9 ms·

Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

50 points by gwae 14y ago

doe88 14y ago
rn@42.fr ? That's sound good!
- ritonlajoie 14y ago
  rn is for Root Nicolas. It's a reference to Nicolas Sadirac, his email is rn@epitech.net
galvanist 14y ago
An english language story reporting the same news about this new Parisian developer school "42": http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed-xavier-niel-launches-tuition-free-developer-school-baptised-42/ http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed-xavie...
- Wilya 14y ago
  "After that the 4k selected will participate in a coding session (perhaps kind of like a mini hack-a-thon) sometime during the summer, from which 1k “geniuses” will be selected." Based on what the website and press releases say, it seems like it will be closer to a 1-month long, 15 hours per day coding session. I wouldn't call that a "mini hack-a-thon". They use the term "piscine" (pool), which is the term already used for a similar training step at Epitech (founded by the same Nicolas Sadirac mentioned in the article), another private tech-focused school based on similar ideas of "code, only code".
mddw 14y ago
For non french speaking people : Xavier Niel is the founder of Free, a major french internet and phone provider, known for kicking hornet nests (he's the "inventor" of low cost unlimited offers, ADSL back in the days, mobile phone very recently.) 42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer" approach to education (whatever it means) It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 hours of programming a day), keeps the 1000 best.
- SeanDav 14y ago
  O/T Pretty sure that the name 42 must come from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Anyone know differently?
  - arcatek 14y ago
    It's definitely this. See the teaser page[1]. [1] http://born2code.fr/ http://born2code.fr/
- simias 14y ago
  That's pretty much what epitech (Nicolas Sadirac's previous school) is about. The only difference seems to be that epitech is far from free (it's actually quite expensive for a "peer to peer" school, since the students do most of the teaching). I've been convinced for quite a long that epitech is a scam that just works because of the enormous demand for IT graduates in the industry. Insert money, get a diploma. Making a free version now, that could change things. Color me skeptic but curious. Disclaimer: I'm a former epitech student, although I dropped out in 3rd year.
  - fab13n 14y ago
    Epitech has all the incentives to be a scam (or higher education as usual, as it's called in the US). Here, since it's free, the only incentive I see for Niel is to have first pick, as an employer, in a pool of young recruits. He's certainly not a philanthropist, and he's probably smarter than most of us, so he might have ulterior motives that we don't see yet, but it won't be a straightforward "cheap degree for good money" scam.
    - ritonlajoie 14y ago
      Epitech is around 8000k/year. I made the 5 years and get a decent job, but I think it's still a scam because you learn in a p2p environment. Teachers and traditional courses are non existent. You code a lot, a lot, a lot, you learn also a lot, but it's not worth 8K euros per year for sure !
  - 14y ago
fab13n 14y ago
Given Niel's [nee-ell] outstanding track record, in terms of turning upside-down old markets paralyzed by established fat cats; given how firmly education belongs to this category; and given how badly it needs to be reinvented, this experiment is really intriguing. For a bit of cultural context, higher education in France works quite differently from the US: it's mostly tax-funded; what we call cheap education is a couple hundreds € a year, full medical insurance included; a very expensive school would be €4-6€ a year. The best schools are cheap (a few select ones even offer a modest salary to their students). The worse ones, "universités", are cheap as well. Expensive schools are in the middle, for kids of wealthy parents who do OK at school, but aren't good enough to pass the best schools' very selective entry competitions. Of course, these institutions being run by academics and civil servants, they aren't exactly reactive nor modernist; I've recently read a prominent school official explaining that Wikipedia wasn't trustworthy because it was user-editable, as opposed to journalists' papers... They offer a very solid mathematical and scientific background, but usually not much in terms of immediately employable skills. I'm not sure whether it's a good or a bad thing: school ought to teach you what you won't learn by yourself, the rest you'll pick up at your first employment, in exchange for a junior salary. But I've got the impression that schools filter mathematically-gifted student more than they train them. Niel seems to concur, and to believe that maths/science gifts don't correlate well with actual development skills. Even if it's not true, there certainly are potentially skilled developers who do poorly at maths and science, and this talent pool is totally unexploited today, so he's right to try and valorise it.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
Philadelphia 14y ago
Alternate headline: Xavier Opens School for Gifted Youngsters
lloeki 14y ago
Here are the courses [0], which I find at best overly optimistic in terms of timings, and critically lacking in mathematics and actual computer science. [0]: http://www.42.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/programme-42.pdf http://www.42.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/programme-42.pdf
Dragonai 14y ago
I just wanted to note that I am incredibly, profoundly amazed by how near-flawlessly Chrome translated this article.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
smonff 14y ago
Hey... Niel is a business man, not a revolutionary guy or a rebel. He do this school because he will make money with future students that will work for him...
jbensamo 14y ago
interesting - the high intensity coding approach did not start with Epitech. It started with Epita, the school created before Epitech. The 15 hours on boarding was called the swimming pool (you learn to swim or you drown). You started that right at the beginning of school with no programming experience. Number of students "giving up" (leaving the school right away) was broadcasted via a Unix based IM system. Goal was only to keep the students who "get it". We would have daily projects to turn in before midnight and most projects names where taken out of the Hitchhiker's. Nicolas is an awesome guy and is very smart as is his right hand Kwame. He was the sys admin for the school and led all the technical curriculum. They are both big believers in learn it / dot it yourself and that's what Nicolas already implemented at Epita as most of the technical classes were led by students. They can be tough but they are great technical mentors. I learned a lot there and I think it was worth the money. I remember that on our first day we had to code 'bdsh' (a light database in bash). I went to them to ask "what is bash?" (because at the time I was barely nailing the login screen). Answer was "man bash". Then I asked "what's man?" - answer was "man man". That's pretty much the approach.

50 points by gwae 14y ago

doe88 14y ago

rn@42.fr ? That's sound good!

ritonlajoie 14y ago
rn is for Root Nicolas. It's a reference to Nicolas Sadirac, his email is rn@epitech.net

galvanist 14y ago

An english language story reporting the same news about this new Parisian developer school "42": http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed-xavier-niel-launches-tuition-free-developer-school-baptised-42/ http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed-xavie...

Wilya 14y ago
"After that the 4k selected will participate in a coding session (perhaps kind of like a mini hack-a-thon) sometime during the summer, from which 1k “geniuses” will be selected." Based on what the website and press releases say, it seems like it will be closer to a 1-month long, 15 hours per day coding session. I wouldn't call that a "mini hack-a-thon". They use the term "piscine" (pool), which is the term already used for a similar training step at Epitech (founded by the same Nicolas Sadirac mentioned in the article), another private tech-focused school based on similar ideas of "code, only code".

mddw 14y ago

For non french speaking people : Xavier Niel is the founder of Free, a major french internet and phone provider, known for kicking hornet nests (he's the "inventor" of low cost unlimited offers, ADSL back in the days, mobile phone very recently.) 42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer" approach to education (whatever it means) It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 hours of programming a day), keeps the 1000 best.

SeanDav 14y ago
O/T Pretty sure that the name 42 must come from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Anyone know differently?
- arcatek 14y ago
  It's definitely this. See the teaser page[1]. [1] http://born2code.fr/ http://born2code.fr/
simias 14y ago
That's pretty much what epitech (Nicolas Sadirac's previous school) is about. The only difference seems to be that epitech is far from free (it's actually quite expensive for a "peer to peer" school, since the students do most of the teaching). I've been convinced for quite a long that epitech is a scam that just works because of the enormous demand for IT graduates in the industry. Insert money, get a diploma. Making a free version now, that could change things. Color me skeptic but curious. Disclaimer: I'm a former epitech student, although I dropped out in 3rd year.
- fab13n 14y ago
  Epitech has all the incentives to be a scam (or higher education as usual, as it's called in the US). Here, since it's free, the only incentive I see for Niel is to have first pick, as an employer, in a pool of young recruits. He's certainly not a philanthropist, and he's probably smarter than most of us, so he might have ulterior motives that we don't see yet, but it won't be a straightforward "cheap degree for good money" scam.
  - ritonlajoie 14y ago
    Epitech is around 8000k/year. I made the 5 years and get a decent job, but I think it's still a scam because you learn in a p2p environment. Teachers and traditional courses are non existent. You code a lot, a lot, a lot, you learn also a lot, but it's not worth 8K euros per year for sure !
- 14y ago

fab13n 14y ago

Given Niel's [nee-ell] outstanding track record, in terms of turning upside-down old markets paralyzed by established fat cats; given how firmly education belongs to this category; and given how badly it needs to be reinvented, this experiment is really intriguing. For a bit of cultural context, higher education in France works quite differently from the US: it's mostly tax-funded; what we call cheap education is a couple hundreds € a year, full medical insurance included; a very expensive school would be €4-6€ a year. The best schools are cheap (a few select ones even offer a modest salary to their students). The worse ones, "universités", are cheap as well. Expensive schools are in the middle, for kids of wealthy parents who do OK at school, but aren't good enough to pass the best schools' very selective entry competitions. Of course, these institutions being run by academics and civil servants, they aren't exactly reactive nor modernist; I've recently read a prominent school official explaining that Wikipedia wasn't trustworthy because it was user-editable, as opposed to journalists' papers... They offer a very solid mathematical and scientific background, but usually not much in terms of immediately employable skills. I'm not sure whether it's a good or a bad thing: school ought to teach you what you won't learn by yourself, the rest you'll pick up at your first employment, in exchange for a junior salary. But I've got the impression that schools filter mathematically-gifted student more than they train them. Niel seems to concur, and to believe that maths/science gifts don't correlate well with actual development skills. Even if it's not true, there certainly are potentially skilled developers who do poorly at maths and science, and this talent pool is totally unexploited today, so he's right to try and valorise it.

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

Philadelphia 14y ago

Alternate headline: Xavier Opens School for Gifted Youngsters

lloeki 14y ago

Here are the courses [0], which I find at best overly optimistic in terms of timings, and critically lacking in mathematics and actual computer science. [0]: http://www.42.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/programme-42.pdf http://www.42.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/programme-42.pdf

Dragonai 14y ago

I just wanted to note that I am incredibly, profoundly amazed by how near-flawlessly Chrome translated this article.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

smonff 14y ago

Hey... Niel is a business man, not a revolutionary guy or a rebel. He do this school because he will make money with future students that will work for him...

jbensamo 14y ago

interesting - the high intensity coding approach did not start with Epitech. It started with Epita, the school created before Epitech. The 15 hours on boarding was called the swimming pool (you learn to swim or you drown). You started that right at the beginning of school with no programming experience. Number of students "giving up" (leaving the school right away) was broadcasted via a Unix based IM system. Goal was only to keep the students who "get it". We would have daily projects to turn in before midnight and most projects names where taken out of the Hitchhiker's. Nicolas is an awesome guy and is very smart as is his right hand Kwame. He was the sys admin for the school and led all the technical curriculum. They are both big believers in learn it / dot it yourself and that's what Nicolas already implemented at Epita as most of the technical classes were led by students. They can be tough but they are great technical mentors. I learned a lot there and I think it was worth the money. I remember that on our first day we had to code 'bdsh' (a light database in bash). I went to them to ask "what is bash?" (because at the time I was barely nailing the login screen). Answer was "man bash". Then I asked "what's man?" - answer was "man man". That's pretty much the approach.