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I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

miguelrochefort.com

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Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#351

Post by gabereiser »

w0mbat wrote: post #319
gabereiser wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US we also take a good hard look at bootcamp graduates. Code school/bootcamp graduates I’ve found to be good enough to do most of the mundane web work broiler-plate we have to write. It gives them experience, it give us that broiler-plate code no one wants to write. Bootcamp’s here like Turing or Galvanize cost $20k and take 4-6mos but you’ll get an entry level Dev job at $75k or more when you’re done. It…

It's "boilerplate". It's because a reusable letterpress metal plate of text is called a "boilerplate" because it looks like the manufacturer's nameplate on a steam-train's boiler. That led to any reusable block of text being called "boilerplate". No BBQ equipment was involved.

Indeed, I wrote it on my phone, brisket wins on iOS apparently. I usually write it boiler-plate.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#352

Post by gabereiser »

bserge wrote: post #264
gabereiser wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the US we also take a good hard look at bootcamp graduates. Code school/bootcamp graduates I’ve found to be good enough to do most of the mundane web work broiler-plate we have to write. It gives them experience, it give us that broiler-plate code no one wants to write. Bootcamp’s here like Turing or Galvanize cost $20k and take 4-6mos but you’ll get an entry level Dev job at $75k or more when you’re done. It…

This is really interesting! What about applicants who didn't go through a bootcamp, but have decent projects on their website/Github/whatever? Is it the fact that you can't verify if they actually built that themselves or just copied/stole it?

I’ll be more keen on a candidate that has interesting GH projects and is self-taught than someone without GH and came from bootcamp. But if both have interesting projects, they both are equal as far as candidacy goes. I can only speak for myself. YMMV.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#353

Post by war1025 »

imtringued wrote: post #333
war1025 wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only get downvoted on a post to -4, fyi. I stopped caring nearly as much about being agreeable once I learned that. For what it's worth, congrats on what you did. I'm in a similar position and I completely agree that for the majority of people here it wouldn't take anything beyond stopping making bad choices.

If staying in my home country is a bad decision then nothing will change my mind.

I think it's important to make a distinction here that I didn't think to make initially:

I am not saying "everyone can make hundreds of thousands of dollars per year if they stop being dumb."

What I am trying to say is "Most people can avoid being massively in debt by making better spending decisions."

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#354

Post by andai »

kemiller2002 wrote: post #48
djsumdog wrote: post #32

Almost seems like the writer treated the process like playing a video game, without all the pretty colors and sounds that give you that dopamine hit. I feel like I did get a lot out of my Computer Science degree. I got it in 2004 and I picked up a lot of stuff I don't think I would have learned on my own. I also went to a small state University in the middle of nowhere that' wasn't very expensive, and I didn't rack u…

He also mentions in the article that he wasn't working at the time. He's still driven, but that makes doing it a whole lot easier.

It doesn't sound like he was working either during the first two attempts where he dropped out. It looks like it took some real world experience to create the motivation to get the degree.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#355

Post by Slaren »

lostcolony wrote: post #82
ajkjk wrote: post #36

> In 2012, I studied computer science at Concordia University and dropped out after 1 semester. > On my first day, I attended 2 lectures. I quickly realized that a 2-hour commute to listen to someone slowly recite a PowerPoint wasn’t the best use of my time. It's so depressing that a lot of expensive higher education is this pathetic. I wish our education system worked enough like a market that it could hold lecturer…

To be fair, this is the problem with Powerpoint. It's a well studied phenomenon. I use it as a rule of thumb, the best thing I can do with Powerpoint is have graphics. If I start writing words, I'm misusing it. That's not entirely true, outlines and things can be helpful, but it's a reasonable ideal to shoot for to avoid just reading from the slide.

Thank you for the really interesting details, but I decided not to take risks but to contact professionals immediately who can help me solve the problem of slides for presentations https://slidepeak.com . You need to be as imaginative as possible because it would be very important for a student to have a term paper that the company impresses the investor, and it would be reasonable to order ppt slides to get the assistance you need. I did this and thanked the competent team that supported me with it. I hope that the importance of the presentation for you is just as useful to you and above all, important cases should be ordered for sure.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#356

Post by 908B64B197 »

ChrisRR wrote: post #195
bserge wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people on Reddit did say they completed 2-3 month bootcamps/courses with no prior experience and got junior dev jobs (in the UK), so I don't even know. Then again it's online and on Reddit, so they may be just lying. I believe it is possible to learn enough to be decent in 3 months full time, and then learn everything else as you go. However, I don't see anyone hiring with that kind of experience. But then why p…

I always worry about the kind of companies that hire bootcamp devs like that. Sure, I agree that quite a lot of university is not necessary for everyone, but not 2.5 years of unnecessary If someone has just started from scratch 3 months ago and only knows how to program a bit in javascript, interface with a server and populate a database. I don't want them anywhere near a project. I want them to at least know the bas…

> I always worry about the kind of companies that hire bootcamp devs like that.

Typically it's a red flag for companies that are cheap and treat software as an expense and not a part of their core product.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#357

Post by chrisseaton »

codingdave wrote: post #102
chrisseaton wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but the qualification (from whichever accredited university) would open up a lot of opportunities I'd caution about this - if you think you can apply to jobs requiring a PhD I would think that when you apply the first thing they're going to do is to ask you who your advisor was and what you did. Unlike a bachelors just having a PhD isn't worth much - they will want to know what you actually achieved. If you have a…

I have heard exactly the opposite from people who work in the administrative side of academia. If your future job prospects are research-based, sure it matters. But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district? Any doctorate is fine.

> But if you just need to hold a doctorate to apply to be a president of a local college, or to get a leg up on a superintendent job at a school district?

Ok I'd never heard of such of thing.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#358

Post by 908B64B197 »

thewebcount wrote: post #342
jayd16 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't pay for the slides, you pay for the course design, the office hours, and access to experts in the field that not only know the course material but can also guide you to further learning outside the syllabus. ...But you have to actually show up and talk to your professor.

Yeah, not only that. I went to a state school and we had access to a lot of computing resources I likely wouldn't have had otherwise. I attended in the 90s and unless you already had a job in the industry, you were unlikely to find a network with hundreds or thousands of computers with different OSes on them. I not only got to use macOS and Windows, but VAX, and just about every flavor of Unix at the time (AIX, HPUX,…

The whole point of college is to figure out what you want to do, explore, network and learn how to learn.

The amount of learning that happens outside of classes, during labs with peers, is on par with lecture halls if not more. I've seen side projects, discussed random technologies, even startup MVPs on Campus.

That's where the real value lies. That and an environment where there's cutting edge research.

Re: I prepared for a decade to graduate in CS in three months

#359

Post by oAlbe »

cxr wrote: post #170
abfan1127 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I paid off $240,000 in 3 years by not being an idiot with my money. I got on a budget with my wife. We cut up our credit cards because we always double or triple spent our money. We budgeted for things like Christmas. We followed Dave Ramsey's plan. We're 2 months from paying off our house now. Edit - I went back and checked, it was $140k.

Heads up: this is a common pattern of expression that makes you come off as really obnoxious to people who will never tell you that that's what's happening. If you can't understand why people have a problem with this, here's the explanation: there are almost certainly smarter people than you who happened to be more unlucky than you . You were lucky-but-stupid before, so you stopped being so stupid, and now your messa…

This is one of the best comments I've ever read on HN, bar none. Thank you for that.
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