer science at a decent university, and definitely knew more than the professors on the topics that I already knew about. I didn't know anything about SDLC or requirements engineering, for example, though, so from that perspective a good third of it at least was very useful (and at the end of it I had a lovely qualification and had spent a generally enjoyable year, so I can't really complain). (This was slightly longer ago than I'd care to admit, so maybe things have changed... I would expect it's still something of a case of "YMMV", as we used to say.)
    - 7y ago

codesushi42 7y ago

9 months is short, and far less than that is spent on teaching CS. So yes, a CS degree would be far more comprehensive. A bootcamp is not a substitute for a CS degree.

mdellavo 7y ago

a cs degree is going to require you to cover a lot of math, which is required for cs proper. a bit of an apple and oranges comparison

scarface74 7y ago
If the purpose of the degree is getting your foot in the door at your average corporate dev job - it’s good enough for most people.

leonidasv 7y ago

Also, you can learn fundamental, intermediate and even advanced topics on CS without a formal degree via MOOCs, like the ones offered by Coursera - some of them taught by professors from universities that you may not even have the money/time/grades to get in for a formal degree. I was thinking about attending to a CS undergrad course some time ago, but since I'm full-time employed at a very big ("unicorn") startup - an opportunity too good to be wasted -, I opted to take some classes on advanced topics such as Discrete Optimization and Automata theory on Coursera . It has been the best use of my spare time ever.

tempsolution 7y ago

Sorry, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn the CS fundamentals in 9 months. Period. What you may be able to do is to teach people how to game interviews within 9 months, sure. Good luck once that performance review comes around... I was very interested in math and theoretical CS. It took the whole batch of students, including the ones in honors math bachelor a good 2 years of daily intense study alone to get the basic feeling for math straight (I was part of the IDEA league program in Europe and I would consider my CS studies among the best in Europe, especially when I see what students come out of Berkeley and Toronto). Then it took at least another year or two of algorithm studies to properly deal with algorithms and data structures. Also note the exam failure rate of about 90%. Sure, you can hack some knowledge together in 9 months. But it is biologically impossible for the brain to properly learn these things in 9 months. If you can do it, you are a genius and your talents are completely wasted in this bootcamp. You should instead apply for a PhD in astrophysics at MIT or something and start contributing to mankind...

icelancer 7y ago
>> biologically impossible for the brain to properly learn these things in 9 months [citation needed]
- colmvp 7y ago
  I mean is that really a controversial statement? I've been doing self-studying for the past few years and there's no way I could possibly truly learn the bulk of CS in only nine months. Every skill needs many hours of practice and the brain needs time to process information. Unless you're part of the 1% of people who are extremely quick learners and have profound memory retention skills, most people need a lot of time to comprehend complex topics. It's not pure coincidence that some of the best performers of a lot of subjects started when they were young: by the time they were in college/adulthood they already had thousands of hours of practice.
  - austenallred 7y ago
    Could you learn all of computer science in nine months? No. Could you learn the necessary CS fundamentals that are included in a CS degree in nine months? Nine months of Lambda School full-time is virtually equivalent to the amount of time you'd spend in the CS portion of a four-year CS degree.

vonseel 7y ago

I can’t imagine why I would need or want to go back to something like this every 8 years. You don’t see people going back to university and relearning other trades every 8 years. Hopefully changing technology will be learned on the job as needed.