Codecademy's ReSkillUSA: Gestation Period For New Developers Is 3 Months 173
theodp writes: TechCrunch reports that Codecademy has teamed up with online and offline coding schools to create ReskillUSA. "3 months," explains ReskillUSA's website, is "how long it takes a dedicated beginner to learn the skills to qualify for computing and web development jobs." TechCrunch's Anthony Ha explains,"By teaming up with other organizations, Codecademy is also hoping to convince employers that completing one of those programs is a meaningful qualification for a job, and that you don't necessarily need a bachelor's degree in computer science." In his Medium post, Codecademy CEO Zach Sims calls on "students learning for the jobs of the future or employers interested in hiring a diverse and skilled workforce – to join us. The future of our economy depends on it."
Sure 'Tis (Score:5, Insightful)
It's too bad I can't mod TFS funny.
Re:Sure 'Tis (Score:4, Funny)
It's too bad I can't mod TFS funny.
The gestation period of a human is only 9 months. Perhaps 4 is enough to produce a developer capable primarily of crying, primitive babbling, and soiling itself?
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It's too bad I can't mod TFS funny.
The gestation period of a human is only 9 months. Perhaps 4 is enough to produce a developer capable primarily of crying, primitive babbling, and soiling itself?
If we get enough women pregnant, we can get coding proficiency in a couple minutes.
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Fits my observations from doing code reviews.
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Well, at least that explains why there are so many really, really bad developers. They can be cranked out fast!
Personally, after 30 years of writing code, I still learn things and still get better at it. From reviewing quite a bit of "enterprise software" source code, I also know that even mission-critical software often sucks massively.
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They leave out the part where they're fired at 4 months...
No doubt. Because:
"3 months," explains ReskillUSA's website, is "how long it takes a dedicated beginner to learn the skills to qualify for computing and web development jobs."
No, it isn't. It's enough time to learn most of the raw coding ability. At this point it isn't a "skill", because there hasn't been time to learn any theory, or to understand the subtle nuances or infrastructure of the language(s) they are using.
And it sure as hell isn't enough time to learn office teamwork skills, or to become intimately familiar with one OS, much less several.
Etc.
This just proves... (Score:2)
that schools don't teach coding. Schools might give people with coding talent a jump start, but as with art, you either get it or you don't.
"Learning the skills" just means that you can type in some lines of code, and make it do something. That's a far cry from learning what it takes to create quality software.
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If it takes an American 3 months to train, why do the big corporations import hundreds of thousands of H-1Bs?
Re:This just proves... (Score:5, Insightful)
Because H-1Bs are cheaper.
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Only for warm bodies. We out compete on results per dollar regularly. Unfortunately, management gets more promotions for having X people under them rather than Z results.
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I can hire 5 coders for 20k for 6 months in india. That is how much cheaper it is.
Back when we had 'mentors' the rule of thumb was 3 months to learn the language. 1-2 months for the process (which was mixed into the first 3 months). Then another 1-2 years before you were considered pretty good at it. 10-15 years before you mentored or managed others.
I can teach pretty much any moron how to program. It really is not hard. Just so long as they can write simple instructions and conditions. The jump from
Re:This just proves... (Score:4, Interesting)
and just how good and maintainable is that code?
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and just how good and maintainable is that code?
Do you really believe that the people pushing crap this give a crap?
Their next step will be to create a "Level 2 6-month advanced program".
And then the "Level 3 9-month expert program."
Because they don't have a clue. But that's okay - we have Simon (the BOfH) [theregister.co.uk] on our side. I expect a run on cattle prods, quicklime and easily rolled up carpets if this ever gains traction.
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Does 'done' include meaningful testing?
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If by meaningful testing you mean "runs on my machine in ideal conditions" then yes, they do meaningful testing.
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That's a no, then.
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And as somebody who has seen what Indian outsourced "quality code" looks like, having them not produce the code saves you 6 months and 20k. Because what they routinely produce is worth less than nothing. Now, I am not saying that Indian developers are more stupid, not at all. But none of the good ones are in outsourcing. You find the good ones in Europe, the US and other places, earning regular salaries. The outsourcing companies get the leftovers. That is why they are so cheap.
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If it takes an American 3 months to train, why do the big corporations import hundreds of thousands of H-1Bs?
There are more of them than there are Americans. Amongst the billions who are no Americans, there are those that are talented and capable but don't necessarily have job opportunities where they live. The US West Coast is the center of gravity for the technology industry. So that's where people go. If it was race cars, you would move to the South East UK. If it was cheese making maybe Holland is the place. If killing people is your talent, the East cost US has lots of military suppliers.
Just because tech is
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Programming is a trade, like plumbing or electrical work. Yes, experience will lead to better finished product, but programmers who think they need an IQ of 135 and an un
Re:This just proves... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but basically in the same breath, you said that you're not a programmer, yet you judge programming to be a trade like plumbing.
I can't reconcile those two, and I respectfully disagree.
By the way, I totally agree about code riddled with bugs. I work on safety-critical software, and I can assure you, not all software (firmware in my case) is of such low quality. But I'll also concede that the cost and time to develop such software is much longer than your typical slap-happy PHP script running on foo.com's webserver...
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think of what a plumber has to deal with if they have a Blackwater line with say 15 gallons worth of back pressure or some of the more involved plumbing nightmares (like how to get a LIVE snake out of a blackwater line).
90% of the time in plumbing you can get away with cut and fit stuff (as long as The Code Allows It) but then there is the 10% of the time you are dealing with having Blackwater all over the carpet.
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I work on safety-critical software, and I can assure you, not all software (firmware in my case) is of such low quality. But I'll also concede that the cost and time to develop such software is much longer than your typical slap-happy PHP script running on foo.com's webserver...
Not all software can justify the effort and expense of safety-critical software, but there are many things you can do to reduce bugs, that take little time, or even speed up your development (because you have less bug reports to deal with later, or don't have to work around bugs, etc).
An example would be checking the warnings from your compiler. Easy to do, doesn't take a huge budget, but cleans up your code. And yet a lot of people don't do it.
Re:This just proves... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but basically in the same breath, you said that you're not a programmer, yet you judge programming to be a trade like plumbing.
I can't reconcile those two, and I respectfully disagree.
Are you a plumber? I'm neither a plumber nor a programmer but I appreciate both that both feature significant complexities which the layperson does not appreciate, and that an only moderately skilled beginner can yet still accomplish many common tasks.
Re:This just proves... (Score:5, Insightful)
I am both a programmer and a plumber, and I can tell you that plumbing isn't as bug-free as you make it out to be. For example, if you stuff too many potato peels down your garbage disposal too quickly, your sink will back up, requiring you to take apart the drain plumbing to get all the peels out. I know, I've had to do this in multiple houses. That's the equivalent of a page crashing when you put in bad data. If you put food down the disposal at a rate it can handle, it will work fine, and if you put reasonably good data into a given Web page, it usually works.
There is an entire industry devoted to fixing "bugs" in plumbing, from drain cleaners to root-removal services. How many bathroom sinks have drain stoppers that don't quite hold the water in the sink? How many shower drains get clogged? How many old pipes leak due to corrosion?
Yes, programming is a trade, like plumbing and electrical work. And like the other trades, programmers have to often fix issues due to problems that either weren't anticipated during construction. In my view, programmers in general don't create code that is particularly more shoddy than craftsmen of any other trade. With each trade, there is a trade-off between quality and cost.
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What you don't get (possibly because you are not a programmer) is that Ruby-on-Rails-with-XHTML-and-JQuery-NoSQL-Hadoop technology is simplifying programming. Simplify it any more, and you'll likely end up with worse (with both likely over the near future).
Back at the day where the programming language was hard, only people with the knack could do it. Programs still had bugs (and always shall), because programming is a complex task and we did not have the tools to simplify the complexity back then.
And then
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What's the Linux kernel written in? How about the HTTP Apache server? How about World of Warcraft, the most successful multiplayer game of all time?
It's better to be able to write simple C code than spend 3 years learning a framework on top of a framework balanced on yet another frame
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More than that, schools don't teach critical thinking, which is a requirement for being a good developer.
Zero to coder in 3 months? I don't think so. That's pretty much the equivalent of zero to literate in 3 months, which is laughable.
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Zero to coder in 3 months?
Of course not - but these idiots are talking about getting someone to the point where they can make a web page. Or use a pre-packaged piece of software and configure it through the admin interface. No real coding required. But the truth won't get you attention, grants, etc.
Besides, it's not like we need even more crappy web developers.
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also it takes more than 3 months (even if you only sleep eat and "play' only 48 hours TOTAL in those 3 months) to learn stuff like (how to get a 90 degree angle from 12 feet of rope and three pegs) much less be able to tell WHY this will work every time.
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That's a far cry from learning what it takes to create quality software.
Sure, that doesn' t mean they are useless... Sure, if you pay them a regular tech-salary...
But can you have second-class developers in a company?
For example writing tests, or internal web applications based on rock solid automation APIs. Or web-based dashboards for presentation of metrics collected and exposed through a stable APIs...
I 50-75 % of study points for my MSc in CS comes from or is related to large group projects. As someone who is smart and skilled, I quickly learned how to isolate parts o
Re:This just proves... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not fearful for my job.
It will be my job to unpick the huge steaming turd that some manager decided to outsource to a "3 month programmer".
I'm not fearful for my job; I'm fearful for my sanity.
Re:This just proves... (Score:5, Informative)
With the right drive, anyone can learn to program. Similarly, anyone can learn how to draw. There are places for simple carnival caricature artists in the world, and there are places for coders who get a start in a 3 month program. I'm very grateful to them, since they help make places for people like me, fixing the problems caused by copy+paste coders that don't understand some of the details that I do.
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you can start with a simple language (hello? BASIC anyone?
Are you insane? Start with a program that teaches you to do everything wrong? BASIC is maybe useful if your career path is moving on to 6502 assembly for embedded systems (GOTO approximates JMP, GOSUB approximates JSR), but BASIC thinking doesn't map well onto programming constructs in modern languages, or even modern processor instruction sets.
Translation (Score:1)
We need more cheap code monkeys that we can use as interchangeable and discardable cogs, who the fuck do these nerds think they are expecting a middle class income.
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WUT (Score:1)
If you hire someone that's only been coding for 3 months, it will add negative value to the entire team.
3 months = thinks they know everything
6 months = realizes they don't know shit
3 months = thinks they know everything
6 years = realizes they still don't know shit
I've been programming for nearly 30 years, and I'm starting to think I know everything. :D
I think that means I've got another 30 years before I realize that I STILL don't know shit.
Seriously though, don't hire anyone with 3 months of coding experi
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Exactly. I've been coding for 70% of my life and I still learn a lot every day.
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I'm at the stage where I know I can make anything with programming,
Really? Make me a sammich!
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Your timeline has a bug and won't pass review ;)
Your reviews are clearly more thorough than my last employer's...
I guess they missed the first step of engineering. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I guess they missed the first step of engineeri (Score:4, Interesting)
Codecademy is also hoping to convince employers that completing one of those programs is a meaningful qualification for a job
I.e. - create a new certification that companies can require. Then profit from it.
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Mod parent up. (Score:5, Insightful)
Technically, someone could be a "programmer" after only 3 months of work. More specifically, a "bad programmer".
From TFA:
That kind of says it all right there.
How about, instead, they put together a curriculum showing what an entry level programmer should know? Even if it takes more than 3 months to finish it all. And what the different sub-fields are in programming (kernel hacker, web site designer, database programmer, etc). Maybe you don't need so much math if you're going to be "coding" in HTML/CSS/scripting-language. But then you aren't going to be hitting the $80,000/year "average" that they claim.
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"coding" in HTML/CSS/scripting-language
Even then, 3 months is only enough to use a Dreamweaver type program and maybe have enough knowledge to not make a complete fool of yourself (probably not).
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From TFA:
I'm not taking advice from computer game characters.
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These are three major hurtles that all take longer than that.
1. A wall of text does not just look like an imposing and confusing mess.
2. The developer can think in code and does not go through a taxing and inefficient translation phase.
3. They can read, understand, and edit other peoples code.
I actually laughed aloud (Score:1)
Please tell me that I'm not the only one who laughed aloud at this.
Yeah. Knowing the Knowing ==poet? Notes academy (Score:4, Interesting)
It's LOL, for sure. In three months you can teach someone the essential keywords of a language and basic syntax, sure. Knowing the essential words doesn't make one a developer any more than it makes one a poet. Programming is nearly pure thought, reasoning. Noting the results of the thought-work using the shorthand known as "code" is a necessary piece of sidework, like an archaeologist. taking notes using archaeological abbreviations. The ability to take notes doesn't make one an archaeologist, the ability to scrawl code,doesn't make one a software architect. To be fair, their very name admits they teach the wrong thing - Code Academy. Apparently they teach code. Pretty much like setting up Medical Abbreviations Academy, where they teach medical abbreviations.
As others have said, I've been programming professionally, and studying my craft, for nearly 20 years ; I still consult with my peers several times each week because none of us know everything we nees to know yet. Except Knuth, of course. Probably the closest any programmer has gotten to knowing their job is Ted T'so - he's the best in the world at developing filesystems. He only needs about 20 other people to review his work before it goes to production.
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know enough to be dangerous (Score:2)
Hmm, so they'd know HOW, mechanically , to screw everything up, but not know why what they're doing is wrong and dangerous? I'm not sure I'd want that. I'd prefer that they be very good at their job, I be very good at mine, and both of us clearly understand that we don't know each other's fields.
IT people, perhaps- it's probably good if the sysadmin can do:
for file in *.spam
do
mv $file spam/
do
I don't want my accountant trying to write a payroll system as a shit ton of Excel m
period broken? (Score:2)
You've expressed the positive possibilities well.
I'm just curious, is your keyboard broken, no period key? I ask because you seem like a native English speaker, don't seem like a moron, and used other punctuation such as commas and - wtf ellipsis. How do you type an ellipsis but not periods?
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JavaScript and not C programmer? (Score:2)
I'm now curious if, as half pint hal suggests, you code a lot of JavaScript, which auto corrects missing semicolons at the ends of lines. If the terminating semicolon is implied, it is logical that the terminating period would be implied.
Ever sense I read The Design of Everyday Things I've been interested in the psychology of error.
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Knowing the essential words doesn't make one a developer any more than it makes one a poet. Programming is nearly pure thought, reasoning
No, programming is writing programs. Take a look around, it's clear that many of them were written without a whole lot of thought. That's why software engineering is a thing different from programming.
Minions (Score:1)
Don't complain, these guys are training your future minions. You know, for all the easy to do but time-consuming and boring as heck tasks. You know you want a minion.
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My minions cost more time than they save, and they have far more than 3 months of training...
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I prefer my minions to have 4-year degrees. Managing minions is not all the slapstick humor and chocolate rivers it's made out to be! I can teach you to code in 3 months but that's NOT what I learned from school. I'll give credit to the individual who can soak up the other stuff on their own but that is by far the exception not the rule in my experience. A pure code monkey is typically a drain on me not a help.
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Wow... lots of incredibly defensive responses. Almost as if these people feel threatened by someone with 3 months of education in their field.
Just to clarify, the minions are for menial programming tasks, not to do automated tasks that would be better done by a script.
You've never had one of those "minions" remove a bunch of files that do things like automatically set up the database connection, verify user input, etc., and lose a days credit card transactions because "I didn't think those functions weren't needed." Sadly, it's a true story. Our idiot boss, who thought he could save time and money by having a "minion" do it, didn't help. (Okay, they weren't minions, they were interns in the last 3 months of a 1-year program, but still ... same diff).
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"Wow... lots of incredibly defensive responses. Almost as if these people feel threatened by someone with 3 months of education in their field."
They should be.
As specially the last 30 years has tought us, it's not about your ability but about what the big executives think.
If big executives want to think 3 months is all it takes and is all it's worth, they are doomed, and the whole world with them.
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Oh and it's means "it is", always surprises me when programmers can't get that right.
Why are you surprised? Hardly anyone ever does, in any profession, and even after studying English to degree level (as a native) I still often make mistakes like that when I'm at a keyboard.
Hell, I even sometimes type "=" instead of "==" in my code. I need to force myself to start saying "is equal to" while I type ==, like I did back when I was learning.
Write code, sure. Programming, no. (Score:4, Interesting)
There are plenty of high schools that teach people the basics of programming in the course of ten months. The advanced courses do a pretty good job of covering everything from languages to algorithms to software engineering. Yet I don't see businesses jumping at the prospects of hiring these graduates.
There's a reason for that: they only touch upon the basics because they only have time to touch upon the basics. While that may be enough to put together a website for a small business or create a basic smartphone/tablet app, only the tiniest minority will come away with the skills to make something as advanced as a salable indie game.
To do anything innovative, you need both the training and experience to handle the mathematics and design that goes into larger applications. That takes years, which is why university programs take years. Without that extra effort and the dedication behind it, very few people are going to be able to develop anything beyond the most basic program.
(Note: I'm not suggesting that the training and experience has to be formal, since a lot of self-studies have done amazing stuff in this field. Yet even teenagers who have created sophisticated programs have been building upon their skills for more than a year, never mind a few months.)
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Someone attending a 3 month crash course is going to be an intern/beginner developer. This is the point. They're going to start working at the bottom of the career ladder and work their way up. One could argue that after 4 years they would have improved especially if they're of the type where they know that programming is a never ending learning experience. One could also argue that a large problem with the university system is that a lot of graduates feel that once they have graduated they're accomplish
Then I'm doing it wrong (Score:1)
Three months? I've been doing this development stuff for many, many, many years and still haven't figured it out. I don't think an experienced person could truly grok a code base (that does anything worth doing) in three months, let alone a beginner learn everything from scratch.
I guess what they mean is that there's so much churn and change for the sake of change these days that any skills you pick up have a three-month lifespan before they're obsolete.
And they wonder why no one wants to be a software deve
Three months (Score:4, Insightful)
And here you were worried where the next generation of software security flaws and data vulnerabilities were gonna come from!
Yeah, I'm sure three months is plenty of time...
Phoenix Uni Grad Here (Score:2, Funny)
Preposterous! Took me 3 and 1/2 years and 92 thousand dollars and I am certifiable.
If you want to 'learn for the jobs of the future ' (Score:3)
then learn how to think, the rest is bs.
Knowing how to code is not the hard part. (Score:1)
Knowing how to code is not the hard part. Knowing what to code is the hard part. If you believe the Web surveys, companies are more interested in developers with business skills than super coders. I have no idea where inexperienced coders with only a minimal education fit into this.
Ridiculous, but so are college degrees (Score:5, Interesting)
Full disclosure: I hold a bachelor's in CS from Stanford and have been an engineer for 14 years since then. I think my degree was, to be polite, poor preparation for any real-world work beyond teaching college CS courses, although I have also never seen any program I think is better.
I've been saying for a while that any "good" engineering education of the future won't look much like today's system. A college degree is a needlessly long, expensive process for qualified candidates to go through to demonstrate their ability (although I definitely think college has many other benefits), and wastes our time with piles of worthless freshman requirements. On top of that, "Computer Science" isn't what engineers do - it goes into far deeper theory than is needed for almost anyone, and at the same time leaves out a lot of real-world skills that are critical for building functioning software.
Ultimately, the only reason CS degrees have the industry importance they do is because it's one of the only things recruiters can understand. For that very reason, boot-camp programs like this, despite their utterly moronic assertion that a decent engineer can be cranked out in three months, are nonetheless a step toward a better solution.
I think the industry needs some sort of advanced trade schools - basically, a prestigious version of DeVry that teaches not just programming using the language of the moment, but *software engineering* as the separate discipline that it truly is (maybe this already exists somewhere, but I think it should be widespread). We need degrees that are good enough to indicate reliably high value in a candidate and provide enduring background knowledge, affordable enough for the average middle-class person to break into engineering, and still provide a black-and-white resume line item that's simple enough to pass the buzzword filters in recruiters' minds. I see no reason why a two-year associate's degree that's packed full of courses on real-world subjects, as well as tons of actual code construction, couldn't theoretically be *far better* than any current CS degree from a top university.
I was never able to take a single class on scalability, security, development methodology trends and how to evaluate them, management of large codebases, refactoring, etc. These are not flash-in-the-pan concepts that only reflect some current fad, but timeless and critical skills that are fully suitable for a university setting. However, universities are too mired in trying avoid looking like trade schools (and thereby justify their astronomical prices) to care much about providing real value to their customers, which makes them ripe to be punished by the free market.
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I think the industry needs some sort of advanced trade schools - basically, a prestigious version of DeVry that teaches not just programming using the language of the moment, but *software engineering* as the separate discipline that it truly is (maybe this already exists somewhere, but I think it should be widespread).
The problem with DeVry is that anyone who is capable can get into a college, even if it's only a cheap community college. DeVry gets the left over students. I'm not sure creating an "advanced trade school" would fix the problem. It would still have the same students.
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[good analysis from parent]
Western Civilization was built upon an education system that was intended to prepare students for life. They were instructed in the Arts and Sciences (such as they were then) and the skills to succeed in their environment. Philosophy and analytic thinking were prized.
It may be the Industrial Age that brought about our current thinking about education. Early on, there was still emphasis upon languages, history, philosophy; but more and more education came to be about training peopl
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I am incredibly glad that I earned my CS degree through a liberal arts college (Hope College). To this day, I feel the liberal arts requirements were just as valuable to my overall growth as my core CS classes were at helping me land a great job straight out of school.
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or they can choose a 'liberal college' that teaches them about the world in which they will live- Culture, history, all the arts... These people will become the thoughtful advisers to corporations and government, teachers of younger people, and guides to the people in their own community who lack a broad education.
These people will be occupying a field somewhere complaining bitterly about how no one will give them a job (while turning their noses up at actual people trying to give them jobs).
"Liberal arts" is for trust-fund babies who will be handed the keys to daddy's company. If that's not you, then realize that "a career" is another way of saying "most of a lifetime providing services the community actually wants or needs. No one wants or needs another social justice complainer, and if that's the only skill you
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I was never able to take a single class on scalability, security, development methodology trends and how to evaluate them, management of large codebases, refactoring, etc.
And at Chalmers in Sweden (one of the top two engineering schools, "polytechnics") I had all those courses available in the late eighties, early nineties.
However, one problem is that in order to grasp those subjects you first have to grasp the basics. And those takes time to aquire. As I tell my students today; "Remember, it takes ten years, or ten thousand hours to become an expert. This is the first half of that" (our engineering degrees are five year programmes).
Now of course, you'll come across managem
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That's great that those sorts of courses at least exist. I'm wondering if the dearth of practical courses is a US thing, or if US "polytechnic" schools such as CalTech, MIT or Rensselaer would also offer those real-world programs.
The problem with technology-focused colleges is that you have to know you want to commit to studying technology several years earlier - at the point in high school where you're choosing which higher institutions you want to apply to. For some people (like me), that's 2-3 years befo
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I hear ya! However, our field is also one in flux. While the guys that studied mechanical engineering in my school in the eighties would still recognise the teaching today, many of the techniques for programming in the large, management etc. weren't even (I hesitate to say, because it's not really true, but bear with me) invented then.
So I think things will probably move in that direction, slowly but surely. However, even those engineers needed to know about Euler's four cases of buckling, or what strain i
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Full disclosure: I hold a bachelor's in CS from Stanford and have been an engineer for 14 years since then. I think my degree was, to be polite, poor preparation for any real-world work beyond teaching college CS courses, although I have also never seen any program I think is better.
That says it all, really. A CS degree is not supposed to be preparation for a career as a software engineer - it's preparation for a career in CS. Degrees in software engineering [wikipedia.org] already exist and serve that purpose, though it sounds like Stanford didn't have one in 2000.
tool (Score:2)
Programming is a tool used to perform work. Learning how to use a tool does not make you qualified to do anything. The analogy being teaching somehow to write does not mean that person can now go and become a best selling author.
All the grumpy old naysayers (Score:2)
I started with
Granted, three month's boot camp isn't a lot but software development is not brain surgery and it doesn't take years of training until we let you loose on a live patient. For example I got this big spreadsheet of "business rules" from work where I think < 1 month of SQL experience is sufficient to be useful, here's a text description so write an SQL rule and create a couple test cases to prove it works as intended. And we're talking about simple checks that tran
History repeating itself (Score:2)
Remember when you could learn to be a HTML/CSS "coder" in a couple of months and, if you were lucky or knew the right people, get a fairly well-paying job? That must have been around 1996-1998...
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Explains everything (Score:2)
Now we know why there is so much shitty code being thrown out every day and why software from multi-billion dollar companies sucks so badly.
I read somewhere that it took roughly five years of training for a Roman to be considered a real soldier yet somehow these folks are claiming in only 3 months someone can be a qualified programmer.
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Also, if you can teach someone to do "computing and web development jobs", wouldn't that mean salaries for such jobs will go way down?
Because they probably started them at 10 years old.
One semester is a start (Score:2)
So, there is some truth to the 3 month number. I learned C from a minimal programming background in one semester as an undergrad, or about three months. Of course, 20 years later I'm still refining my skills. The rest of the CS degree gave me a much more solid foundation than I'd have if I had gone straight to work after learning C. Surprisingly, basic theory like complexity analysis come in handy when building applications.
-Chris
Facetious (Score:2)
Three months is long enough to produce a code monkey, not a software developer, let alone a computer scientist. I venture the result of such a regimen would be someone who is ready for an apprenticeship, not produce anything on their own.
If coders are 3 months, how long for CEOs? (Score:2)
Using same scaling factor as Codecademy, I figure about 3 weeks to train a replacement.
Think of all the money that could be saved!
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Then there are weeks of training to learn all the executive perks. It's not just the key to the exec washroom any more. There's the gym, and limo, and checking out the exec jet (which requires many hours of flight time).
Then there is all the time needed to meet all the important people both in and out of the compan
Read actual job ads to understand how useless (Score:2)
this is.
1) You always need five years of recent, verifiable, professional experience. Don't take my word for it, look at the ads.
2) The experience needs to be in about six different technologies, and every employer has a different list. Often the required skills are not even related to computers, i.e. HVAC tech - seriously, I've seen that, more than once.
3) Over 35 is considered very old.
Also, remember that employers are shipping jobs offshore as fast as they possibly can. And the jobs they cannot ship offs
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Yes, three months training is perfect (Score:2)
Three months training is a perfect amount of training to royally fuck up just about anything, yes.