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I too felt a lot of readers had the wrong reaction and mis-interpreted Jeff Attwood's original post. I was an undergrad in the tech bubble a decade ago. CS was
by siavosh 14y ago
I too felt a lot of readers had the wrong reaction and mis-interpreted Jeff Attwood's original post.
I was an undergrad in the tech bubble a decade ago. CS was the most in demand and popular major on campus. When the bubble burst, a lot of my former classmates abandoned programming. I was not surprised. A lot of them were CS majors because that's where the money/attention/parent pressure/sexiness was during the bubble. The moment it faded they left for greener pastures. They had realized, very abruptly, they were miserable during those long lab hours and hated debugging at 2AM before a deadline.
Coding is a beautiful and difficult thing, but like any career, it can be very tough sometimes. As Jeff says, the only path to happiness is to follow your love (or as Bret Victor would say, follow a principle). The challenge now is the same as a decade ago: quieting all that noise and figuring out what you really want to do.
- koide 14y agoI don't understand this. Doing a couple hours a week learning Javascript and you will now change careers? Or, inversely, learning Javascript on Codecademy will get you a lucrative job on frontend programming, if you are not talented? Yes, of course doing what you love and striving for excellence and doing your research on your own are all great admirable things everyone should do. But they are hard, and not at all at odds with this tiny time investment. What's all the fuss about? Let people do what they want to and get off the high horse, unless you are pulling people up with practical contributions, not just "don't do this"
- slantyyz 14y agoDuring the last bubble, the hot scam was for "private vocational schools" to advertise to recent grads (i.e., fine arts and social sciences majors) to develop tech skills to help them get a job. The company I was at was looking for cheap labour and hired several of these people who paid a small fortune for a six month "intensive" course. Needless to say, they were all duds looking to cash in on a hot job market.
- koide 14y agoAt least the companies now will save the small fortune, they'll just point the duds to Codecademy/Udacity/Coursera. People like the ones you mention will always exist, but they are not Codecademy's responsibility. It's even likely they would find a place where you get a relatively respected diploma instead of a certificate in PDF.
- huggyface 14y agoI too felt a lot of readers had the wrong reaction and mis-interpreted Jeff Attwood's original post. I have a personal peeve for the desperate pivots of a piece to try to see what can stick. It's bad enough when an original author does it, but even worse when fans of the author did it. His original piece was asinine. Perhaps intentionally, because its easy-to-refute nature saw it linked by the thousands, everyone lining up to take an easy hit. And now they'll link to this for followup points.
- Vadoff 14y agoI was an undergrad in the tech bubble a decade ago. CS was the most in demand and popular major on campus. It's funny, this again seems to be the case at a lot of universities today.