4 ms·

Agreed, it's an arrogant and condescending comment that does not belong on HN let alone at the top. It's sad.

jsjddbbwj 7y ago
It is a joke and social critique and if someone takes it seriously then that's their problem.
commandlinefan 7y ago
> arrogant and condescending Arrogant and condescending don’t mean “wrong”. Djikstra (the king of accusations of arrogance), once pointed out that his native language has no word for “egghead”: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD1209.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/E..., principally because his native culture has no history of dismissing the educated. OP is using (I interpret) “bootcamp data scientists” as a shorthand for people who know far less than they think they do. That seems like a fair characterization, honestly: that’s entirely the philosophy behind bootcamps in the first place. The idea behind them is that a four-year education in computer science is unnecessary for routine software development jobs, and one can be trained up to useful programming ability in a much shorter time (and less cost) than a full-blown university education takes. While it’s difficult to say how true this is, OP (I interpret) and I have both observed that bootcamp types seem to presume that a few-month intensive bootcamp experience actually does cover everything that a four-year degree does, and are often surprised (as well as defensive) when they come across something that their bootcamp didn’t prepare them for. A close analogue would be a paralegal thinking they know the law better than lawyers or nurses thinking they know medicine better than doctors - not that they don’t know a lot, but there are a few things that, while not as commonly useful, do come up in actual practice that are important when they do.
- thedance 7y ago
  Well, the problem isn't that the bootcamp people lack a computer science education, it's that they lack any formal education. I've hired epistemologists and physicians to program computers and it turned out fine. The bootcamp process might in fact work well as training for otherwise educated people.
- mattmanser 7y ago
  I've worked as a programmer for 15 years. I did a Philosophy degree. I can run circles around some programmers with a CS degree. CS degrees have always been an odd qualification, mainly because so much of it is completely unrelated to professional programming. You can get a high mark and still be unable to write a non-trivial program on your own. When I originally started doing my Chemistry degree, we did huge amounts of lab work compared to the odd class or two CS students did. You don't come out of uni a good progammer if you study CS, while you will come out of uni a good chemist, biologist or engineer. And that really sums up the problem with this line of argument.
  - basementcat 7y ago
    A famous Dutchman once opined that a CS degree has as much to do with teaching programming as an astronomy degree has to do with teaching the construction of telescopes.
  - commandlinefan 7y ago
    > You don't come out of uni a good progammer if you study CS Do you think that this is untrue of boot camps?
    - mattmanser 7y ago
      Well, no, but it's roughly the same amount of time you'll spend on learning programming in a CS degree. And you're not going to be able to pass it because you can pontificate at length about compiler design or explain what a linked list is, but flunked the practicals because none of your code even compiled. One guy I worked with a long time ago that we hired would give us all these huge lectures about the right DB design and when to use structs or classes. Had an opinion on the right way to do everything. But he didn't seem to be clearing many bugs, and then our company fired him after 3 months when they realized in his main project to get our dropbox-esque system talking with Word he'd written a whole 10 lines of code. Could talk the talk, but couldn't walk the walk.
  - new2628 7y ago
    Forget about CS degree, I once worked with a CS postdoc, now a professor at a top US university, who prided himself of never having written a program.

It is a joke and social critique and if someone takes it seriously then that's their problem.

> arrogant and condescending Arrogant and condescending don’t mean “wrong”. Djikstra (the king of accusations of arrogance), once pointed out that his native language has no word for “egghead”: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/EWD1209.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD12xx/E..., principally because his native culture has no history of dismissing the educated. OP is using (I interpret) “bootcamp data scientists” as a shorthand for people who know far less than they think they do. That seems like a fair characterization, honestly: that’s entirely the philosophy behind bootcamps in the first place. The idea behind them is that a four-year education in computer science is unnecessary for routine software development jobs, and one can be trained up to useful programming ability in a much shorter time (and less cost) than a full-blown university education takes. While it’s difficult to say how true this is, OP (I interpret) and I have both observed that bootcamp types seem to presume that a few-month intensive bootcamp experience actually does cover everything that a four-year degree does, and are often surprised (as well as defensive) when they come across something that their bootcamp didn’t prepare them for. A close analogue would be a paralegal thinking they know the law better than lawyers or nurses thinking they know medicine better than doctors - not that they don’t know a lot, but there are a few things that, while not as commonly useful, do come up in actual practice that are important when they do.

thedance 7y ago
Well, the problem isn't that the bootcamp people lack a computer science education, it's that they lack any formal education. I've hired epistemologists and physicians to program computers and it turned out fine. The bootcamp process might in fact work well as training for otherwise educated people.
mattmanser 7y ago
I've worked as a programmer for 15 years. I did a Philosophy degree. I can run circles around some programmers with a CS degree. CS degrees have always been an odd qualification, mainly because so much of it is completely unrelated to professional programming. You can get a high mark and still be unable to write a non-trivial program on your own. When I originally started doing my Chemistry degree, we did huge amounts of lab work compared to the odd class or two CS students did. You don't come out of uni a good progammer if you study CS, while you will come out of uni a good chemist, biologist or engineer. And that really sums up the problem with this line of argument.
- basementcat 7y ago
  A famous Dutchman once opined that a CS degree has as much to do with teaching programming as an astronomy degree has to do with teaching the construction of telescopes.
- commandlinefan 7y ago
  > You don't come out of uni a good progammer if you study CS Do you think that this is untrue of boot camps?
  - mattmanser 7y ago
    Well, no, but it's roughly the same amount of time you'll spend on learning programming in a CS degree. And you're not going to be able to pass it because you can pontificate at length about compiler design or explain what a linked list is, but flunked the practicals because none of your code even compiled. One guy I worked with a long time ago that we hired would give us all these huge lectures about the right DB design and when to use structs or classes. Had an opinion on the right way to do everything. But he didn't seem to be clearing many bugs, and then our company fired him after 3 months when they realized in his main project to get our dropbox-esque system talking with Word he'd written a whole 10 lines of code. Could talk the talk, but couldn't walk the walk.
- new2628 7y ago
  Forget about CS degree, I once worked with a CS postdoc, now a professor at a top US university, who prided himself of never having written a program.