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The more I think about bootcamps, the more they appear to be a rather insulting business proposition. Did they genuinely believe that one can take someone off t

The more I think about bootcamps, the more they appear to be a rather insulting business proposition. Did they genuinely believe that one can take someone off the street, albeit someone relatively intelligent and motivated, and teach them enough to be a professional programmer in 9 months? Imagine that we replaced programmer with mechanical engineer. Or with marketing executive. Would that sound believable? What is it about programming that makes people believe that they can learn it in a hilariously short amount of time? Sure, we programmers may be harboring some imposter syndrome and secretly believe that programming is super easy. Sure, programming doesn't require lots of math. But it's still hard! It's still a craft that requires problem solving ability, lots of semi-arcane knowledge and a detail oriented mind.

conanbatt 7y ago
Because you can, and because lots of people are doing it.
sean2 7y ago
I don't think we could pump out the well rounded developers like 4 years of undergrad can, but I don't see how we couldn't pump out SQL technicians, front-end developers, or otherwise specialized workers that could alleviate the supposed shortage of developers. I also helped a person go from zero knowledge of programming to pumping out android games in a month of self study. So I know that smart, motivated people can get pretty far pretty fast. In regards to your point, I don't think this person knows UML or ever learned big O notation, but this person was able to gain the skills required to do what they wanted, plus some pro-programmer friends and stackoverflow to fill in the "semi-arcane knowledge" when required.
- _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  I think we can pump out good apprentices. After 9 months of study, the person could definitely have enough skills to write semi-valid code and work on some small projects with supervision from a developer. However I would not call this person after 9 months a developer. A developer should be able to look at a codebase, learn it, learn the relevant technologies and start contributing. I doubt a bootcamp graduate will be able to do that. Or worse, they'll do that and wreak havoc on the codebase. > front-end developers I suspect this is part of the issue. Plenty of people believe that front-end is easier or lesser than back-end, and therefore can be learned quickly. Lots and lots of terrible front-end code has taught me that this is not true. Good front-end developers are really hard to find and subpar ones can lead to horrible user interfaces and direct impact to the bottom line. Even if we're talking the most minimal of front-end stacks, i.e. HTML, CSS and JS, which, I'm not even sure people hire for anyways, there's a lot of subtle issues with accessibility, responsive UI, writing halfway decent JS, etc. If we add on the various libraries (a sign of a good developer is also knowing when to use these libs and when to avoid them), then the amount of knowledge required is far far more than 9 months can provide.
jmastrangelo 7y ago
Ime past a certain point years of experience doesn't seem to improve one's programming ability. Even in large organizations promotions tend to slow after reaching senior engineer as the job becomes more about people management than actually improving as an engineer. Yes you can continue to gain experience in new tech but the fundamentals of thinking through software solutions doesn't really change.
- Strom 7y ago
  > Ime past a certain point years of experience doesn't seem to improve one's programming ability. [..] Yes you can continue to gain experience in new tech but the fundamentals of thinking through software solutions doesn't really change. In my own 20 years of programming experience I've kept improving significantly every year. There are so many different areas to cover (hardware internals, compilers, languages, tooling, databases, networking, graphics, user interaction, i18n, cryptography, compression, etc) and in each area there are so many different competing ideas. Each of them, when deeply understood, will provide insights in other areas. I don't see my learning hitting significantly diminishing returns before death by old age. I'm curious, at what year of your programming history did you find yourself not progressing in fundamental software thinking and how long has the plateau lasted?

conanbatt 7y ago

Because you can, and because lots of people are doing it.

sean2 7y ago

I don't think we could pump out the well rounded developers like 4 years of undergrad can, but I don't see how we couldn't pump out SQL technicians, front-end developers, or otherwise specialized workers that could alleviate the supposed shortage of developers. I also helped a person go from zero knowledge of programming to pumping out android games in a month of self study. So I know that smart, motivated people can get pretty far pretty fast. In regards to your point, I don't think this person knows UML or ever learned big O notation, but this person was able to gain the skills required to do what they wanted, plus some pro-programmer friends and stackoverflow to fill in the "semi-arcane knowledge" when required.

_hardwaregeek 7y ago
I think we can pump out good apprentices. After 9 months of study, the person could definitely have enough skills to write semi-valid code and work on some small projects with supervision from a developer. However I would not call this person after 9 months a developer. A developer should be able to look at a codebase, learn it, learn the relevant technologies and start contributing. I doubt a bootcamp graduate will be able to do that. Or worse, they'll do that and wreak havoc on the codebase. > front-end developers I suspect this is part of the issue. Plenty of people believe that front-end is easier or lesser than back-end, and therefore can be learned quickly. Lots and lots of terrible front-end code has taught me that this is not true. Good front-end developers are really hard to find and subpar ones can lead to horrible user interfaces and direct impact to the bottom line. Even if we're talking the most minimal of front-end stacks, i.e. HTML, CSS and JS, which, I'm not even sure people hire for anyways, there's a lot of subtle issues with accessibility, responsive UI, writing halfway decent JS, etc. If we add on the various libraries (a sign of a good developer is also knowing when to use these libs and when to avoid them), then the amount of knowledge required is far far more than 9 months can provide.

jmastrangelo 7y ago

Ime past a certain point years of experience doesn't seem to improve one's programming ability. Even in large organizations promotions tend to slow after reaching senior engineer as the job becomes more about people management than actually improving as an engineer. Yes you can continue to gain experience in new tech but the fundamentals of thinking through software solutions doesn't really change.

Strom 7y ago
> Ime past a certain point years of experience doesn't seem to improve one's programming ability. [..] Yes you can continue to gain experience in new tech but the fundamentals of thinking through software solutions doesn't really change. In my own 20 years of programming experience I've kept improving significantly every year. There are so many different areas to cover (hardware internals, compilers, languages, tooling, databases, networking, graphics, user interaction, i18n, cryptography, compression, etc) and in each area there are so many different competing ideas. Each of them, when deeply understood, will provide insights in other areas. I don't see my learning hitting significantly diminishing returns before death by old age. I'm curious, at what year of your programming history did you find yourself not progressing in fundamental software thinking and how long has the plateau lasted?