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Programming Education

Boom Or Bust: The Lowdown On Code Academies 130

snydeq writes "Programming boot camps are on the rise, but can a crash course in coding truly pay off for students and employers alike? InfoWorld's Dan Tynan discusses the relative (and perceived) value of code academies with founders, alumni, recruiters, and hiring managers. Early impressions and experiences are mixed, but the hacker school trend seems certain to stick. 'Many businesses that are looking at a shortfall of more than a million programmers by the year 2020 are more than willing to give inexperienced grads a chance, even if some are destined to fail. The zero-to-hero success stories may be relatively rare, but they happen often enough to ensure that the boom in quick-and-dirty coding schools is only likely to accelerate.'"
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Boom Or Bust: The Lowdown On Code Academies

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  • by inasity_rules ( 1110095 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @01:56PM (#46211427) Journal

    Advertising much?

  • Only (Score:5, Interesting)

    by The Cat ( 19816 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:06PM (#46211477)

    They'll work only if they aren't a sloppy, slapped together gimmick designed to rubber stamp "programmers" and install them in cubicles like spare parts.

    In 2014, it is shameful that we still don't have an adequate statewide computer curriculum in the state that gave birth to Apple, Google and Blizzard.

    And no, buying iPads for everyone and teaching them how to use Word is not a computer curriculum. When a 2.0 high school graduate can explain in 50 words or less what a computer is then we will have success.

    The fact that someone hasn't already taken all the throwaway PCs, installed Linux on them and equipped every school in the state with a 50-desktop computer lab (at zero cost) is only further proof of our failure in technology.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When a 2.0 high school graduate can explain in 50 words or less what a computer is then we will have success.

      With standards these days, I'd be surprised if a 2.0 high school graduate could explain anything.

    • Can you explain what a computer is? For example: Can you explain why a cell phone isn't a computer--despite having computer pieces--but a smart phone is? Can you explain why a wifi card isn't a computer, even though it's running an operating system managing software and hardware?
      • by Anonymous Coward

        In the abstract sense, a computer is anything, even neatly arranged rocks on a beach can be a ``computer''.

        In the same abstract sense, nothing is a `computer' (nothing physical is infinite, so nothing is "truly" a computer in a Turing sense of the word).

      • If by "computer" you understand "general purpose / user programmable computer", then the differences are easy to explain. Neither the wi-fi card nor the smartphone have a built-in general purpose programming language/environment for the user to play with.
        On the same lines one may notice that contemporary Windows PCs are not "computers" in this sense either. Back in the past they used to, but these days they don't come with any sensible general purpose programming environment either.
        I do remember the days
        • by rmstar ( 114746 )

          If by "computer" you understand "general purpose / user programmable computer", then the differences are easy to explain. Neither the wi-fi card nor the smartphone have a built-in general purpose programming language/environment for the user to play with.

          At least for android, downloading the sdk and running your first app on a phone is a matter of less than an hour (up to bandwidth limitations).

          For the wifi card - well, it depends on your determination. It is possible to get root on the linux that runs on i [hackaday.com]

          • Sure you can do that to them, but they were not designed for this, at least not from the part of the end user. They were designed as appliances.
          • At least for android, downloading the sdk and running your first app on a phone is a matter of less than an hour (up to bandwidth limitations).

            And for the "PC" that Napalm claims isn't a computer because it doesn't come with a programming language, it takes even less time to install Perl or Python or ... and he's ignoring the batch file ability already there.

            "A computer" has a certain set of properties, which do not include "spiffy GUI programming environment". Isn't it a shame when you young folks start thinking that something isn't a computer just because it lacks conveniences? In the new world of Things on the Internet many of our computers w

            • hey I'm talking about Windows 7/8 here. In which ways do you think that MS designed it as a general programming environment for the end user? I see none. By the time you make cygwin work on it, you could have installed Linux instead, and that one comes with all the programming tools by default.
              • hey I'm talking about Windows 7/8 here. In which ways do you think that MS designed it as a general programming environment for the end user? I see none.

                I've had no problem installing programming languages on my Windows 7 systems. You're calling the hardware "not a computer" because the operating system doesn't come with GUI IDEs for your favorite language? Wow. Then VAXen aren't computers, either, despite their long history of computing, because VMS didn't come with a general purpose programming language for free.

                By the time you make cygwin work on it, you could have installed Linux instead,

                You know, the fact that many Linux distributions come with the -devel packages installed doesn't mean they all do. I've had to install my share

            • To put it more bluntly: A contemporary Windows PC is an appliance that allows you to run pre-made software that you buy / download for free. A Linux PC *is* a computer in the previously mentioned sense, as it comes by default not only with all the programming tools you could dream of, but also with all the source code as examples or for you to tinker with. It was designed as a programming learning tool not as an appliance (albeit you can transform it into such).
        • If by "computer" you understand "general purpose / user programmable computer", then the differences are easy to explain. Neither the wi-fi card nor the smartphone have a built-in general purpose programming language/environment for the user to play with. On the same lines one may notice that contemporary Windows PCs are not "computers" in this sense either. Back in the past they used to, but these days they don't come with any sensible general purpose programming environment either. I do remember the days of the Spectrum / Commodore 64 etc. Now *those* were computers - they booted right into a programming environment.

          So you are trying to say that if someone else, but not you, can program a computer... it is not a computer. By this definition my computer is not a computer, because you can not program it.

      • Can you explain what a computer is? For example: Can you explain why a cell phone isn't a computer--despite having computer pieces--but a smart phone is? Can you explain why a wifi card isn't a computer, even though it's running an operating system managing software and hardware?

        I see what you did there... it is a trick question, they are all computers.

        • Think about "Computer Fraud and Abuse". The wording of the law makes it so that a strict definition of a "computer" can make you guilty of anything. A touch-tone telephone with number memory and built-in answering machine may be a small embedded computer; if you use it to dial into a phone system tree and hack your way through the system, you're using "a phone"... but, since it's got an embedded SOC, can you be charged with hacking "with a computer"?

          It's an important distinction. The thing has the cap

          • "Think about "Computer Fraud and Abuse". The wording of the law makes it so that a strict definition of a "computer" can make you guilty of anything. A touch-tone telephone with number memory and built-in answering machine may be a small embedded computer; if you use it to dial into a phone system tree and hack your way through the system, you're using "a phone"... but, since it's got an embedded SOC, can you be charged with hacking "with a computer"? "

            In that case it would still be Computer Fraud and Abuse

    • by rwa2 ( 4391 ) *

      Preach on!

      Hell, I'd be happy if they'd just teach people the basics of using source control.

      It is so much more pleasant working with even a total noob dev who can incrementally make progress by properly checking out, branching, and submitting code, than working with a moderately talented programmer who just submits blobs of stuff all over the place that we have to run around and try to keep coordinated.

    • I learned to code on my own from 10th grade onward (I didn't have access to programmable computers before then...)

      In 1982, my high school CompSci teacher was pretty cool and realistic about his skillz, there were a group of about 10 of us who he gave "independent study" access to the machines so we could teach ourselves - the stuff in the lecture class would take us about 2 weeks to finish the year's material.

      I took the curriculum courses in University Computer Engineering, but, strangely, they never offere

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        My version of "Hacker boot camp" wouldn't focus on "how to code" or "how to look up & hook up a library function that does an optimal sort" - you're going to need to figure that out for yourself when Java/Python becomes the next latest and greatest thing. It would focus on best practices, communicating with your customers and coworkers, documentation, source control, and transparency.

        This. This. For the love of all that is good and holy, this.

        Learning to code is the easy part. Learning to design good

    • I don't think statewide computer curriculum had anything to do with Apple/Google - there were plenty of people in those classes when I was a kid but the only people that really learned anything were the ones who also had computers at home and spent a lot of time programming.

      The code academies are a good start in making training available to those really interested in programming, for a much more affordable approach than getting an engineering or CS degree from most colleges. It's really just a more program

    • The fact that someone hasn't already taken all the throwaway PCs, installed Linux on them and equipped every school in the state with a 50-desktop computer lab (at zero cost) is

      Half a million individually assembled desktop computers, all wiped and re-imaged (using traditional installers, since they won't even come close to the same hardware configuration), and then maintained.

      You've really taken the "Linux is only free if your time has no value" quip to an amusingly absurd conclusion.

      • by The Cat ( 19816 )

        Let the students maintain the computers. You know, "crowdsourcing?" They're going to anyway.

    • There's something to be said though for being self-taught something to inspire a love of a subject. The fact that all those tech companies started up and are doing well when computer science education at the HS level sucks so bad says it's working to some degree. Maybe we shouldn't fix what's not completely broken, since that often ends up even worse.

      My computer classes in high school in the 90s were a 60 year old woman insulting us while we typed the same paragraph over and over in something one step
    • They'll work only if they aren't a sloppy, slapped together gimmick designed to rubber stamp "programmers" and install them in cubicles like spare parts.

      I really can't imagine any good a 3 month crash course would accomplish. At best you'll get someone dangerous who thinks they know how to code, and a nightmareish scenario of either picking up the pieces or having someone in management now tell you your job is so easy they can do it.

      Kids 2-3 years into college with no prior experience are just barely starting to write code that does anything interesting, let alone writing it properly. 3 months? Give me a break. The only proper way to increase the number of

  • by bluefoxlucid ( 723572 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:11PM (#46211499) Homepage Journal

    This is the same public education problem. If you provide universal education--that is, provide for a way for everyone to buy into education on their own--then what you get is market speculation by students, which often fails. For example: now again we have a need for programmers because things like Roku are becoming popular and we want to build more Android and iOS apps for phones and smart TVs; everyone in the world will want to be a programmer for those $90k, $110k, $150k salaries, and then in 5 years there will be so many programmers that none of them can get a job because some 10% of them filled all the slots and got $60k salaries out of it to boot.

    The summary directly acknowledges that, short on a crop of self-made resources, businesses are buying into low-experience, low-training wannabe poor kids who can't afford college degrees and then supplying career development. Which is something I've said again and again: universal access to education doesn't provide greater upward mobility for the poor; it forces them to speculate, which gives them a hit-or-miss chance of success if they bother putting in the hard work to become career-worthy, which only the rich can manage to absorb in the case of landing in the "not useful because saturated market" bin. Government-backed loans and government-provided vocational education is bad for the poor.

    I mean christ, I'm looking right at it. Right here. Do you see this? This is what happens when not enough people can get an education: the businesses need these educated kids to succeed, and not enough rich kids have those degrees and those skills, so the businesses grab anyone who can absorb those skills and makes sure they get it. Because hell if I'm going to lose market share to that goat fucker Cogswell when he publishes an iOS app selling his cogs to a huge market I can't reach.

    • Good points. I'd also add that universal education simply makes it so that a person has to get more education in order to improve their chances of landing or retaining a job. Teachers, for example, generally have to get a Masters, which is completely useless to most of them. At least in programming, there's not as much of this, although I did lose out one time to a person who had a Masters' degree.
    • by lexman098 ( 1983842 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:26PM (#46211615)
      I think you're way off base.

      universal access to education doesn't provide greater upward mobility for the poor; it forces them to speculate, which gives them a hit-or-miss chance of success

      Even if it's as bad as you make it seem, that's still a chance of success as opposed to not being educated and having 0% chance.

      the businesses need these educated kids to succeed, and not enough rich kids have those degrees and those skills, so the businesses grab anyone who can absorb those skills and makes sure they get it.

      The problem is they don't need to make sure of anything because there's plenty of investment from other countries to take advantage of. We live in a global economy, and we should be investing in our competitiveness.

      • Even if it's as bad as you make it seem, that's still a chance of success as opposed to not being educated and having 0% chance.

        From TFS:

        Many businesses that are looking at a shortfall of more than a million programmers by the year 2020 are more than willing to give inexperienced grads a chance, even if some are destined to fail.

        So we're going from "put in your hard work and have a roulette-wheel chance of winning" to "put in your hard work and have a high chance of success; be a poor lazy welfare wart on the ass of society and go nowhere".

        The problem is they don't need to make sure of anything because there's plenty of investment from other countries to take advantage of. We live in a global economy, and we should be investing in our competitiveness.

        The only reason not to outsource is: Our local talent is better. The outsourcing problem is entirely wage-based: $50,000/year for American programmers versus $15,000/year for Indian programmers. If the Indian programmers are essentially on parity with Americans, or at least close

        • The only reason not to outsource is: Our local talent is better. The outsourcing problem is entirely wage-based: $50,000/year for American programmers versus $15,000/year for Indian programmers. If the Indian programmers are essentially on parity with Americans, or at least close enough, then you're better off working at McDonalds because you won't have college debt. If businesses want to hire American programmers at above-McDonalds wages, then ... well, see above.

          Can you try to not argue against what is exactly in front of you?

          I'm not even sure what point you're trying to put in front of me. I would agree that apprenticeship style training is a positive thing. I just wouldn't agree that we should scrap investment in public education on the expectation of businesses to train everyone apprenticeship style. I think a good education system is what keeps our talent generally better than the code farms in India.

          • Maybe. A good, readily-accessible education system is great for businesses who want to access an abundant supply of off-the-shelf talent at low, low prices. It's not so good for the supply, which is somewhat perishable.

            The supply is vocational graduates.

            When Arthur Anderson was in business, accounting was big business; a lot of students went to school for accounting, got jobs, made a lot of money. Left to its own devices, the market would have eventually saturated, and a lot of accountants would hav

    • by Anonymous Coward

      This is what happens when not enough people can get an education: the businesses need these educated kids to succeed, and not enough rich kids have those degrees and those skills, so the businesses grab anyone who can absorb those skills and makes sure they get it.

      There's a demand in the market for a certain skill set, some people will try to acquire those skills to get jobs (or better jobs). Every young person has to make choices and invest time and money into a career choice. While it's true that a young person with deeper financial resources can better afford a mistake ("gee, that Medieval History degree isn't so useful, maybe I can get into Law School") I'm baffled by what alternative you suggest.

      • I'm baffled by what alternative you suggest.

        You're baffled by the alternative that businesses, incapable of finding enough labor to achieve their goals, will provide for the vocational training of able entrants in the same numbers as they would naturally hire in a flooded market?

        I mean let's face it, the essential choice is this: either you pay money for a degree and get hired; or your employer pays money for a degree for you. That's the two success situations.

        The two failure situations are this: either you pay money for a degree and don't ge

    • Excellent points, I'd like to add one:

      If you at what gets spent on Education in America - and the amount that actually ends up being spent on actual Education - it's a DISGRACE. A huge share of the funding goes into the Teacher's Unions, who have bought their seat at the table by bribing every politician who will listen. Union Bosses and Administrators make huge salaries - whereas the teachers don't get squat.

      The Democrats have turned the Union/Party alliance in a huge cash machine.

      Proof? Detroi
      • My essential point is that businesses want high-experience, high-training professionals; they will settle for low-experience, qualified professionals. If they can have neither, they have two choices: go nowhere--because you pay $250k for an essential position who is in so much demand that he's paid $275k to leave you in 4 months and go to a competitor--or take low-experience, low-training entrants and turn them into professionals.

        I'm slowly forming a middle-ground opinion, but it takes time. Prefronta

        • I agree with your essential point.

          The competition for senior developers is so intense, that our strategy is to bring in junior developers, put them on teams with Senior guys, and bring them up to speed. If they like the culture, and the work is interesting, they stay for a very long time, The guys that leave you for a dollar an hour more you really don't want, they tend to sour the team with complaining.

          Despite what people who have never managed anyone profess, it is not just all about the money. M
        • You're so far from the middle ground as it can get.

          Your rigid thinking completely ignores the fact that most public eductiaton for most of your life has shit todo with higher education.

          Or that people chooses higher education or vocation beyond what your myopic mind percives.

          But excuse my current drunk wisdom....

          You're just another aspie cunt that think you have figoured out every human condition, the fact that you think everyone is after higher wages regardless of anything else, after those windows 8 app sh

          • And yet history supports me with trends in education booms and following low salaries and unemployment statistics.

            It continues to appear that I'm right and yet nobody will accept it. Lemmings.

            • Because its not an all compassing boom, I've know people that changed their subjects in the first year because of the math primers and friends that wanted to be police but ended up as truckers.

              If salries are what everyone ties themselved down to, then why can't I remember everyone wanting to become fishermen.

              You are so simplistic in your analysis it hurts.

              • Art of the Fallacy: Cherry Picking. Pick out anecdote and small inflections while ignoring the greater trend of data.

                Your responses indicate that, physiologically speaking, you have a strongly encoded belief (likely "enabling all persons to independently enter college immediately after high school is a good thing") in your basal ganglia, and the conflicting idea entering your prefrontal cortex is creating the standard physiological response: stress and an immediate shift of blood flow away from your p

                • Ad-hom much?

                  • Analyzing your opponent's responses on any level is not ad-hominem. Ad-hominem is "You're a negro, therefor you're an uneducated welfare-child drug dealer, therefor you must be wrong." My response was a call-out of cherry picking, an analysis of your sharp emotional responses, and a minor dissertation on how this applies to credibility of argument.

                    Essentially it's a counter-argument to your argument by volume (i.e. screaming and stamping your feet to appear large, confident, and thus win the debate by

  • by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:24PM (#46211593)

    Not anyone can be a coder, just not not anyone can be a doctor, lawyer or executive.

    Businesses decided they didn't like the leverage coders had on them, so they tried all kinds of nasty tricks, including outsourcing, no-poaching agreements, removing stock options, and even Agile methodologies attempt to commoditize a position. Instead of fostering R&D, they RIF'd a ton of people in the early 2000s after the dot bomb. The result? The number of CS/MIS applicants were cut in 1/2 for half a decade.

    You reap what you sew, assholes. Time to pay up, bitches.

    • Apparently they think that "engineering" and "coding" are about the same thing. What they really need are some good software engineers not generic code monkeys. But, as you mentioned, they don't get it.
      • by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:43PM (#46211745)

        I personally don't think a code monkey should even exist. It's another aberration invented in an attempt to commoditize software development. The logic goes like this:

        1. Hire 1 smart guy instead of 5.
        2. Smart guy lays out the architecture/skeleton of the application
        3. Hire cheap labor to "fill in the blanks."

        It works about as well as it sounds.

        Every "architect" should play a major role in the implementation of his ideas. Otherwise, it could be a complete failure and no one would know until it's too late. It's easy to make an architectural mistake from 10,000 feet up. Architects need to be able to land and see what's going on.

        • THIS

          So many organizations try to do this, and they don't understand why it doesn't work. For people who don't code, it makes sense. Just like in constructing a house. You get a guy who knows what he's doing to draw up the plans, and you get some low paid minions to hammer in the nails. Except that in software there is no equivalent of hammering in the nails. Every person writing code is basically the person that is designing the software. By the time the well trained guy has got the requirements speci
        • Been there, done that, ain't working. In order to insure direction and quality, the experienced guy will have to supervise / code review / correct / restart from scratch the monkeys at every step. By that time he could have written it all by himself.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      "Sow" not "sew" unless you're reaping crocheted nut-warmers.

    • Not anyone can be a coder, just not not anyone can be a doctor, lawyer or executive.

      I'm not sure that being an executive or lawyer is as hard as you make it seem. Sure, executives have great opinions of themselves, and they do work hard, but it's not like some impossible thing that only geniuses can do.

    • This is nonsense. Business isn't any more or less evil than anything else. Governments tend to be more evil, BTW.

      If you are paying U.S. programmers $100K a year, and your competitors are paying offshore programmers $30K a year, what are you gonna do? Go offshore, or go out of business.
  • I'd be happy to see 1% of those 1000000 jobs.... were are they as I can't seem to be able to find them...
    • They don't exist. Its all a giant conspiracy to justify more outsourcing to 3rd world countries where there aren't minimum wage laws.

      • by Matheus ( 586080 )

        1) This is a projected shortfall for 6 years from now not now. That being said I rarely give credit to such speculation as the logic behind is usually lacking.

        2) Having recently been in the job market there are *TONS of jobs available in the Software field at least in my area (Minneapolis, MN) but even more so searching nationally. You may or may not have the skills or experience or desire to do certain types of development but there is no shortage of computer jobs at the moment.

      • Coding doesn't pay enough to offset the degree costs in the USA.
        There is a few reasons for that, none of which you and I can do anything about,,, except for not playing the game at all, because whoever wins, isn't going to be us. The observation that young people seem to have realized that is a good thing (for the kids!), not a bad one.

        My advice to young kids now is "don't go into debt for schooling to do anything that can be off-shored". That rules out a lot of technical fields at once, but it is the tr
        • "don't go into debt for schooling to do anything that can be off-shored"

          Well said. A manager sitting on his ass cannot be offshored. Couple a CS degree with a MBA is the way to go.

        • I hope you realize that there's no such thing as an non-outsourceable job. For those that can't be plainly offshored, H1B visas will do.
  • Yeah right (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CODiNE ( 27417 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:34PM (#46211675) Homepage

    Where are all the no experience needed programming jobs then? Everywhere I look 3 years of X 5 years of Y extensive knowledge of Z.

    • Where are all the no experience needed programming jobs then? Everywhere I look 3 years of X 5 years of Y extensive knowledge of Z.

      I think they mean unpayed jobs, of which there are some for inexperienced graduates. Some years ago when I graduated, I would have done jobs in either physics or engineering or computer science for free for months to get experience. After dealing with "employers" back and forth for long periods of time and them stipulating the terms, I couldn't get anything because of competition! Now I am fine, because once you have experience you can simply waltz from job to job, but getting the initial job with an advanc

  • Wrong Operator (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CanHasDIY ( 1672858 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:37PM (#46211699) Homepage Journal

    It's Boom and Bust. [wikipedia.org]

    There's no OR about it, one precedes the other.

  • by xtal ( 49134 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:46PM (#46211787)

    The rise of the code academies is people trying to profit. Nothing more. Same thing happened 15 years ago.

    There's so much information out there for free now - tutorials, books, references, open source, computers (damn near free), operating systems - the types of personalities that will excel have the tools available.

    The money would be vastly better spent in providing access to maker spaces, and programming spaces with fat connections and coffee so people can network and work on ideas. Find a way to mix in some entrepreneurial types and you've got something.

    Buy iPads? Why not buy them all a copy of the art of computer programming instead. Even if you don't understand it, it sets a stage. I remember getting my hands on a copy when I was very young, but I didn't understand it very well. Not understanding it bothered me the same way not understanding how the radios I took apart worked. 20 years later I know how both things.

  • by EMG at MU ( 1194965 ) on Monday February 10, 2014 @02:46PM (#46211789)
    We all know this is every HR drone's wet dream. They probably buy the graduation list right from the coding academy and make low ball offers to these obviously desperate coders.
    • This. The "shortfall" sounds like spin. There's plenty of programmers - but they have enough experience to want fair compensation. It's not black and white, there's fantastic upside to helping more people learn to code. At the same time, we need to see the potential for abuse.
      • So, those experienced programmers are knitting while they are waiting for fair compensation? No, they are coding somewhere else. And if you raise salaries, guess what? That company gets to hire people, while another has open positions. It's not really an issue of not paying enough, when you look at it on aggregate.

        If you want to look for a problem, it's that hiring young devs out of school is a lottery. You'll find some amazing ones, which will quickly deserve great salaries, and many crappy ones that are n

        • Haha. Hiring anyone is a lottery. You're actually better off hiring someone with 0 years of experience* as an intern or co-op for a 3 to 6 month period then hiring them on full time if they work out.

          * Who really has 0 years of experience besides people that really don't deserve jobs? Anyone can get relevant job experience through volunteering, clubs, research projects, tech support gigs, craigslist, internships. Someone who has 0 experience isn't being hired because of their lack of job experience, they
      • I was going to retract everything I said this morning, but the rest of this comment is pasted from a link in tfa. I don't buy the projections. Particularly, the 1m jobs will be at the bottom of the pay scale, not the $80k average.

        Summary of source data for Code.org infographic

        1mm more jobs than students in computing, $500B over 10 years: From the 2010 - 2012 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://www.bls.gov/ [bls.gov], across all industries we are adding 136,620 jobs per year in computing. Subtract 40,00

    • by nhat11 ( 1608159 )

      It's ok, its a way to get their foot in the door and get some experience then the newly hired can move on after a year or so after getting their feet wet. It was a win-win situation for me.

  • Just because somebody has learned the syntax of one language doesn't mean that that person is a Software Engineer.

    I've had experiences with foreign students that got a MASTERS DEGREE in Computer Science from a respected State University (not your run of the mill private diploma mill) that "waived" the CompSci basics background requirement because they're full-fare students and most of those "Software Engineers" are crap. They don't know how compilers work, don't know how a program is linked, haven't tak
    • For embedded development try Electrical Engineers, they're better at it than the CS types. You may be surprised that many of them are very productive in assembly language too.
  • IT / codeing needs an trades / apprenticeship systems.

    That takes the best parts of places like this, the ITT's / devry's, and the old fashioned University system. While cutting out the fluff and filler but adding in real hands skills and real work place settings that can be far from what that books says and let's people work with stuff that can't really be done in lab setting.

    And has a good maybe 1-2 year base with some kind of an on going plan after that.

  • We need all types of programmers, as eventually all jobs, no matter how menial, will require some programming skills.

    Most technological device use is what was once called programming, but is not considered programming anymore. Think about the complex things millions of people do with their telephones. In the 1980's only a select group of the world's most skilled programmers could do some of those things. Is it really so different to do something with five button presses than doing something with 500 lines o

  • My employer, faced with an outsized number of draftsmen, machinists, technicians, etc. and had need for programmers had a program many years ago to turn those non-programming employees into useful developers. I can't speak statistically on how successful the program was, but I can say that one of my former coworkers had gone through the program and became a successful developer.

  • How come I cant find a job here in Australia despite looking for one for 3 years or more?
    Everyone wants 3 years commercial experience with .NET or J2EE or whatever technology they are using.

  • I can't think of much anything bad about the rise of coding schools in the past few years, I think it's a great idea. All institutions of learning position themselves from an ROI standpoint to make it easier to convince people that it's a good investment, but the skills are needed pretty much across all industries. I like to think that coding schools are a good start, but the only thing that really teaches a person is working on coding projects. Some things you can't teach.
  • Daddy looks at his useless 18 year old spawn who is glued to the TV while slopping on the couch. Daddy is well aware that no place in the world really wants anything to do with his teen. Daddy also has a big ego. Daddy knows damn well that any school that is willing to get the brat out of his home is going to grab 50K a year. And daddy also likes his money. So here is what daddy will do. Daddy will send his worthless teen to a school that gives him high grades. After all if the useless kid flunks

Technology is dominated by those who manage what they do not understand.

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