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Having taught at a coding bootcamp, I can tell you that some people will never in their lives be capable of writing functional software. People exist, with coll

by anm89 5y ago

Having taught at a coding bootcamp, I can tell you that some people will never in their lives be capable of writing functional software. People exist, with college degrees, who cannot in months of lessons, understand the idea of a variable. Not every person in the world needs to or is capable of writing software. Probably a majority are given the right exposure but there's a big difference between being able to write any piece of code and creating business value with code.

908B64B197 5y ago
You'll get downvoted for this, but it's been observed repeatedly. It’s also the reason I stopped hiring from bootcamps. The signal to noise ratio is just too low.
- uejfiweun 5y ago
  What's your take on bootcamps? I worked pretty hard to get my BS CS, but now it seems like a lot of people I knew from college who were liberal arts majors are going to bootcamp. It's got me wondering about the value of my own degree.
  - 908B64B197 5y ago
    Stuff they don't teach at bootcamps: Algorithmic complexity. "Don't roll out your own data structures" and "just use a library" works until it doesn't. Operating System fundamentals is another one. It seems a lot of bootcamps teach with rote, rather than by looking at the underlying concepts. My favorite example is git. I've seen bootcamp grads claim they can use git, but what it really meant is that they memorized a few git commands and as long as they don't stray too fart from those they can sort of work using git. But cherry-picking, rebase, proper branching forget it. I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at Lambda (the most famous one) are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their "placement" stats! Not only that, but Lambda seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1] [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610
    - uejfiweun 5y ago
      Interesting, thanks for the information. So it seems bootcamps are not really the same type of quality signal that you would get from a degree and GPA. This assuages my fears somewhat. As an aside, I always considered git to be in the category of "Easily Google-able Technologies". In that whatever I am trying to do in git, it is generally very easy to find a resource online that tells me exactly what to do. For this reason I actually never really bothered to really "learn" git beyond git commit, git add, git push, etc. It's the same attitude I take towards technologies like CSS. Wanted to hear your thoughts on this as you seem experienced and I have < 3 YOE.
      - QuercusMax 5y ago
        You should learn the basics of the git object model. It's really very simple and can help you understand better what some of the commands are actually doing. Lots of git stuff is just stored as plain text file inside the .git folder - the magic 'HEAD' ref is just a textfile that contains the hash of the HEAD commit. http://shafiul.github.io/gitbook/1_the_git_object_model.html http://shafiul.github.io/gitbook/1_the_git_object_model.html
        uejfiweun 5y ago
        Wow, this is really awesome. Thanks for the resource! Stuff like this is why I love HN.
horsawlarway 5y ago
I TA'd a lot of comp-sci classes in school - the double hump is real. Even in a class designed to teach people basic, fundamental steps, some folks just will not engage with a computer in a meaningful way. Not sure what it is, but intro CS classes will almost always show two bell curves at the end of the year - The double hump. The group that "got it" and the group that "did not".
cute_boi 5y ago
Its not like most people want to write software, but many people have to write software to keep the lights up in their home. Blame market of supply and demands that people are compelled to switch their jobs. Many of my friends wanted to study physics, but due to no scope in employement, they are currently doing computer jobs and some excel related thing.
kanaffa12345 5y ago
rurban 5y ago
> People exist, with college degrees, who cannot in months of lessons, understand the idea of a variable. They were probably exposed to SICP and prefer functional programming. Lambda calculus, memory safe, concurrency safe :)

by anm89 5y ago

908B64B197 5y ago

You'll get downvoted for this, but it's been observed repeatedly. It’s also the reason I stopped hiring from bootcamps. The signal to noise ratio is just too low.

uejfiweun 5y ago
What's your take on bootcamps? I worked pretty hard to get my BS CS, but now it seems like a lot of people I knew from college who were liberal arts majors are going to bootcamp. It's got me wondering about the value of my own degree.
- 908B64B197 5y ago
  Stuff they don't teach at bootcamps: Algorithmic complexity. "Don't roll out your own data structures" and "just use a library" works until it doesn't. Operating System fundamentals is another one. It seems a lot of bootcamps teach with rote, rather than by looking at the underlying concepts. My favorite example is git. I've seen bootcamp grads claim they can use git, but what it really meant is that they memorized a few git commands and as long as they don't stray too fart from those they can sort of work using git. But cherry-picking, rebase, proper branching forget it. I'm extremely skeptical of bootcamps, especially after learning that some of the TA's at Lambda (the most famous one) are hired to help with teaching as little as two months into the program as students[0]. I guess that counts toward their "placement" stats! Not only that, but Lambda seems so desperate that they will offer a fresh grad at no cost to any company for a 4 week trial period. [1] [0] https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-p... [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25138610
  - uejfiweun 5y ago
    Interesting, thanks for the information. So it seems bootcamps are not really the same type of quality signal that you would get from a degree and GPA. This assuages my fears somewhat. As an aside, I always considered git to be in the category of "Easily Google-able Technologies". In that whatever I am trying to do in git, it is generally very easy to find a resource online that tells me exactly what to do. For this reason I actually never really bothered to really "learn" git beyond git commit, git add, git push, etc. It's the same attitude I take towards technologies like CSS. Wanted to hear your thoughts on this as you seem experienced and I have < 3 YOE.
    - QuercusMax 5y ago
      You should learn the basics of the git object model. It's really very simple and can help you understand better what some of the commands are actually doing. Lots of git stuff is just stored as plain text file inside the .git folder - the magic 'HEAD' ref is just a textfile that contains the hash of the HEAD commit. http://shafiul.github.io/gitbook/1_the_git_object_model.html http://shafiul.github.io/gitbook/1_the_git_object_model.html
      - uejfiweun 5y ago
        Wow, this is really awesome. Thanks for the resource! Stuff like this is why I love HN.

horsawlarway 5y ago

I TA'd a lot of comp-sci classes in school - the double hump is real. Even in a class designed to teach people basic, fundamental steps, some folks just will not engage with a computer in a meaningful way. Not sure what it is, but intro CS classes will almost always show two bell curves at the end of the year - The double hump. The group that "got it" and the group that "did not".

cute_boi 5y ago

Its not like most people want to write software, but many people have to write software to keep the lights up in their home. Blame market of supply and demands that people are compelled to switch their jobs. Many of my friends wanted to study physics, but due to no scope in employement, they are currently doing computer jobs and some excel related thing.

kanaffa12345 5y ago

rurban 5y ago

> People exist, with college degrees, who cannot in months of lessons, understand the idea of a variable. They were probably exposed to SICP and prefer functional programming. Lambda calculus, memory safe, concurrency safe :)