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The model is broken. Too many people want to learn to code, not everyone can do it well. The only way would be to filter many candidates going in, but the nega

The model is broken. Too many people want to learn to code, not everyone can do it well. The only way would be to filter many candidates going in, but the negative press would be huge. So you end up with huge cohorts of people who can't code, and you have to make the money back somehow. Good teachers need to know how to code well, and those are expensive too. And, let's face it, the internet is full of great material to learn to code for free. If you are not motivated enough to learn by your own, all the time, I don't see how a bootcamp will give you anything.

paulpauper 2y ago
I think it's worse than not doing it well. It's more like struggling at the basics. The incentives of these camps favor quantity over quality.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  Programming is really not as hard as you're making it out to be. I've taught it to beginners both children and adults and they struggle but they all learn it. Professional software development is quite difficult, but programming is only a portion of why. And even then, software dev is only like the second or third most technically difficult job I've had. Any welder or marine upholsterer or nurse or whatever has about as intellectually demanding a job as we do.
  - paulpauper 2y ago
    Are you doing it one on one or in a classroom setting? In former, I imagine the success rates would be higher.
    - giraffe_lady 2y ago
      It was a code school. Not lambda but a comparable curriculum & setting.
  - vunderba 2y ago
    I'm sorry, but this take is just ridiculous. I say this as somebody who has worked in various fields (education, medicine), gotten my private pilot's license, worked in education as a foreign language teacher, and done EMT and paramedic work. Your examples are just absurd. Software development and software engineering is such a vast and broad field that your comparison doesn't really apply. It's more of an indictment of your particular position than anything. If all you were doing was tweaking Tailwind styles, and installing and managing WordPress, then I suppose your assessment is somewhat applicable. But for those of us who have worked as proper software engineers (I don't particularly care if this sounds pretentious), I've never encountered more intellectually challenging problems than developing brand-new solutions and algorithms to solve complex issues. If you had said "doctor" or even "nurse practitioner," then maybe. But the idea that working as a nurse (for 99% of nursing work) is as intellectually challenging as software engineering is just patently absurd. I don't even know what marine upholsterer is so I can't comment on that one. The same goes for welding, even if we went so far as as to say UNDERWATER welding. This is a position that nobody in their right mind would claim is intellectually challenging. That being said it is highly paid for two reasons: it's a very high-skill job requiring substantial training (in much the same way as getting your ATP), and it comes with a set of significant risks. Let me give you ONE example. Just one. I remember my first job out of university as a C++/C# developer. We had a large technically minded QA team. A lot of our feature work was in SDK plugins developed as DLLs which we would license to external companies. We were running into an issue where it was difficult for the QA team to quickly iterate/field test our work without us having to write custom test harnesses for them. I remember reading through the SDK reference manual for C# and reading about this concept of Reflection which would allow one to dynamically discover information about classes, methods, properties, fields, events even to the point of examining the actual arguments that could be passed in and their allowable data types. All of a sudden I realized that I could write an entire dynamic testing harness (which I dubbed "Pandora's Box") that could dynamically generate UI to run tests by pointing it at any of our managed DLLs with support for feeding in CSV to manage regression tests as well. I did this - I came to the realization, I figured out how to implement it, everything was me. I soon left the company after a couple years, and learned later that it became an important internal tool used for many subsequent years beyond my tenure. That is one just ONE example of a thousand things that I've personally come up with and developed in my stint as a software engineer. And that was 6 months out of university as a mere associate software engineer. I also came up with a novel way of doing OCR 15 years ago by combining genetic algorithm spinning up tesseracts with markov probability modeling against a common English corpus which exponentially improved our company's SOTA text recognition. And ON and ON and ON.
goat_whisperer 2y ago
That might be true if the company was honest. But this was clearly fraud. So go ahead and blame the victim.
- gatinsama 2y ago
  In fact, I am blaming the company from the very start, since they are the ones who promised something they could never deliver.
CalChris 2y ago
Wizard: Why, anybody can have a brain. Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me, I hereby confer upon you the Honorary Degree of T.H.D. Scarecrow: “Th.D.”? Wizard: Yeah, that’s “Doctor of Thinkology.” The authority vested in Allred was that he'd been a manager at a payday lending company.
- KRAKRISMOTT 2y ago
  Allred?
  - CalChris 2y ago
    Lendup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Institute_of_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Institute_of_Technology
bee_rider 2y ago
I think there’s probably room for something like: programming with less CS. But I mean, we already have trade schools and community colleges for that sort of thing. I also think there’s a ton of value in everybody learning a little bit of programming to help them automate things like office jobs. But that’s have to be carefully handled with nice intuitive libraries and thoughtfully restricted network stuff. Getting teachers for this sort of stuff is hard, but maybe the tech bubble will pop soon.
- itronitron 2y ago
  I'm curious how much Calculus as a prerequisite is a barrier to entry for students. CS as a topic is not hard, but a lot of students are blocked from entry with fairly rigorous Calculus requirements.
  - SuurRae 2y ago
    I'm sorry, but if you are unable to understand the basics of calculus and discrete math, then you should not be in a Computer Science program (with emphasis on the "science" part). CS isn't just programming - it's the theory of how computers work and math is an integral part of that. Just because you don't use it every day in the job itself doesn't mean that the information is useless.
    - itronitron 2y ago
      >> understand the basics of calculus I think the issue is that many programs expect students to understand 'the basics' of calculus as an academic mathematician understands them, which I would consider to be more suitable as an upper level elective for a CS program. A fun exercise would be to have graduating CS students take the same calculus exams that were required for admission to the program. I would expect that 10% would score much higher and the other 90% would score much lower.
      - bee_rider 2y ago
        I worked with students in a “intro calculus for humanities” type class for many years (as a sort of undergrad tutoring role, so, it was a while ago, I’m old now). Despite this experience it is pretty shocking to me that there are, like, actually adult people walking around who can’t at least do a derivative. Spending too long in STEM academics absolutely warps your view of the mathematical skill floor I think.
Bjorkbat 2y ago
As a former instructor (not at Lambda), I'm kind of inclined to believe it has more to do with the fact that it takes a certain kind of person to put up with the demands of corporate software engineering. Getting both kids and adults (especially kids) to figure out how to program is easy if you understand that most of the concepts are better taught visually through p5js or what have you. Once they leave that sandbox, however, and have to contend with what has to go into developing a production React app, it's a different animal. Programming is easy. Putting a bunch of black-boxes together in order to build some app or whatever is much, much harder and more complex (and, arguably, I think that calling it programming is kind of deceptive. You're technically doing programming, but you really feel like you are? I can't say I do.) Incidentally this is perhaps why I'm calmer than others when it comes to AI getting better and better at programming. All these researchers and companies have done is given me another black box to manage. They mean to assault my castle by first repairing its walls.
- gatinsama 2y ago
  Good point. What is hard is not programming, but taming complexity and scale.
- duxup 2y ago
  The frustration factor is a big deal. I took a bootcamp. One day and another student and I were working on something and a third member of our group (who had other issues) was really frustrated and took it out on us and then went to the teacher. She told the teacher "they just get it and I don't". But in truth the other student and I were not "just getting it", we were failing frequently, we had made no more progress on what was a fairly elementary task than she did. We just kept trying ... kept our hands on the keyboard and came up with new things to try. We were no less frustrated too. Now there's more to it than just typing like coming up with those ideas / thinking it through, but the grit to do that is not something many people have just to start. Amusingly that seems to be a problem with seasoned programmers too. I work with some good guys who do their job well enough, but man they hit a little cognitive dissonance and they just fall apart. I'm not better and very much not smarter, I just keep thinking about the problem and keep trying. A troubleshooting mindset, curiosity, and will to keep going is hard to really test for and give to someone.
kjkjadksj 2y ago
Why don't you just fire them like any other job where people can't perform the work? This isn't a unique issue with programming but the hiring managers that exist in programming act like it is and have come up with crap like leetcode and passive aggressive games like soft firing people by paying them salary and not giving them work. Imagine a landscaper thats been soft fired, it would be unthinkable.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
codeforafrica 2y ago
last week two students started learning on freecodecamp using a laptop i provide for them in my home. they work on their own, but they can ask me when they get stuck. so far it was mostly telling them to closely reread the instructions to see if that provides a clue. when they finish the html course, i'll pay them to update my website (it's all static html) then i'll see if i can get them started on javascript. not sure yet where this will go. the first student that tried that gave up after a few days. don't know why. maybe he felt it wasn't for him. fine.
pessimizer 2y ago
> Too many people want to learn to code, not everyone can do it well. People don't want to code. People want to make a living, and the people who exported their jobs overseas and gig-ized what was left told them to "learn to code."
kccqzy 2y ago
I don't think filtering candidates would cause negative press. In fact the comparison to traditional colleges is stark: colleges like to brag about how "selective" their admission process is. A coding boot camp doesn't need to be that rigorous, but at least they can demand things like a bachelors degree in any field, a few years of work experience in any field, etc. So the target audience becomes more like already reasonably successful workers who want to switch fields.

paulpauper 2y ago

I think it's worse than not doing it well. It's more like struggling at the basics. The incentives of these camps favor quantity over quality.

giraffe_lady 2y ago
Programming is really not as hard as you're making it out to be. I've taught it to beginners both children and adults and they struggle but they all learn it. Professional software development is quite difficult, but programming is only a portion of why. And even then, software dev is only like the second or third most technically difficult job I've had. Any welder or marine upholsterer or nurse or whatever has about as intellectually demanding a job as we do.
- paulpauper 2y ago
  Are you doing it one on one or in a classroom setting? In former, I imagine the success rates would be higher.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    It was a code school. Not lambda but a comparable curriculum & setting.
- vunderba 2y ago
  I'm sorry, but this take is just ridiculous. I say this as somebody who has worked in various fields (education, medicine), gotten my private pilot's license, worked in education as a foreign language teacher, and done EMT and paramedic work. Your examples are just absurd. Software development and software engineering is such a vast and broad field that your comparison doesn't really apply. It's more of an indictment of your particular position than anything. If all you were doing was tweaking Tailwind styles, and installing and managing WordPress, then I suppose your assessment is somewhat applicable. But for those of us who have worked as proper software engineers (I don't particularly care if this sounds pretentious), I've never encountered more intellectually challenging problems than developing brand-new solutions and algorithms to solve complex issues. If you had said "doctor" or even "nurse practitioner," then maybe. But the idea that working as a nurse (for 99% of nursing work) is as intellectually challenging as software engineering is just patently absurd. I don't even know what marine upholsterer is so I can't comment on that one. The same goes for welding, even if we went so far as as to say UNDERWATER welding. This is a position that nobody in their right mind would claim is intellectually challenging. That being said it is highly paid for two reasons: it's a very high-skill job requiring substantial training (in much the same way as getting your ATP), and it comes with a set of significant risks. Let me give you ONE example. Just one. I remember my first job out of university as a C++/C# developer. We had a large technically minded QA team. A lot of our feature work was in SDK plugins developed as DLLs which we would license to external companies. We were running into an issue where it was difficult for the QA team to quickly iterate/field test our work without us having to write custom test harnesses for them. I remember reading through the SDK reference manual for C# and reading about this concept of Reflection which would allow one to dynamically discover information about classes, methods, properties, fields, events even to the point of examining the actual arguments that could be passed in and their allowable data types. All of a sudden I realized that I could write an entire dynamic testing harness (which I dubbed "Pandora's Box") that could dynamically generate UI to run tests by pointing it at any of our managed DLLs with support for feeding in CSV to manage regression tests as well. I did this - I came to the realization, I figured out how to implement it, everything was me. I soon left the company after a couple years, and learned later that it became an important internal tool used for many subsequent years beyond my tenure. That is one just ONE example of a thousand things that I've personally come up with and developed in my stint as a software engineer. And that was 6 months out of university as a mere associate software engineer. I also came up with a novel way of doing OCR 15 years ago by combining genetic algorithm spinning up tesseracts with markov probability modeling against a common English corpus which exponentially improved our company's SOTA text recognition. And ON and ON and ON.

goat_whisperer 2y ago

That might be true if the company was honest. But this was clearly fraud. So go ahead and blame the victim.

gatinsama 2y ago
In fact, I am blaming the company from the very start, since they are the ones who promised something they could never deliver.

CalChris 2y ago

Wizard: Why, anybody can have a brain. Therefore, by virtue of the authority vested in me, I hereby confer upon you the Honorary Degree of T.H.D. Scarecrow: “Th.D.”? Wizard: Yeah, that’s “Doctor of Thinkology.” The authority vested in Allred was that he'd been a manager at a payday lending company.

KRAKRISMOTT 2y ago
Allred?
- CalChris 2y ago
  Lendup. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Institute_of_Technology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom_Institute_of_Technology

bee_rider 2y ago

I think there’s probably room for something like: programming with less CS. But I mean, we already have trade schools and community colleges for that sort of thing. I also think there’s a ton of value in everybody learning a little bit of programming to help them automate things like office jobs. But that’s have to be carefully handled with nice intuitive libraries and thoughtfully restricted network stuff. Getting teachers for this sort of stuff is hard, but maybe the tech bubble will pop soon.

itronitron 2y ago
I'm curious how much Calculus as a prerequisite is a barrier to entry for students. CS as a topic is not hard, but a lot of students are blocked from entry with fairly rigorous Calculus requirements.
- SuurRae 2y ago
  I'm sorry, but if you are unable to understand the basics of calculus and discrete math, then you should not be in a Computer Science program (with emphasis on the "science" part). CS isn't just programming - it's the theory of how computers work and math is an integral part of that. Just because you don't use it every day in the job itself doesn't mean that the information is useless.
  - itronitron 2y ago
    >> understand the basics of calculus I think the issue is that many programs expect students to understand 'the basics' of calculus as an academic mathematician understands them, which I would consider to be more suitable as an upper level elective for a CS program. A fun exercise would be to have graduating CS students take the same calculus exams that were required for admission to the program. I would expect that 10% would score much higher and the other 90% would score much lower.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      I worked with students in a “intro calculus for humanities” type class for many years (as a sort of undergrad tutoring role, so, it was a while ago, I’m old now). Despite this experience it is pretty shocking to me that there are, like, actually adult people walking around who can’t at least do a derivative. Spending too long in STEM academics absolutely warps your view of the mathematical skill floor I think.

Bjorkbat 2y ago

As a former instructor (not at Lambda), I'm kind of inclined to believe it has more to do with the fact that it takes a certain kind of person to put up with the demands of corporate software engineering. Getting both kids and adults (especially kids) to figure out how to program is easy if you understand that most of the concepts are better taught visually through p5js or what have you. Once they leave that sandbox, however, and have to contend with what has to go into developing a production React app, it's a different animal. Programming is easy. Putting a bunch of black-boxes together in order to build some app or whatever is much, much harder and more complex (and, arguably, I think that calling it programming is kind of deceptive. You're technically doing programming, but you really feel like you are? I can't say I do.) Incidentally this is perhaps why I'm calmer than others when it comes to AI getting better and better at programming. All these researchers and companies have done is given me another black box to manage. They mean to assault my castle by first repairing its walls.

gatinsama 2y ago
Good point. What is hard is not programming, but taming complexity and scale.
duxup 2y ago
The frustration factor is a big deal. I took a bootcamp. One day and another student and I were working on something and a third member of our group (who had other issues) was really frustrated and took it out on us and then went to the teacher. She told the teacher "they just get it and I don't". But in truth the other student and I were not "just getting it", we were failing frequently, we had made no more progress on what was a fairly elementary task than she did. We just kept trying ... kept our hands on the keyboard and came up with new things to try. We were no less frustrated too. Now there's more to it than just typing like coming up with those ideas / thinking it through, but the grit to do that is not something many people have just to start. Amusingly that seems to be a problem with seasoned programmers too. I work with some good guys who do their job well enough, but man they hit a little cognitive dissonance and they just fall apart. I'm not better and very much not smarter, I just keep thinking about the problem and keep trying. A troubleshooting mindset, curiosity, and will to keep going is hard to really test for and give to someone.

kjkjadksj 2y ago

Why don't you just fire them like any other job where people can't perform the work? This isn't a unique issue with programming but the hiring managers that exist in programming act like it is and have come up with crap like leetcode and passive aggressive games like soft firing people by paying them salary and not giving them work. Imagine a landscaper thats been soft fired, it would be unthinkable.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

codeforafrica 2y ago

last week two students started learning on freecodecamp using a laptop i provide for them in my home. they work on their own, but they can ask me when they get stuck. so far it was mostly telling them to closely reread the instructions to see if that provides a clue. when they finish the html course, i'll pay them to update my website (it's all static html) then i'll see if i can get them started on javascript. not sure yet where this will go. the first student that tried that gave up after a few days. don't know why. maybe he felt it wasn't for him. fine.

pessimizer 2y ago

> Too many people want to learn to code, not everyone can do it well. People don't want to code. People want to make a living, and the people who exported their jobs overseas and gig-ized what was left told them to "learn to code."

kccqzy 2y ago

I don't think filtering candidates would cause negative press. In fact the comparison to traditional colleges is stark: colleges like to brag about how "selective" their admission process is. A coding boot camp doesn't need to be that rigorous, but at least they can demand things like a bachelors degree in any field, a few years of work experience in any field, etc. So the target audience becomes more like already reasonably successful workers who want to switch fields.