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Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

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Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#51

Post by irahul »

meaty wrote: post #7

10 weeks is not enough time to learn any skill. I wish people would stop these boot camps with ridiculous claims. We've had a couple of victims of these schemes apply to us and we've had to rather sadly tell them 'no way' and explain why. A lot of them have come from business and arts backgrounds and think it's an easy way to make quick cash (hint: it isn't - writing software is hard and laborious and pays crap for t…

> We've had a couple of victims of these schemes apply to us and we've had to rather sadly tell them 'no way' and explain why.

If you aren't accepting candidates, won't it be better to explain(if you do explain) what you needed which they lack instead of profiling(Victims of these schemes). You haven't run into comp sci graduates who aren't suitable for the job?

> A lot of them have come from business and arts backgrounds and think it's an easy way to make quick cash

Most of the programming jobs aren't very involved. I will bet my life on at least 70% of working programmers unable to explain dynamic programming, let alone actually use it. In fact, it's very rare that I run into someone who can reduce a problem to a recurrence and solve it.

In an ideal world, that would be unacceptable. In the not-so-ideal world which we live in, programming jobs tend to vary a lot and there are a lot of jobs which do just fine with Django/Python knowledge.

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#52

Post by meaty »

dools wrote: post #16
meaty wrote: post #7

10 weeks is not enough time to learn any skill. I wish people would stop these boot camps with ridiculous claims. We've had a couple of victims of these schemes apply to us and we've had to rather sadly tell them 'no way' and explain why. A lot of them have come from business and arts backgrounds and think it's an easy way to make quick cash (hint: it isn't - writing software is hard and laborious and pays crap for t…

I learned enough C in a semester to get a (pretty crap) job writimg Javascript and PHP having never programmed before. Given that was first year university with a bunch of other courses on my plate, I would say 10 weeks is ample. EDIT: Just to add to that, in the following year I learned to program the Motorola 68HC11 microcontroller in a single semester well enough to build a 48 note midi controller (with Hypertermi…

I get what you're saying (I designed a 4-bit CPU at university, prototyped it in basic TTL and got it fabbed and it worked (!) in two semesters) but it doesn't mean I'll ever be able to throw a useful microcontroller core out of the door or that the work I did was of any merchantable quality.

Progress is good but if you throw someone into industry too early, then you're going to hurt the reputation of the education methodology (which in this case deserves it) and the company who is employing them.

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#53

Post by zedshaw »

bradleyjg wrote: post #35
zedshaw wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 10 weeks is not enough time to learn any skill. What? So, all of the military training methods don't exist? Military bootcamps are 6-8 weeks and you learn a massive fuck-ton of skills. Hell, college courses are less than this in hours spent and people learn crazy amounts of stuff. So how can you conclude that it's not possible to learn any skill despite a fairly huge amount of available evidence to the exact contra…

Bootcamp isn't about skills, it's about breaking down the civilian mentality and then building back up a military one. For those destined to be more than cannon fodder, the skills training comes in advanced courses that last months or occasionally years (e.g. nuclear sub courses).

Uh no, it's about skills, and you learn a lot of them in 8 weeks which disproves that you can't learn any in 10.

Unless you're in the Navy, then it's about keeping clean so you don't piss off everyone else on the ship. :-)

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#54

Post by tommorris »

eLobato wrote: post #43
tommorris wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Can anybody explain? Yes, historically, some groups have been discriminated at and put at a social and economic disadvantage on the basis of intrinsic factors. Putting right an unequal playing field looks unfair only if you don't see that it is an unequal playing field.

The fact that black people were treated bad in the past wouldn't justify if you were treated as an slave just to compensate for what your ancestors did. I don't see why this is unequal nowadays for women or other minorities but it IS unequal to men (don't think anyone can't see that fact). Equality should be the goal, not being treated differently depending on your gender.

> I don't see why this is unequal nowadays for women or other minorities

In the United States, women's median income is still 77% of men's median income. (And, yes, before you bring up all the various stupid talking points, that figure accounts for all the various factors like taking time out of a career to raise kids etc. etc. US government statistics account for all those kinds of differences and still show a gender pay gap that is closing very, very slowly.)

According to a 2003 study, white workers earn approximately 14% more than black workers in the United States across all sectors.

Only six of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies are black, only 20 are women.

Prisons in the United States hold six million people, a 772% increase from 1970 to 2009. The War on Drugs has heavily targeted minority black communities. 40% of the prison population is black despite only making up 12% of the national population. We've seen the story countless times before: shitty schools, no economic opportunities, so crime becomes the only option and prison the only solution. If you don't think there is a heavily racialized component to how the prison system works in the United States, you don't understand the prison system in the United States.

And despite all the stories about "the pink dollar", gay men get paid less than their heterosexual counterparts.

In the United Kingdom, according to figures by the Office of National Statistics, women are paid 14.9% less than men.

Tell me again how men and women are equal and how we are living in a post-racial, post-discriminatory society where we are all equal.

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#55

Post by [deleted] »

[deleted] wrote: post #40
belorn wrote: post #33

Women only courses and equality in education don't normally mix well with me. The whole subject is however rather interesting, being a very political subject but also one where experiments and statistics tend to go against common opinion. Okey, this is from a Swedish perspective, as that is the only perspective I got. Anyway, the Swedish state educational overseeing body has made several attempts to improve equality…

[deleted]

[deleted]

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#56

Post by fiblye »

zedshaw wrote: post #44
eLobato wrote: post #30

Will sound like an asshole to many people, but: Hackbright Academy Turns Men Into Developers In 10 Weeks Hackbright Academy Turns Blacks Into Developers In 10 Weeks Hackbright Academy Turns Whites Into Developers In 10 Weeks Do we really need MORE discrimination? If I go ahead and try to join in, they will say "sorry, no men accepted"? That sounds equally as bad to me as "sorry, no woman accepted" or "sorry, no latin…

Well, what you're seeing is a backlash from the way programming has been taught thus far. For whatever reason all computer science education is geared toward someone who's already had about 6 years of self-education. Typically that meant that women, minorities, and the poor couldn't learn programming and so never went into computer science. Now what you're seeing is companies meeting the demand from these new groups…

> Typically that meant that women, minorities, and the poor couldn't learn programming and so never went into computer science.

I understand that poorer people have no opportunity to learn programming and other less-immediately applicable topics outside of class, but I don't see what's stopping women from learning how to code. Most middle class people today spend their entire days on facebook--why is it "harder" for a woman to take some time to learn how her computer works when countless men begin learning in their late teens/early adult years?

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#57

Post by FlemishBeeCycle »

shantanubala wrote: post #42
eLobato wrote: post #30

Will sound like an asshole to many people, but: Hackbright Academy Turns Men Into Developers In 10 Weeks Hackbright Academy Turns Blacks Into Developers In 10 Weeks Hackbright Academy Turns Whites Into Developers In 10 Weeks Do we really need MORE discrimination? If I go ahead and try to join in, they will say "sorry, no men accepted"? That sounds equally as bad to me as "sorry, no woman accepted" or "sorry, no latin…

The simple fact is that many women feel uncomfortable going into a field that is dominated by men. Assuming you're a white male, do you feel out of place when you're in an area where everyone is a woman? How about when everyone is black? Have you walked through a neighborhood where everyone is Latino? Being in an ovewhelming minority sucks in an irrational way. There's no logical explanation other than, "we want to f…

You're placing entirely too much importance on particular categorizations, "comfort" has much more to do with "what you're used to", than the idea that people are constantly fretting about how population densities in their environment match up to their own self-identification.

As a bi-racial male of the darker persuasion (which in America is basically "not-white"), I find myself much more comfortable around predominantly "white" groups because that has been the most common environment for myself throughout my life.

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#58

Post by zedshaw »

meaty wrote: post #45
zedshaw wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uh, no, I was in the Army and I learned way more than not getting killed or court martialed. In fact, you saying that says either your military sucks at training or you're lying. It also doesn't answer my direct criticism of your comment. You claimed you can't learn any skill in 10 weeks, which is complete bullshit. People learn quite a lot of things in less time, so saying that is stupid. Maybe you meant to say some…

The military, well the British Army which is my only experience (not strictly true [1]), does suck at training. I mean really suck. Most knowledge is pumped down via training manuals written by people detached from the equipment or scenarios or is done via assimilation. That inevitably ends up with people who have ascended to a higher rank due to ass-licking giving years out of date advice to lower ranks. At the end…

So, you get to say something incredibly invalid and easily disproven like "you can not learn any skill in 10 weeks" because I wrote an essay in 2008? Four years ago?

Let me guess, you aren't very good at this whole logical argument thing which why you're just wrong here.

Again, merchantable skill is subjective and based on the free market, so no, I could learn a "merchantable" skill in 2 hours. Cleaning toilets comes to mind as one very such skill.

You're just wrong. It's possible to learn skills in 10 weeks of 8-10 hour days, and learn them well. It's possible to become a junior programmer in that time. It's possible to learn a ton of different skill in that time. You actually meant mastering these skills, and just refuse to admit it.

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#59

Post by zedshaw »

fiblye wrote: post #56
zedshaw wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what you're seeing is a backlash from the way programming has been taught thus far. For whatever reason all computer science education is geared toward someone who's already had about 6 years of self-education. Typically that meant that women, minorities, and the poor couldn't learn programming and so never went into computer science. Now what you're seeing is companies meeting the demand from these new groups…

> Typically that meant that women, minorities, and the poor couldn't learn programming and so never went into computer science. I understand that poorer people have no opportunity to learn programming and other less-immediately applicable topics outside of class, but I don't see what's stopping women from learning how to code. Most middle class people today spend their entire days on facebook--why is it "harder" for…

I think a big part of it is that there is a very strong hatred of intellectualism in the US, to the point that people who learned to use computers are called nerds and other vile things as well as abused and beaten for it. I think previously the potential of computers as a career wasn't strong enough to overcome this with many young kids, boys or girls, but more so girls.

Re: Hackbright Academy Turns Women Into Developers In 10 Weeks

#60

Post by meaty »

zedshaw wrote: post #58
meaty wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The military, well the British Army which is my only experience (not strictly true [1]), does suck at training. I mean really suck. Most knowledge is pumped down via training manuals written by people detached from the equipment or scenarios or is done via assimilation. That inevitably ends up with people who have ascended to a higher rank due to ass-licking giving years out of date advice to lower ranks. At the end…

So, you get to say something incredibly invalid and easily disproven like "you can not learn any skill in 10 weeks" because I wrote an essay in 2008? Four years ago? Let me guess, you aren't very good at this whole logical argument thing which why you're just wrong here. Again, merchantable skill is subjective and based on the free market, so no, I could learn a "merchantable" skill in 2 hours. Cleaning toilets comes…

No that's not what I suggested. Read it again a couple of times, carefully.

I think it was a logical and concise argument.

Perhaps a better statement is: "any semi technical skill takes way more than 10 weeks to become productive and not a risk".

Are you happy now?

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