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Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

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Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#61

Post by WildUtah »

tps5 wrote: post #49
Kluny wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the women just hustled harder. I know that was the case in the program I went through. 30 of us passed; 3 were women. All 3 women and about 20% of the men got good industry jobs. However, I and the other two women were hustling for jobs, sending resumes, networking and going to interviews 6 months before graduation. Most of the men, assuming they were telling the truth when I casually asked them about it, didn'…

> Maybe the women just hustled harder. Doubt that explains it. I went through a large software development course, about 70 people. 60-40 male-female. Was a positive experience. The women all landed jobs instantly. As in, the day the camp ended, they all had jobs. The men, mostly, did not. It took months and multiple interviews for the men to get hired. The demand for female developers is higher than the demand for m…

40% female? That's extremely high. Wonder how they accomplished that.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#62

Post by StClaire »

dsacco wrote: post #60
StClaire wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I brought it up since his profile pointed me towards a dating site, which is prime ground for predictive analytics. Also, the website didn't have a "careers" section that I could readily find.

Hm, fair enough, that does seem to follow. Good luck :)

Thanks!

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#63

Post by purple-again »

MegaButts wrote: post #47
Hydraulix989 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first two CS courses at my top university are enough to be qualified for your entry-level junior engineer: the intro course "Programming with Java" (recently changed to Python now), followed by the second course, Data "Structures & Algorithms." All the bootcamp would have to do is be similarly very selective and do the same exact curriculum, and the people who "survive" these two weed-out courses (you needed to s…

> you needed to score higher than half your classmates in each course to receive a passing grade Was this actually the rule dictated by the professor/curriculum or just a rule of thumb?

This is common in highly ranked programs in the United States. We had the exact same system in my accounting program which was ranked 11th in the nation at the time.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#64

Post by lmcnish14 »

WildUtah wrote: post #61
tps5 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe the women just hustled harder. Doubt that explains it. I went through a large software development course, about 70 people. 60-40 male-female. Was a positive experience. The women all landed jobs instantly. As in, the day the camp ended, they all had jobs. The men, mostly, did not. It took months and multiple interviews for the men to get hired. The demand for female developers is higher than the demand for m…

40% female? That's extremely high. Wonder how they accomplished that.

That seems like a reasonable ratio considering that bootcamps are a popular way for women to break into the industry.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#65

Post by trymas »

ramses0 wrote: post #29

Before going through a dev-bootcamp, I recommend (especially if you're a coder already) to get her through Learn Python The Hard Way. https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/ Best case it'll take less than a month (2 exercises per day, 52 exercises), is basically free, and if she's happy with everything at the end of it, she'll be FAR more prepared to jump feet-first into a dev bootcamp. I compare learning to program…

I could not resist...

but do you want to confuse her with python2 vs python3? When python2 should be out of the question, even if it's default on macOS. Though to be fair the difference should be learned, but it shouldn't be promoted to learn python2 for beginners. It will just confuse them. Even though many years have passed, but I think soon many libraries and frameworks will not support python2 at all (e.g. Django's next version will not), any new code I write - I write it in python3 and never think about python2.

The LPTHW is built for beginners in a sense, that it's easy to read and follow, though author is extremely __butthurt__[0] against python3 [1]. I guess it's the authors _shtick_ to be extremely opinionated, to a degree of incoherent blabber [1].

[0] sorry for my language

[1] https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/nopython3.html

P.S. Though "Appendix A: Command Line Crash Course"[2] is probably one of the best promotions and intros into CLI .. and that is very useful to learn, instead of locking yourself as a beginner into some IDE.

[2] https://learnpythonthehardway.org/book/appendixa.html

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#66

Post by michaelmrose »

jen729w wrote: post #54
OJFord wrote: post #27

> As a positive point, all the females in our cohort got dev jobs, including the only one who actually failed the class. Startups are pretty aware of the gender discrepancy and actively looking to hire those with double x chromosomes. Not complaining about affirmative action, just wanted to give you as full picture as possible You should be complaining! Especially given the rest of your story. This kind of thing is s…

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

Given Male 1 and Female 1 wherein female 1 was unfairly discriminated against. How does it follow that if you unfairly privilege female 2 in favor of male 2 that you have somehow made up for the original injustice.

A rational though process would be that this just adds to the sum of injustice in the world.

I'm perhaps presuming to much but with a name that begins with Jen which is often a short or familiar form of Jennifer I would have to wonder if you yourself are in favor of "positive discrimination" because you yourself have suffered from plain old discrimination the bad and in fact only form of discrimination there is.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#67

Post by jen729w »

michaelmrose wrote: post #66
jen729w wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

Given Male 1 and Female 1 wherein female 1 was unfairly discriminated against. How does it follow that if you unfairly privilege female 2 in favor of male 2 that you have somehow made up for the original injustice. A rational though process would be that this just adds to the sum of injustice in the world. I'm perhaps presuming to much but with a name that begins with Jen which is often a short or familiar form of Je…

They're my initials. I'm a 40 year old white English guy called John.

I believe my life thus far has been tremendously more easy than a 40 year old black woman's would have been. Do you disagree?

Edit: here's a concrete example. I've basically been offered every job interview I've gone for. I'm good at my job, no doubt, but in some of those cases I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been the strongest candidate.

But - forgive me if I sound like an asshole, I'm trying to make a point - I'm charming. I'm white, I smile, I dress well, and that makes me safe. I'm a safe option. Unsure who to hire? Hire that nice white guy.

This is the systemic, subliminal discrimination that positive discrimination is trying to address. I shouldn't be the default option just because I'm the white guy. I've had my time. Let's give the "hey we're not sure, so if in doubt hire the black lady" option a go. Fuck it, it can't hurt.

Now, I do absolutely disagree with PD where it favours a clearly inferior candidate just because of their race/gender/etc. That is clearly wrong, and gets people upset, and I see why and I agree.

It's a nuanced issue. But if you deny that there's an issue, or try to sweep it under the carpet, I believe you're being disingenuous at best.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#68

Post by J-dawg »

jen729w wrote: post #54
OJFord wrote: post #27

> As a positive point, all the females in our cohort got dev jobs, including the only one who actually failed the class. Startups are pretty aware of the gender discrepancy and actively looking to hire those with double x chromosomes. Not complaining about affirmative action, just wanted to give you as full picture as possible You should be complaining! Especially given the rest of your story. This kind of thing is s…

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

>Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

Modern feminism increasingly seems to be an ideology based on the idea that women are always victims.

You've just described positive discrimination, and implied that you think it's a good thing.

Then you imply that you think women suffer unfairness for "literally your entire life". Which is it? You've either been a victim your entire life or you've benefitted from positive discrimination, in which case you probably need to stop acting like a victim.

The idea of giving someone an unfair advantage because someone like them possibly had an unfair disadvantage is ludicrous.

Based on your logic, in a generation from now we're going to have to start positively discriminating in favour of men, to make up for the fact that men are currently being discriminated against.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#69

Post by grzm »

J-dawg wrote: post #68
jen729w wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

>Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life. Modern feminism increasingly seems to be an ideology based on the idea that women are always victims. You've just described positive discrimination, and implied that you think it's a good thing. Then you imply that you think women suffer unfairness for "literally your entire life". Which is it? You've either been a victim your entire life or you've bene…

I understand what you're saying. To dig into it a little more, do you think there is structural (as opposed to intentional) gender discrimination, and if so, should it be corrected? Please don't hesitate to answer "no" if that's what you believe. My goal in conversations like this is to better understand each other, not score points or make judgements.

If it should be corrected, what specifically (i.e., what implementation) would you propose to do so? This whole issue is so contentious that I find people don't get much further beyond the surface disagreements.

Re: Ask HN: What should I tell my cousin who wants to go to a “coding boot camp”?

#70

Post by vonklaus »

I did one and had a bad experience; I still think they are worthwhile.

Much like colleges the rigor varies a lot BUT unlike colleges you're class will have a massive impact on your educatoion.

I studied a lot before I went in, it is highly recommended. Some other students struggled because they did not do much prep. Some students were annoyingly inquisitive and volunteered off-topic stuff frequently, eating into class time.

Have a capstone project or goal in mind when going in and try to do some pared down version for a final project(nearly all I have researched have several projects).

If you (op) can, help her get familiar w/ a dev environment. Explain things in depth and assume little. I was learning the absolute basics and someone introduced me to git, rails, terminal, scaffolding and ruby over a 10min convo. Obviously, it is great to dive in, but finding out what is important and how things work is important. Show her text editors, basic command line, git ect. Resources like hacker news, stack overflow, and maybe shell into an AWS instance.

I think they can be great, but they require a lot of prep, and a lot of research

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