rn@42.fr ? That's sound good!
rn is for Root Nicolas. It's a reference to Nicolas Sadirac, his email is rn@epitech.net
Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school
21–27 of 27 posts
Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school
#22Earlier 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…
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…
Epitech is around 8000k/year. I made the 5 years and get a decent job, but I think it's still a scam because you learn in a p2p environment. Teachers and traditional courses are non existent. You code a lot, a lot, a lot, you learn also a lot, but it's not worth 8K euros per year for sure !
Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school
#23[deleted]
Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school
#24Hey... Niel is a business man, not a revolutionary guy or a rebel. He do this school because he will make money with future students that will work for him...
Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school
#25Earlier 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…
Still a 4th year Epitech student, I don't agree with your 'scam' affirmation. I'm pretty sure that I would not have been able to follow traditional schools due to some attention problems, but going to Epitech allowed me to meet a lot of skillful students (including in my own promotion) and get better. Of course it wasn't free, but it was definitely worth it (I will start my first long term contract in may, before get…
It will not be revolutionary at all for students. You can learn the same at home by coding on Free Softwares, learn everything you need on Stack Exchange and even find a paid job in the end. Don't need to pay an expensive school or going to this "free" one.
It will be revolutionary for startups and other enterprises: in France, the lack of developer is high, and it's painful for startups to find people (searching for one year before you find or even more). I'm sure this is not a free school. Students will be the next Niel's friends employee, they will be inexpensive interns (in France, an internship that longs less than 3 months can legally be unpaid). Enterprises wants people who knows corporates methods and how to work in an "agile" way (I mean agility for business). But employee don't care of business in France.
A real revolution for business, not for students. Developers don't need Niel to make their own revolution.
Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school
#26interesting - the high intensity coding approach did not start with Epitech. It started with Epita, the school created before Epitech. The 15 hours on boarding was called the swimming pool (you learn to swim or you drown). You started that right at the beginning of school with no programming experience. Number of students "giving up" (leaving the school right away) was broadcasted via a Unix based IM system. Goal was only to keep the students who "get it". We would have daily projects to turn in before midnight and most projects names where taken out of the Hitchhiker's. Nicolas is an awesome guy and is very smart as is his right hand Kwame.
He was the sys admin for the school and led all the technical curriculum. They are both big believers in learn it / dot it yourself and that's what Nicolas already implemented at Epita as most of the technical classes were led by students. They can be tough but they are great technical mentors. I learned a lot there and I think it was worth the money.
I remember that on our first day we had to code 'bdsh' (a light database in bash). I went to them to ask "what is bash?" (because at the time I was barely nailing the login screen). Answer was "man bash". Then I asked "what's man?" - answer was "man man". That's pretty much the approach.
Re: Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school
#27For 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…
15 hours of programming a day? Holy shit. There's no way I could be productive/attentive for that long.
Actually, that's not really 15 hours of programming a day.
This period is called "piscine" (swimming pool). That's the same "marathon" as the one you face when you're an epitech student.
During your first month at school, you'll learn, from scratch, how to use a UNIX shell and C programming by coding various things, such as some str*() functions and implement various functions for linked lists manipulation. If you've never programmed before, you may spend ~10 hours on this. Else it will just take a few hours. 15 hours is because some exercises can change at the last minute, just before the deadline which is around midnight every day (for example, at the last minute they may ask you to return 42 instead of 1 in some function, and the automated checking script will check whether you return the right value).