4 ms·

Why do we have bootcamps for coding when we could apply the same methodology to law, minor surgery, accounting, policing, and jobs we actually need more people

Why do we have bootcamps for coding when we could apply the same methodology to law, minor surgery, accounting, policing, and jobs we actually need more people in because the prices are so high? We could teach elementary school kids to set bones, do stitches, manage projects, and treat flu. If people have a problem with this, they should have a problem with subsidies for teaching people to code as well.

saddestcatever 7y ago
Because "Software Engineering" isn't (currently) held to the same standards of certification, ethics, and peer review that other Engineering and Medical fields are. Maybe some day.
- kuschku 7y ago
  And that's exactly the issuem Software Engineering is just as much engineering as anything else, requires the same quality and lessons in ethics, and nowadays costs more people their lives than many other forms of engineering. The MCAS of the 737-MAX wasn't designed by mechanical or civil engineers ;)
- carapace 7y ago
  Yeah, this. ...maybe? On the one hand the idea that you can become a well-paid programmer starting from one of these bootcamps is almost insulting to me as someone who dedicated much of his life to the field. On the other hand, a lot of people do it. I've worked with them. They don't all suck. Have I wasted my life on trivialities? What does my knowledge and, yes, mastery count for if Joe Bootcamp can solve Jane Businessman's problems with a few months of training and a bolus of javascript?
  - mcguire 7y ago
    In my experience, you will be the one called in to fix it when Joe's solution goes pear shaped.
  - mrguyorama 7y ago
    I didn't get a Computer Science degree to build web apps. I got it because I enjoyed learning about the field and technology. I build web apps to pay the bills
- dylan604 7y ago
  If these standards were required, would we have less hostile UI/UX, would we have less shady banner ad auctions, would there be less malware, etc? Not sure it would matter, especially since those standard requirements would only apply to the country in which they were enacted. Old eastern bloc countries would still have no problem filling the void. So essentially, the same bad actors would still act bad.
  - DannyB2 7y ago
    > would there be less malware, etc? There would be MORE malware. People who couldn't meet the high standards could find income in the lucrative field of malware.
_JC_Denton 7y ago
My parents are both practicing physicians, and I am a bootcamp graduated developer. We have talked about this at length, and their conclusion is that there is no real reason why parts of medical education can't be done in a similar manner. 90% of what they learned in medical school is irrelevant to their specialties, and the vast majority of the medicine they practiced was learned 'on the job'. Medical education is heavily regulated and controlled by licensing organizations, and this is the primary reason why there would never be a disruption in the education model like this. Whether or not this a good thing is tough to answer.
- slumdev 7y ago
  Parts of the medical field are done in a similar manner. We call them nurses, PAs, and paramedics. And every single one of them has a training program already more rigorous than most bootcamps.
  - _JC_Denton 7y ago
    You are right, and even doctors learn most of their practice on the job. It makes you wonder about the value of 4-year medical school relative to the high cost.
  - gowld 7y ago
    Entry-level Emergency Medical Response training is 90 hrs. https://www.emergenthealth.org/ems-education/ems-licensure-courses/emergency-medical-responder-emr-course https://www.emergenthealth.org/ems-education/ems-licensure-c... This is equivalent to coding bootcamp.
    - slumdev 7y ago
      An EMT-Basic's scope of practice is so small, there isn't an analogy applicable to software. If a doctor is equivalent to a software engineer, than an EMT is equivalent to a business analyst who can only work on 3% of your projects and is only present a few hours per week. I have nothing against EMTs. I earned an EMT-Basic license a number of years back.
carapace 7y ago
Paralegals, paramedics, ...paraprogrammers?
- seangrogg 7y ago
  Pair programming?
CM30 7y ago
Probably because software engineering doesn't have consequences as impactful as those fields do. If your lawyer screws up, you could end up in prison (or worse). If a surgeon screws up, it could kill the patient. Same with policing and real world engineering, which have terrible consequences for failure (though the former seems to have a real problem with quality control itself). Meanwhile if your average developer or software engineer screws up, it's usually not a big deal. It might be in a few specific instances (like if they're working with medical software or systems onboard planes), but in most cases it's just 'some small business' website goes down' or 'a video game crashes'.
- hashkb 7y ago
  Massive privacy breaches? Self driving cars? Outer space? Medical implants? Robotic surgery? AI referees? Edit: Social Media, Elections, Politics, News, etc
  - gowld 7y ago
    Which recent bootcamp grads are writing spacecraft software and cars?
    - hashkb 7y ago
      That isn't the point. The point is that it's not the case that software failures are inconsequential. I'm sure there are some bootcamp grads who would like to work at SpaceX; I happen to have a personal contact who I wouldn't trust to code his way out of a paper bag who just got a job at Equifax.
  - JackRabbitSlim 7y ago
    It's cool. They will have one proper "engineer" to verify and sign off on everyone else's cheap and/or shoddy labor.
  - CM30 7y ago
    There are definitely use cases where software engineering can bring about harm if done poorly/maliciously, but they're outnumbered by ones where it really won't/can't. How many people are working on those things you list above compared to say, websites or CMS plugins or video games or marketing banner or emails or what not? That's another huge difference between software engineering/web development/coding and something like medicine; there are few parts of the latter where screwing up won't have major consequences, and many parts of the former which won't. In that sense, I guess you could say tech is less like a 'field' or 'industry' and more like part of life that a bunch of different fields or industries depend on. It's like how 'writing English' covers lawyers writing documents for use in court, teachers teaching students in schools and colleges, authors writing novels and businesses writing copy for their websites/brochures. The former two cases would have some sort of licensing because they have actual consequences if someone doesn't know what they're doing, whereas the latter clearly wouldn't.
twic 7y ago
If you already have a degree, in the UK, you can get a law qualification equivalent to an undergraduate degree in a year: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors/law-sector/law-conversion-courses https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sec... A bit longer than a typical bootcamp, but not a long time.
- mcguire 7y ago
  Which you can then use to go to school to become a solicitor or barrister? Does it have any directly associated jobs? "The GDL is one (full-time) or two (part-time) years long, and successful candidates may proceed to either the Legal Practice Course (LPC) for solicitors or the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) for barristers."
earlINmeyerkeg 7y ago
1 word: Lobbyists Law - you have to pass the bar Accounting - you need to be a CPA (although mostly for a specific career path) Surgery - do you really want some schmuck performing an operation solely from a 2 month school that teaches how to fix people? Policing - well the union's a big one...

saddestcatever 7y ago

Because "Software Engineering" isn't (currently) held to the same standards of certification, ethics, and peer review that other Engineering and Medical fields are. Maybe some day.

kuschku 7y ago
And that's exactly the issuem Software Engineering is just as much engineering as anything else, requires the same quality and lessons in ethics, and nowadays costs more people their lives than many other forms of engineering. The MCAS of the 737-MAX wasn't designed by mechanical or civil engineers ;)
carapace 7y ago
Yeah, this. ...maybe? On the one hand the idea that you can become a well-paid programmer starting from one of these bootcamps is almost insulting to me as someone who dedicated much of his life to the field. On the other hand, a lot of people do it. I've worked with them. They don't all suck. Have I wasted my life on trivialities? What does my knowledge and, yes, mastery count for if Joe Bootcamp can solve Jane Businessman's problems with a few months of training and a bolus of javascript?
- mcguire 7y ago
  In my experience, you will be the one called in to fix it when Joe's solution goes pear shaped.
- mrguyorama 7y ago
  I didn't get a Computer Science degree to build web apps. I got it because I enjoyed learning about the field and technology. I build web apps to pay the bills
dylan604 7y ago
If these standards were required, would we have less hostile UI/UX, would we have less shady banner ad auctions, would there be less malware, etc? Not sure it would matter, especially since those standard requirements would only apply to the country in which they were enacted. Old eastern bloc countries would still have no problem filling the void. So essentially, the same bad actors would still act bad.
- DannyB2 7y ago
  > would there be less malware, etc? There would be MORE malware. People who couldn't meet the high standards could find income in the lucrative field of malware.

_JC_Denton 7y ago

My parents are both practicing physicians, and I am a bootcamp graduated developer. We have talked about this at length, and their conclusion is that there is no real reason why parts of medical education can't be done in a similar manner. 90% of what they learned in medical school is irrelevant to their specialties, and the vast majority of the medicine they practiced was learned 'on the job'. Medical education is heavily regulated and controlled by licensing organizations, and this is the primary reason why there would never be a disruption in the education model like this. Whether or not this a good thing is tough to answer.

slumdev 7y ago
Parts of the medical field are done in a similar manner. We call them nurses, PAs, and paramedics. And every single one of them has a training program already more rigorous than most bootcamps.
- _JC_Denton 7y ago
  You are right, and even doctors learn most of their practice on the job. It makes you wonder about the value of 4-year medical school relative to the high cost.
- gowld 7y ago
  Entry-level Emergency Medical Response training is 90 hrs. https://www.emergenthealth.org/ems-education/ems-licensure-courses/emergency-medical-responder-emr-course https://www.emergenthealth.org/ems-education/ems-licensure-c... This is equivalent to coding bootcamp.
  - slumdev 7y ago
    An EMT-Basic's scope of practice is so small, there isn't an analogy applicable to software. If a doctor is equivalent to a software engineer, than an EMT is equivalent to a business analyst who can only work on 3% of your projects and is only present a few hours per week. I have nothing against EMTs. I earned an EMT-Basic license a number of years back.

carapace 7y ago

Paralegals, paramedics, ...paraprogrammers?

seangrogg 7y ago
Pair programming?

CM30 7y ago

Probably because software engineering doesn't have consequences as impactful as those fields do. If your lawyer screws up, you could end up in prison (or worse). If a surgeon screws up, it could kill the patient. Same with policing and real world engineering, which have terrible consequences for failure (though the former seems to have a real problem with quality control itself). Meanwhile if your average developer or software engineer screws up, it's usually not a big deal. It might be in a few specific instances (like if they're working with medical software or systems onboard planes), but in most cases it's just 'some small business' website goes down' or 'a video game crashes'.

hashkb 7y ago
Massive privacy breaches? Self driving cars? Outer space? Medical implants? Robotic surgery? AI referees? Edit: Social Media, Elections, Politics, News, etc
- gowld 7y ago
  Which recent bootcamp grads are writing spacecraft software and cars?
  - hashkb 7y ago
    That isn't the point. The point is that it's not the case that software failures are inconsequential. I'm sure there are some bootcamp grads who would like to work at SpaceX; I happen to have a personal contact who I wouldn't trust to code his way out of a paper bag who just got a job at Equifax.
- JackRabbitSlim 7y ago
  It's cool. They will have one proper "engineer" to verify and sign off on everyone else's cheap and/or shoddy labor.
- CM30 7y ago
  There are definitely use cases where software engineering can bring about harm if done poorly/maliciously, but they're outnumbered by ones where it really won't/can't. How many people are working on those things you list above compared to say, websites or CMS plugins or video games or marketing banner or emails or what not? That's another huge difference between software engineering/web development/coding and something like medicine; there are few parts of the latter where screwing up won't have major consequences, and many parts of the former which won't. In that sense, I guess you could say tech is less like a 'field' or 'industry' and more like part of life that a bunch of different fields or industries depend on. It's like how 'writing English' covers lawyers writing documents for use in court, teachers teaching students in schools and colleges, authors writing novels and businesses writing copy for their websites/brochures. The former two cases would have some sort of licensing because they have actual consequences if someone doesn't know what they're doing, whereas the latter clearly wouldn't.

twic 7y ago

If you already have a degree, in the UK, you can get a law qualification equivalent to an undergraduate degree in a year: https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sectors/law-sector/law-conversion-courses https://www.prospects.ac.uk/jobs-and-work-experience/job-sec... A bit longer than a typical bootcamp, but not a long time.

mcguire 7y ago
Which you can then use to go to school to become a solicitor or barrister? Does it have any directly associated jobs? "The GDL is one (full-time) or two (part-time) years long, and successful candidates may proceed to either the Legal Practice Course (LPC) for solicitors or the Bar Professional Training Course (BPTC) for barristers."

earlINmeyerkeg 7y ago

1 word: Lobbyists Law - you have to pass the bar Accounting - you need to be a CPA (although mostly for a specific career path) Surgery - do you really want some schmuck performing an operation solely from a 2 month school that teaches how to fix people? Policing - well the union's a big one...