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Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

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Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

#11

Post by arcatek »

webjprgm wrote: post #10
simias wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's pretty much what epitech (Nicolas Sadirac's previous school) is about. The only difference seems to be that epitech is far from free (it's actually quite expensive for a "peer to peer" school, since the students do most of the teaching). I've been convinced for quite a long that epitech is a scam that just works because of the enormous demand for IT graduates in the industry. Insert money, get a diploma. Makin…

I didn't catch the "peer-to-peer" part from the article, but that's interesting. (I'm not good with French.) I understood that it would be based around doing a bunch of projects with peers and learning how to find information on the internet vs. learn it from a course/book. So, how is this different from being a self-taught programmer? Does the peer interaction help that much? Are there any instructors to guide in an…

> So, how is this different from being a self-taught programmer? Does the peer interaction help that much? Are there any instructors to guide in any way?

If it's just like Epitech, it means that the teachers will be the students. 2nd-year teaching to 1st-year, etc. It's not as bad as it sounds, since it's possible to pick the 'best candidates'.

Also, I really think that peer interaction helps a lot. You definitely learn something when you have to work with people which does not have the same mindset than yours. You also have to deal with a lot of things such as "do not work with your friends", or "if you fail, the whole group fails", or "always have a leader in a team" etc.

Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

#12

Post by fab13n »

Given Niel's [nee-ell] outstanding track record, in terms of turning upside-down old markets paralyzed by established fat cats; given how firmly education belongs to this category; and given how badly it needs to be reinvented, this experiment is really intriguing.

For a bit of cultural context, higher education in France works quite differently from the US: it's mostly tax-funded; what we call cheap education is a couple hundreds € a year, full medical insurance included; a very expensive school would be €4-6€ a year. The best schools are cheap (a few select ones even offer a modest salary to their students). The worse ones, "universités", are cheap as well. Expensive schools are in the middle, for kids of wealthy parents who do OK at school, but aren't good enough to pass the best schools' very selective entry competitions.

Of course, these institutions being run by academics and civil servants, they aren't exactly reactive nor modernist; I've recently read a prominent school official explaining that Wikipedia wasn't trustworthy because it was user-editable, as opposed to journalists' papers... They offer a very solid mathematical and scientific background, but usually not much in terms of immediately employable skills. I'm not sure whether it's a good or a bad thing: school ought to teach you what you won't learn by yourself, the rest you'll pick up at your first employment, in exchange for a junior salary. But I've got the impression that schools filter mathematically-gifted student more than they train them.

Niel seems to concur, and to believe that maths/science gifts don't correlate well with actual development skills. Even if it's not true, there certainly are potentially skilled developers who do poorly at maths and science, and this talent pool is totally unexploited today, so he's right to try and valorise it.

Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

#13

Post by SeanDav »

mddw wrote: post #4

For non french speaking people : Xavier Niel is the founder of Free, a major french internet and phone provider, known for kicking hornet nests (he's the "inventor" of low cost unlimited offers, ADSL back in the days, mobile phone very recently.) 42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer" approach to education (whatever it means) It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 h…

O/T Pretty sure that the name 42 must come from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Anyone know differently?

Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

#14

Post by fab13n »

simias wrote: post #5
mddw wrote: post #4

For non french speaking people : Xavier Niel is the founder of Free, a major french internet and phone provider, known for kicking hornet nests (he's the "inventor" of low cost unlimited offers, ADSL back in the days, mobile phone very recently.) 42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer" approach to education (whatever it means) It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 h…

That's pretty much what epitech (Nicolas Sadirac's previous school) is about. The only difference seems to be that epitech is far from free (it's actually quite expensive for a "peer to peer" school, since the students do most of the teaching). I've been convinced for quite a long that epitech is a scam that just works because of the enormous demand for IT graduates in the industry. Insert money, get a diploma. Makin…

Epitech has all the incentives to be a scam (or higher education as usual, as it's called in the US). Here, since it's free, the only incentive I see for Niel is to have first pick, as an employer, in a pool of young recruits.

He's certainly not a philanthropist, and he's probably smarter than most of us, so he might have ulterior motives that we don't see yet, but it won't be a straightforward "cheap degree for good money" scam.

Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

#15

Post by arcatek »

SeanDav wrote: post #13
mddw wrote: post #4

For non french speaking people : Xavier Niel is the founder of Free, a major french internet and phone provider, known for kicking hornet nests (he's the "inventor" of low cost unlimited offers, ADSL back in the days, mobile phone very recently.) 42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer" approach to education (whatever it means) It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 h…

O/T Pretty sure that the name 42 must come from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Anyone know differently?

It's definitely this. See the teaser page[1].

[1] http://born2code.fr/

Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

#17

Post by [deleted] »

fab13n wrote: post #12

Given Niel's [nee-ell] outstanding track record, in terms of turning upside-down old markets paralyzed by established fat cats; given how firmly education belongs to this category; and given how badly it needs to be reinvented, this experiment is really intriguing. For a bit of cultural context, higher education in France works quite differently from the US: it's mostly tax-funded; what we call cheap education is a c…

[deleted]

Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school

#19

Post by cantcopy »

simias wrote: post #5
mddw wrote: post #4

For non french speaking people : Xavier Niel is the founder of Free, a major french internet and phone provider, known for kicking hornet nests (he's the "inventor" of low cost unlimited offers, ADSL back in the days, mobile phone very recently.) 42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer" approach to education (whatever it means) It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 h…

That's pretty much what epitech (Nicolas Sadirac's previous school) is about. The only difference seems to be that epitech is far from free (it's actually quite expensive for a "peer to peer" school, since the students do most of the teaching). I've been convinced for quite a long that epitech is a scam that just works because of the enormous demand for IT graduates in the industry. Insert money, get a diploma. Makin…

42.fr is free...
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