****** No Bootcamp Applicants ****** • Hacker News Board

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#41

Post by timthelion » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 12:02 AM UTC

capkutay wrote: post #38

timthelion wrote: post #20

Unrelated to bootcamps, but one thing really jumped out at me in the article. The author's discussion of BigO time: "The post went on to detail a need for an understanding of BigO time complexity, which is completely fair. No one wants a double loop in production code. What a bulky monstrosity that would be (imagining a giant disgusting swamp monster made of 0’s and 1’s, eeek!)." "I certainly don’t want to make a mes…

> But it does seem that this quote demonstrates a tendency I see among female advocates of women in tech, and that is to slightly awkwardly use technical terms in order to try to prove that they are part of the "in group" of people who understand technical concepts. That has nothing to do with being a female advocate of women in tech. That has everything to do with being 12 weeks into programming. That's the main rea…

> I'm lucky enough to know a lot of incredible software engineers who happen to be women (and were also CS grads or PhDs), much smarter than me, and I don't like this attempt to associate all women engineers with people who clearly only have a superficial understanding of code.

I don't know that many experienced female programmers, but the ones whom I do know are not advocates and tend to avoid the subject of their gender. So my own experience leads to the conclusion that I made, not about all women programmers, but about those who advocate women in tech.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#42

Post by tchaffee » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 12:12 AM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #36

tchaffee wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teaching someone with a physics background to code while on the job is doable if you are willing to throw the code out. Programming is as much of a learned skill as any skill and expecting someone with no programming experience to quickly catch up to someone who has been studying and actually coding for a few years is not realistic.

I haven’t met anyone with a physics degree in the past 10 years that cannot program. Programming is required today to attain a post graduate and even graduate at physics since you’ll be programming a lot of math problems and more importantly simulations. We have 8 CUDA programmers at my work place and only one of them has a degree in computer science/SE the rest got post grads in Physics Chemisty or Biology. On a gra…

Then they really aren't being trained on the job are they? Thanks for the info about the programming experience they get. I know a few graduate level physicists, but they never talk about programming.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#43

Post by tchaffee » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 12:13 AM UTC

throwaway2016a wrote: post #31

tchaffee wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed with most of what you said, especially that this would be a good discussion. My problem with filtering based on bootcamp training is that you occasionally find someone who has been programming their whole life (as a kid) an d finally decided to get a certificate. If there is one thing I've learned about interviewing, it's to not limit your options. Instead, talk to people for a few minutes on the phone and ask…

To be clear, I do not agree to filtering out bootcamp people.

You made that clear in your first post. I was just trying to add on to that.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#44

Post by greglindahl » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 1:18 AM UTC

throwaway2016a wrote: post #22

It's too bad this got flagged. I think it could have good discussions. My problem with bootcamps is that is not how the human brain works. No one can absorb 12 hours a day of information for 12 weeks. Things get lost. We need experience and repetition. We need to shoot ourselves in the foot by accident a few times. You don't get that in a 12 weeks. Which is fine. I've hired plenty of people with no college but years…

> The difference is when you act like the 12 weeks has taught you everything you need to know.

I've never met anyone out of a bootcamp who acted like that.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#45

Post by dogma1138 » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 1:31 AM UTC

tchaffee wrote: post #42

dogma1138 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven’t met anyone with a physics degree in the past 10 years that cannot program. Programming is required today to attain a post graduate and even graduate at physics since you’ll be programming a lot of math problems and more importantly simulations. We have 8 CUDA programmers at my work place and only one of them has a degree in computer science/SE the rest got post grads in Physics Chemisty or Biology. On a gra…

Then they really aren't being trained on the job are they? Thanks for the info about the programming experience they get. I know a few graduate level physicists, but they never talk about programming.

They are, everyone is being trained on a job to some degree. If you are hiring graduates you are going to be training them on the job for a while even if you hire SE/CS students only there is a big difference between knowing how to program and having experience in software development and delivery.

But some things can be trained while others realistically cannot, you can train people on the job rather quickly to develop using a given framework and toolset but giving them background in fields that require nearly decade of dedicated education is a different story.

The truth is that unless your bootcamper has had proper education they would not be able to catch up on the theory.

Forget algorithms maybe 1 out of 10 bootcamper I've interviewed understood basic mathematics like vectors and scalars, were talking about High School level Calculus here.

But again if you only build basic web applications and implement pre-defined UX/user stories there isn't much need for this.

Bootcamps aren't new I remember the Java/C++ 8-12 week night schools from the 90's which were later supplemented by .NET schools that was huge in the early to mid 2000's Microsoft was pushing Windows 2000/2003 MCSE and MCPD to highschool students in my country.

My older brother effectively use a bootcamp in the late 90's he had a masters in electrical engineering he had some programming experience mostly in FORTRAN but effectively in .com boom of late 90's he switched to programming after doing one of those JAVA and C++ evening courses. That said I don't think he would've gotten to IBM and now into Redhat without his previous education, that course was effectively just a seminar for him.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#46

Post by throwaway2016a » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 2:11 AM UTC

greglindahl wrote: post #44

throwaway2016a wrote: post #22

It's too bad this got flagged. I think it could have good discussions. My problem with bootcamps is that is not how the human brain works. No one can absorb 12 hours a day of information for 12 weeks. Things get lost. We need experience and repetition. We need to shoot ourselves in the foot by accident a few times. You don't get that in a 12 weeks. Which is fine. I've hired plenty of people with no college but years…

> The difference is when you act like the 12 weeks has taught you everything you need to know. I've never met anyone out of a bootcamp who acted like that.

Unfortunately I have. Everyone is different, I don't think they are all like that. Probably depends a lot on who the mentors are too.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#47

Post by tchaffee » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 3:00 AM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #45

tchaffee wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then they really aren't being trained on the job are they? Thanks for the info about the programming experience they get. I know a few graduate level physicists, but they never talk about programming.

They are, everyone is being trained on a job to some degree. If you are hiring graduates you are going to be training them on the job for a while even if you hire SE/CS students only there is a big difference between knowing how to program and having experience in software development and delivery. But some things can be trained while others realistically cannot, you can train people on the job rather quickly to deve…

The initial comparison was between someone with little training in a discipline and someone educated in a discipline. Of course every graduate needs plenty of mentorship at their first or first few jobs. That's not the same as training someone with no exposure to a discipline.

As far as bootcamp graduates go, I would be careful about assuming that's their only exposure. I'll take someone who has been obsessed with coding since they were a kid over a uni graduate who is just in it for the money, went to class, and only wrote code to pass the classes.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#48

Post by chrismcb » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 6:37 AM UTC

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #15

Barrin92 wrote: post #5

Not a great article. I can completely understand the rejection of bootcamp applicants. I've personally interviewed people for algorithm / math heavy positions (explicitly mentioned in the article) and bootcamp applicants just do not cut it. The genuine knowledge in a field like this cannot be conveyed to anybody over the course of a few months. Teaching someone with a stats or physics background to code is pretty doa…

I've been curious about this issue, because I've been relatively successful in my so-far short career as a web developer. Yet I'm self-taught, and can't math my way out of a paper bag. I'm good at logic so that's gone a long way in helping me. I always wonder, though, whether I'll eventually run into a math-critical issue and cannot just reason my way through it. It's a terrifying prospect, but luckily in my 5 years…

Probably not. There are jobs that might require some decent may, so stay away from them. But you're average programmer won't run into a math critical issue.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#49

Post by Grue3 » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 8:17 AM UTC

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #15

Barrin92 wrote: post #5

Not a great article. I can completely understand the rejection of bootcamp applicants. I've personally interviewed people for algorithm / math heavy positions (explicitly mentioned in the article) and bootcamp applicants just do not cut it. The genuine knowledge in a field like this cannot be conveyed to anybody over the course of a few months. Teaching someone with a stats or physics background to code is pretty doa…

I've been curious about this issue, because I've been relatively successful in my so-far short career as a web developer. Yet I'm self-taught, and can't math my way out of a paper bag. I'm good at logic so that's gone a long way in helping me. I always wonder, though, whether I'll eventually run into a math-critical issue and cannot just reason my way through it. It's a terrifying prospect, but luckily in my 5 years…

If you don't use math, it's almost certain that you're writing inefficient code. There's no way to estimate big-O complexity of the procedures you're writing without at least some math. Unfortunately these days it's considered ok to write chat applications that consume several gigabytes of RAM, so maybe nobody cares about efficient code anymore.

Re: No Bootcamp Applicants

#50

Post by candiodari » Sun, Dec 03, 2017, 11:00 AM UTC

Grue3 wrote: post #49

tenaciousDaniel wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been curious about this issue, because I've been relatively successful in my so-far short career as a web developer. Yet I'm self-taught, and can't math my way out of a paper bag. I'm good at logic so that's gone a long way in helping me. I always wonder, though, whether I'll eventually run into a math-critical issue and cannot just reason my way through it. It's a terrifying prospect, but luckily in my 5 years…

If you don't use math, it's almost certain that you're writing inefficient code. There's no way to estimate big-O complexity of the procedures you're writing without at least some math. Unfortunately these days it's considered ok to write chat applications that consume several gigabytes of RAM, so maybe nobody cares about efficient code anymore.

I see tons of people online writing algorithms in python and ruby, that will run against a few megabytes of data, and worry about getting the "big-O" of their algorithms right.

Then I go ahead and show them that just by doing the same thing in C++ you get a 10x speedup if you know what you're doing, sometimes more.

And then they say "but I'd never get an optimal algorithm done" (that C++ is typed actually makes this easier for me then python as soon as we get past the "trivial" complexity level, but to each his own I guess).

So I say "Ok. No worries ! Let's make it inefficient !". And add an inner for loop where a hash lookup would have done it (for example). And lo and behold ! The C++ code still beats the crap out of their "optimal" python code. (this is somewhat of a cheat because the odds of making a random thing somewhat inefficient is very unlikely to be the critical point of that code, even if it's in the middle of the deepest loop). Then we replace their 100mb csv with a new 10mb memory-mappable data and they can't even measure anymore how fast the program is. As soon as we enter main, it just immediately terminates.

Algorithms start to matter when your data, optimally stored, becomes >10x all the CPU cache combined, ignoring things like strings. That means 300-400 megabytes when stored fully binary. Ie. you DO NOT HAVE ANY SUCH DATA. Your company's yearly transaction log is less than this. Before that, forget about algorithm optimization, it will bring you nothing.

TLDR: If you're not working in C++, and actually doing most of your development on data layout in memory and on disk, you don't care about performance. Math does not matter at all. Once a year I encounter a situation where math matters, and frankly I just usually find a PhD in that specific field and ask them (despite having a master degree in Math myself).

You do not need math to program.

The big secret is that for programming, there is only one thing that matters beyond basic programming skill. And that thing is domain knowledge of the problem. Exactly, I might add, what almost all programmers don't have.