Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 341 posts

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#251

Post by 0_gravitas »

smnplk wrote: post #217
Sharlin wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s the problem-solving, not the language part, that requires special aptitude. You might speak a dozen languages but it doesn’t help if you don’t know what to say. Besides, have you tried to learn a new natural language in adulthood? A bootcamp won’t get you far. And natural languages are really forgiving in comparison because you’re communicating with a human-level intelligence that’s used to inferring meaning fro…

So much this. There is a trend with these "techie" youtubers giving advice on which programming languages to learn first or which language is the easiest, etc... They are all missing the point of programming.

Which is the exact reason why when people ask for a language suggestion to start with/learn, I tell them all the same thing: "Oh sure, go through the CS50 manual on MIPS!" Personally I can't think of a period of study that affected my ability to problem-solve/reason about problems more than my time studying MIPS.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#252

Post by TeMPOraL »

Kalium wrote: post #243
TeMPOraL wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, if the bootcamp is going to spend 3 months teaching you how to make a website using the industry-standard tools and frameworks, you're going to know absolutely shit at the end. Consider a typical front-end developer setup - with IDE/smart editor, linters, transpilers, packers, package managers, project generators. These are all useful tools, but to be even a marginally competent developers, you have to know wha…

I encountered a particularly egregious example of this recently. I was running a group of recent(-ish) hires through a training course recently. Part of it is penetrating-testing a dockerized application on their machines. One of the things the application is vulnerable to is various forms of form tampering attacks. One of my students just stared helplessly at this. They were absolutely stuck. I had no idea why. I ca…

I once observed a "become a web developer quick" RoR-based course, where they made people write their "hello worlds" as full-blown RoR apps with full MVC project scaffolding - meaning dozens of folders, and having to create 3 files (M, V, C) and write a lot of code to put something simple on the screen. I realized then that people finishing this course lack what I consider one of the most fundamental insights in writing client-server web software. I wonder if the person from your story lacked it too.

The insight is this: a browser is a program that reads text that it gets from files or servers, and that text tells it what to put on the screen, how it looks and what can be done with it. When you're learning the basics of a (backend) programming language, you first learn how to put text on screen. The same way, you can put text into a file, or (with some more tricks) into a network connection. So if you write a program that prints HTML to stdout and make browser read from it, you get a client-server web page. Boom, that's pretty much all. Everything else you'll ever learn is just managing complexity. Modules, MVC, database connections, etc. - it's all serving the goal of generating the right text that gets shipped to browser.

I was surprised by the ways people (sometimes junior programmers with little web experience) didn't get that. Some didn't know that browser simply reads text (happens when you're exposed to frameworks instead of raw HTML). Others thought MVC is something fundamental to web apps, instead of just being a way to keep your "print HTML to stdout" code from very quickly getting out of hand. So whenever I teach something the basics of web development, I always start with this - raw HTML as text, the connection to "your program can print text to stdout, so it can print HTML to stdout too", and we build up from there.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#253

Post by redisman »

peter303 wrote: post #66

In the mid 20th century coding was seen as a trade school skill. Perhaps boot camps are another version of this. When I attended MIT in the 1970s there was no pure computer science major even though competitor schools had such. The faculty said it was a skill most of the students picked up in high school. In 1980 MIT made computer science a co-major with electrical engineering. And finally last year an independent sc…

My highest level of education is trade school (electronics). Trade school doesn't take 4 months, it's usually 2-3 years with multiple internships and apprenticeships.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#254

Post by [deleted] »

iguy wrote: post #18
BlackJack wrote: post #10

We can discuss code camp pro/cons all day, but the article spells out that there was little coding being taught here. Instructors with little tech experience, high rate of firing and stuff turnover, students being told to "google it", operating without licenses, all while the founder has fancy offices in Chicago with rapacious and alcoholic parties. Amanda Laucher, the founder, essentially stole funds from government…

It sounds uncomfortably close to a cynic's view of aid projects in poor countries. The customers aren't the students, but rather the Commission, and they were apparently sufficiently impressed with the TED talks to part with $1.5 million to start this thing. Maybe someone trying to get re-elected got to cut a ribbon on TV too. And I bet this also made a great story for the founders to tell in their law school applica…

[deleted]

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#255

Post by paultopia »

BlackJack wrote: post #10

We can discuss code camp pro/cons all day, but the article spells out that there was little coding being taught here. Instructors with little tech experience, high rate of firing and stuff turnover, students being told to "google it", operating without licenses, all while the founder has fancy offices in Chicago with rapacious and alcoholic parties. Amanda Laucher, the founder, essentially stole funds from government…

I would be interested to know (again, assuming the article is fair) if Laucher will actually get admitted to a bar after law school. This is the sort of thing that could easily raise issues in a character and fitness examination for bar admission.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#256

Post by murphy214 »

TheLuddite wrote: post #221

Coding jobs in Appalachia...wow I've heard it all. The people living in these places are still semi-barbaric, they need a long civilizing process before they can cut it in the modern world, 2 months long boot-camps is definitely not going to do this. It's a process that should start from childbirth.

https://www.sfgate.com/technology/businessinsider/article/Pe...

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#257

Post by throwawayjava »

Noos wrote: post #219
mothsonasloth wrote: post #45

[Warning Exremely Controversial Post Ahead] I am currently working for a big corporate in the UK, who have been showing off their "pioneering" and "visionary" strategy to focus recruitment from code boot-camps. All I can say is that as a senior developer, it has made my life misery. I've gone from writing code and producing features, to a full-time mentor and babysitter. Half of the boot-camp graduates I believe have…

So here's the thing. What do those people do? tech people have been automating jobs away and insisting the future is code for a long time now. Now all of a sudden we get "coding is hard" and the non-traditional bootcamp education they pitched only really works for highly motivated self-starters, often with preexisting engineering or science backgrounds. So what do they do? What exactly are they going to train into?

> tech people... they

We're commenting on an article about a coding camp founded by a professional TED talker who's now in law school.

The "they" pitching bootcamps and the "they" automating jobs away are two different "theys".

People who have been doing software for the last 20 years have always been saying "coding is hard" and "a few months in a coding bootcamp isn't sufficient preparation for a career in tech, especially when the winds of the market shift".

But no one wants to hear "high-paying jobs require spending years getting good at doing hard things".

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#258

Post by murphy214 »

MattyRad wrote: post #182
murphy214 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

24 yo CE here with FE here, the question becomes do you think a test can be designed for something as large as software to accurately judge competency. Competency in code comes from getting stuff wrong and having to live with it and fix it, that stuff isn't super easy to test.

You're right, it would be pretty difficult to make a test that actually gauges competency. That shouldn't necessarily be a reason not to try though. Honestly, it might be easier to adjust the hiring process. If the hiring process were able to easily select driven individuals who retain "software engineer" as part of their identity, and people that take pride in their work, seek constructive criticism and want to lear…

Self taught programmer here, criticism is something I think is harder for self taught people. I think it stems from never having an authority over you when you initially learned, and that sort of becomes enshrined as part of your identity. If your not reviewing someones code formally, just ask questions that could lead them to what your trying to suggest. Pretty commonly used method but just having them logically work it out sort of quails the knee jerk reaction to criticism.

Also maybe a lot of people are self conscious about no formal education as well? That wasn't an issue for me but I imagine it is for some.

TL;DR: The transition from learning the hard way always, to allowing someone to try to prevent it is tough.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#259

Post by megaremote »

mothsonasloth wrote: post #79
hatchnyc wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has been my experience, and I'll add I have noticed there is a massive disconnect from the reality of just how complicated modern software is. I remember beginning my career what I think used to be a quite common experience of being quite a bit overwhelmed by how much I had to learn, very aware that I didn't even know what I didn't know and this definitely motivated me. This awareness is completely absent from 1…

Completely agree, I would like to blame it on this dichotomy of "frontend and backend development". Most of the bootcampers did three months of "frontend" work and are oblivious to what goes underneath in the murky world of business logic and services. Until they have been able to demonstrate they are confident in: * Presenting data to a user * Validating inputs * Making correct requests and understanding the interac…

Why? If someone can just do FE development, that is not a problem, and they can get a job as a junior.

Re: They Were Promised Coding Jobs in Appalachia

#260

Post by megaremote »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #222
clarry wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have noticed there is a massive disconnect from the reality of just how complicated modern software is. There's also a massive disconnect from the reality of just how complicated modern software needs (not) to be. That said I agree that some 3-month bootcamp probably isn't enough time to really internalize the basics of programming (unless you're really smart or have prior exposure), let alone learn to design and…

Well, if the bootcamp is going to spend 3 months teaching you how to make a website using the industry-standard tools and frameworks, you're going to know absolutely shit at the end. Consider a typical front-end developer setup - with IDE/smart editor, linters, transpilers, packers, package managers, project generators. These are all useful tools, but to be even a marginally competent developers, you have to know wha…

> you have to know what they do and why

Ah, bullshit. No you don't. Most people only understand a small subset of what they use. They are junior devs.

Post reply on HN