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42 (school)

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Re: 42 (school)

#91

Post by quadcore »

valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project

I believe this is a good method for beginners. A beginner doesn't need to think much because he/she doesn't have the material/experience for that anyway, but instead just practice as much as possible. Later, he/she will reflects on what he/she think he knows and get a more structured / professional work.

Re: 42 (school)

#92

Post by valw »

zimablue wrote: post #84
valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

Depending on the problem, I disagree with this idea "think before you code". I think /by/ coding, sometimes a problem is too big to fit into my head and if I write some code and try to string it together the code will tell me where my mental concept is missing something. If the real underlying problem/solution is a shape too big to put in your head, what do you propose? Pen and paper as superior to code for modelling…

I never wrote "think before you code", and agree that's not always the most suitable way to go about a problem, although I believe a lot of programmers would benefit from doing that more often.

I wrote "think about what you're doing".

Re: 42 (school)

#93

Post by valw »

quadcore wrote: post #91
valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project I believe this is a good method for beginners. A beginner doesn't need to think much because he/she doesn't have the material/experience for that anyway, but instead just practice as much as possible. Later, he/she will reflects on what he/she think he knows and get a more structured…

It really depends on how long you wait before making the students sensitive to these issues.

Wait 6 months or 1 year, and you've given them time to gather sufficient experience for motivating a more mindful way of working.

Wait 3 years or more, and you've just taught them bad habits.

I'm tired of interviewing candidates who were supposedly trained extensively in programming, asking them "how do you approach making quality software?" and hearing the usual "oh, I indent my code and write a lot of comments" as an answer.

Re: 42 (school)

#94

Post by hh3k0 »

ElFitz wrote: post #83
wutschkef wrote: post #75

I'm a student at the Paris 42 campus. It is not true that the average 42 student lack theoretical understanding. We may not take a semester long course in compiler theory for example, but we do manage to build our own shell scripting interpreters and pick up enough compiler theory to define a grammar, build a parser to produce an AST and then interpret it accordingly. The same goes for other theoretical foundations o…

Quite honestly, most companies don't care about one's compiler theory knowledge or ability to build shell scripting interpreters, nor should they.

> Quite honestly, most companies don't care about one's compiler theory knowledge or ability to build shell scripting interpreters, nor should they.

Your reply, in the context of the comment you replied to, strikes me as a point of view so American that it's almost cliché.

I think that it'd be quite sad if we'd adjust education so that it'd merely contain things that are of interest to companies.

Re: 42 (school)

#95

Post by abronan »

maxymoos wrote: post #30
fhrow4484 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> private schools are expensive > I checked Epitech tuition fees, it's around 40k€ for the whole 5 years curriculum $9100 a year is indeed expensive for French schools, but I'm sure some Americans on the other side of the ponds are chuckling right now.

For comparison purposes, tuition fees in a French public engineering school were around 700€/$800 per year when I was there about a decade ago, and I wouldn't expect this to have changed much.

This is without considering students whose parents have low revenue, thus getting access to financial help from the government. This was my case. Technically, I was paid to go to University, with 3600€ per year for being one of the top students.

Re: 42 (school)

#96

Post by udioron »

arkh wrote: post #58
valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

> To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before they shoot. People should learn this mantra: coding is to software development what moving pieces is to chess.

> coding is to software development what moving pieces is to chess.

And on a more serious note: I really like this mantra, but I do not think it's true or relevant:

There are many examples of success stories of what you would call "coders": Gates and Allen's Altair Basic and Zukerberg's Facebook are the famous ones - but I would argue that many software related business are also a product of "coding" and not "software development". See also WordPress or Wikipedia as examples. "Coding" is very important.

Software development is a very wide subject. The driving force of schools is mostly economical - training developers to fill a huge demand on this huge market. The thousands of open jobs require different sets of skills - and again I will argue that a high percentage of these jobs will allow a (very) junior developer to build good products as long as he knows to "code" and he can be managed and mentored by a senior developer. Being able "to code" will be a hard requirement for these jobs. Simple examples would be web and mobile development. enterprise/huge software projects. "Coding" can get you a job.

And, as I wrote in my other comment above, "training software developers" is not the same as "developing software". There are many ways to train developers - and where to start from and how much time it takes are good questions. Assuming a year (or 3-4 years) in college is very expensive and not accessible to anyone who can and want to be a software developer, finding other/more/different approaches to enter the software industry is needed. "Coding" is an eligible trailhead for starting to learn software development.

Re: 42 (school)

#97

Post by solomatov »

baby wrote: post #22
gjmacd wrote: post #4

"The candidates must be between 18 and 30 years of age (18 - 45 in Silicon Valley).[14] No previous diploma is required." Age discrimination at its best. Cap it at 45? How many people over 30 (45 in the US) are trying to retool and get educated on programming?

This school is for free, and to educate the next generation of students, why do you have to complain?

Because there're laws against age discrimination in US.

Re: 42 (school)

#98

Post by LukeB42 »

ElFitz wrote: post #83
wutschkef wrote: post #75

I'm a student at the Paris 42 campus. It is not true that the average 42 student lack theoretical understanding. We may not take a semester long course in compiler theory for example, but we do manage to build our own shell scripting interpreters and pick up enough compiler theory to define a grammar, build a parser to produce an AST and then interpret it accordingly. The same goes for other theoretical foundations o…

Quite honestly, most companies don't care about one's compiler theory knowledge or ability to build shell scripting interpreters, nor should they.

> Quite honestly, most companies don't care about one's compiler theory knowledge or ability to build shell scripting interpreters, nor should they.

Right. Like how you don't care about the persons' physics knowledge when hiring an architect. /s

Re: 42 (school)

#99

Post by fjsolwmv »

valw wrote: post #93
quadcore wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project I believe this is a good method for beginners. A beginner doesn't need to think much because he/she doesn't have the material/experience for that anyway, but instead just practice as much as possible. Later, he/she will reflects on what he/she think he knows and get a more structured…

It really depends on how long you wait before making the students sensitive to these issues. Wait 6 months or 1 year, and you've given them time to gather sufficient experience for motivating a more mindful way of working. Wait 3 years or more, and you've just taught them bad habits. I'm tired of interviewing candidates who were supposedly trained extensively in programming, asking them "how do you approach making qu…

It sounds like you are expecting junior hires to be senior, instead of training them. The average elite computer science student spends 3 years learning computer science before they start building professional programs.

Re: 42 (school)

#100

Post by fjsolwmv »

arkh wrote: post #58
valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

> To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before they shoot. People should learn this mantra: coding is to software development what moving pieces is to chess.

Yes, and chess teachers will tell you, the way to improve as a beginner is through playing many many games quickly to get a wide variety of exposure and start developing intuition.
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