The Academy For Software Engineering: a High School For Developers 56
rjmarvin writes "The Academy for Software Engineering, right off of Manhattan's Union Square, is in its second year of educating students for a future in computer science and software engineering. No entrance exams, no admission standards, just an opportunity for any student interested in software to take specialized classes like robotics and programming, go on trips to companies like Google and Facebook, and spend summers interning at Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase before heading to college and into the workforce, powering the next wave of innovation as members of the tech workforce in New York's burgeoning 'Silicon Alley.'"
Universities are not vocational schools (Score:4, Interesting)
at least it's better then theory loaded CS colleges where you learn skills that give a big skills gap on the stuff needed to do the job.
Universities are not vocational schools. If you want to learn the languages and operating systems that are used at a job ***today*** then go to your local junior college (JC) and take the relevant vocational classes. JCs do a fine job in this regard. If you want the theory and background knowledge that is more persistent, that will outlast the programming languages and operating systems that are popular today then you go to the university. In the university you are often expected to learn the programming languages and operating systems of the day on your own time. As you will have to do throughout your career. Even things necessary for class are often on your own time. For example in a compilers class the class time may be mostly spent on compiler theory. You may be offered an optional session led by a TA to introduce you to lex and yacc (used to implement your compiler) but you are expected to learn these mostly on your own. Similar story in AI classes, theory in class, a TA session for LISP or Prolog, but mostly you learn the programming language on your own time. Programming languages and operating systems are implementation details, they change over time. The theory tends to last a bit longer.
I have two books from the early 1980s. A book on programming MS-DOS and Knuth Volume 3: Sorting and Searching. The former is full of what was once useful info for a job and went into the recycle bin when cleaning out the garage recently. The later is theory and is still a valuable and useful reference today and still sits on my bookshelf.
If you have a skills gap after the university you made some sort of mistake. At the university you are surround by people (professors and fellow students) with an incredibly variety of skills and knowledge, you have incredible resources (hardware and software) available, if you are not doing some sort of independent study on your own you are making a mistake. If you are doing nothing other than homework assignment on the default hardware using the default languages you are making a mistake, you are making yourself less attractive to employers. Assuming of course you don't have a job or some other "legitimate" demand on your time.