4 ms·

Is it possible to pick up what they're missing later? Or is it something like Calculus or Accounting, where if you don't pick it up by college, the odds of pic

Is it possible to pick up what they're missing later? Or is it something like Calculus or Accounting, where if you don't pick it up by college, the odds of picking it up later are negligible?

andrewchambers 12y ago
It's not the odds of picking it up, its the need or willpower to do it. Most people just get by with what they already know and don't bother to try and learn anything new after a certain age.
bsaul 12y ago
I don't think it's impossible, but if you have any desire or love for abstract reasonning and theory, you'll probably feel a bit sad eating projects after projects of low-level C programming. The kind of people going out of this school will most likely build OS implementation stuffs, or security appliance, or VM or compilers. But probably not a new compression or distributed concensus algorithm, unless they already have a personnal interest for the fields.
- gbog 12y ago
  And it's ok. We need much more glue code coders than compression algorithm coders, right?
  - bsaul 11y ago
    Sure. I think this school is very useful and a genius idea btw. I just don't think that it will be the key to creating the new google in France. Unless it becomes so popular that it starts to attract people who are strong in maths ( at first this school attracted people that didn't fit in the very math oriented french education).
    - brohee 11y ago
      For people that are actually very bright in France, education is not only free but they are actually paid for it. The greatest French hackers like Jean-loup Gailly (zlib) and Fabrice Bellard (ffmpeg, QEmu and much more) actually went to Polytechnique (X), where they actually got something 42 students are very unlikely to get, an extremely strong math background readily applicable to multiple fields. Fabrice Bellard was already an excellent self taught programmer at age 17 when he released LZEXE. What got him to superhero level was likely more the well rounded, traditional French generalist engineering coursework he followed at X. I completely fail to see what would attract such bright people to the 42 school, when X, ENS and a few good engineering schools and university programs are available. 42 is an excellent opportunity for the people that for some reasons didn't strive in the more traditional system, but I find the possibility it start to attract top people very remote, because being taught by students two years older than you isn't nearly as attractive as being taught by top researchers, and being on a campus and mingle with top mathematicians, physicists, biologists chemist is IMHO a lot more stimulating than being among only rejected by the system computer geeks.
      - mathattack 11y ago
        Poly (& the Ecoles) are a fantastic education. It's a stretch to call it well rounded since it's 100% math, science and engineering, but those programs produce a ton of grads. They can't take everyone, though. (Hyper-competitive. It's kind of like asking if Harvard produces the superstars, or are they superstars before entering) I'm a huge fan of the elite French schools, but 42 seems to fill out the rest of the pyramid. It's not a place for people in lieu of X, it's for everyone else.
- hueving 12y ago
  Very rarely is spinning your own distributed consensus algorithm or compression algorithm something useful, let alone required.
  - Retra 11y ago
    It is if you want to learn to do it well enough to push the state-of-the-art.
- mathattack 11y ago
  If this is the free equivalent of an auto mechanic's apprenticeship for coders, I'm all for it. Although many folks look down at that type of work, there's an enormous quality and productivity difference in people who sort of know what they're doing, and people who have put in the hours to get good.

Is it possible to pick up what they're missing later? Or is it something like Calculus or Accounting, where if you don't pick it up by college, the odds of picking it up later are negligible?

andrewchambers 12y ago

It's not the odds of picking it up, its the need or willpower to do it. Most people just get by with what they already know and don't bother to try and learn anything new after a certain age.

bsaul 12y ago

I don't think it's impossible, but if you have any desire or love for abstract reasonning and theory, you'll probably feel a bit sad eating projects after projects of low-level C programming. The kind of people going out of this school will most likely build OS implementation stuffs, or security appliance, or VM or compilers. But probably not a new compression or distributed concensus algorithm, unless they already have a personnal interest for the fields.

gbog 12y ago
And it's ok. We need much more glue code coders than compression algorithm coders, right?
- bsaul 11y ago
  Sure. I think this school is very useful and a genius idea btw. I just don't think that it will be the key to creating the new google in France. Unless it becomes so popular that it starts to attract people who are strong in maths ( at first this school attracted people that didn't fit in the very math oriented french education).
  - brohee 11y ago
    For people that are actually very bright in France, education is not only free but they are actually paid for it. The greatest French hackers like Jean-loup Gailly (zlib) and Fabrice Bellard (ffmpeg, QEmu and much more) actually went to Polytechnique (X), where they actually got something 42 students are very unlikely to get, an extremely strong math background readily applicable to multiple fields. Fabrice Bellard was already an excellent self taught programmer at age 17 when he released LZEXE. What got him to superhero level was likely more the well rounded, traditional French generalist engineering coursework he followed at X. I completely fail to see what would attract such bright people to the 42 school, when X, ENS and a few good engineering schools and university programs are available. 42 is an excellent opportunity for the people that for some reasons didn't strive in the more traditional system, but I find the possibility it start to attract top people very remote, because being taught by students two years older than you isn't nearly as attractive as being taught by top researchers, and being on a campus and mingle with top mathematicians, physicists, biologists chemist is IMHO a lot more stimulating than being among only rejected by the system computer geeks.
    - mathattack 11y ago
      Poly (& the Ecoles) are a fantastic education. It's a stretch to call it well rounded since it's 100% math, science and engineering, but those programs produce a ton of grads. They can't take everyone, though. (Hyper-competitive. It's kind of like asking if Harvard produces the superstars, or are they superstars before entering) I'm a huge fan of the elite French schools, but 42 seems to fill out the rest of the pyramid. It's not a place for people in lieu of X, it's for everyone else.
hueving 12y ago
Very rarely is spinning your own distributed consensus algorithm or compression algorithm something useful, let alone required.
- Retra 11y ago
  It is if you want to learn to do it well enough to push the state-of-the-art.
mathattack 11y ago
If this is the free equivalent of an auto mechanic's apprenticeship for coders, I'm all for it. Although many folks look down at that type of work, there's an enormous quality and productivity difference in people who sort of know what they're doing, and people who have put in the hours to get good.