41–50 of 62 posts
15 hours a day? On fake problems? Why not teach them basic skills on the frontend and backend and let them work on projects for 15 hours a day?
Rewritting a shell / ircd / httpd seems like a really good place to start to learn about the unix system / network / versioning systems / working in a team / learning how to find answer to things you know very few about. That's part of the program.
I like the idea, but I hope the article would address my question whether or not there are mentors available for office hours. You can certainly learn by trials and errors, but to be honest you'd learn a lot more if there are professionals to help you. Second issue is programming 15 hours a day seems a lot. I can't even stare at my screen for more than 7-8 hours a day. That's a lot of work... I do like the idea, and…
1) Mentors should be available at 2 in the morning. Not that they have to (most of the time) it's just that you mostly interact with teaching assistants that still are in school working on their projects too, so they usually pull the same kind of hours than you.
2) You have really tight deadlines and a huge amount of project so it's not unusual to have to work 15 hours. But the whole thing is just about learning to manage crazy constraints, you deal with it the way you want. If you choose to work 15hours a day an manage to be efficient then great, but it's more about learning to be organize / be efficient.
I see some comments already heavily criticizing this school. A few things to note before taking those comments at face value. - This is the school's website http://www.42.fr . If you can't read in french, but want to know more, I'd suggest to use some translation tool, or lookup other articles that talk about it. - I also encourage you to lookup who is behind the project http://www.42.fr/lequipe-et-les-moyens/ - The…
They actually cover a lot: C, Java, Functional Programming, Kernel Programming, Iphone/Android Development, etc.
French version: http://www.42.fr/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/programme-42.pdf
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From what I gather the 42 team has a really poor view of anything web-dev related. They have this idea of creating "hardcore devs", because supposedly they are better and if you can code hardcore you can code anything. (An idea that obviously lead to entire categories of failures, because not two systems are alike, and developing necessitate many skills, including communicating, writing, leading) Note that this is wh…
Epitech Alumni here (42 is basically the same thing but free). The idea is rather that if you start from low level programming it is not difficult to go up, and you can pretty much do anything after that. I do think that starting from C/C++ & having a good understanding of how any interpreted language work makes you a better web developer. Not that it guarantees it / is absolutely necessary, but it gives you a broade…
If you're only doing to do crud apps the the typical RoR project, you're going to be a lot better off with an algorithms background vs codecademy student 25013.
I think a practical approach to theory done right has immense potential though.
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The fair policy is to take the most competent candidates, regardless of gender.
That is one type of policy. But if all female applicants are not "fit" for the school, you get all male and zero female. So the other kind of fair policy (which is kind of like affirmative action) is to ensure X number of a particular group of applicants must be accepted.
An entity in Australia called DSTO started thrusting women into management positions back in the early 90s - so they could say they had 50% (or as close to 50%) of women in management roles. I had the misfortune of working with a few of the bad ones.
The ones that were capable (ie. competent) were great to work with, but there were some that were REALLY, REALLY bad. People laughed (or cringed) when the bad ones did their job - and it was obvious they were inept. It was so bad that I would consider these few women to be the worst I have -ever- seen (in 20+ years of a working career).
After a period of time, these women cracked and left because they could not cope with the situation. If anything, I blame the management for putting the wrong people in these roles and emphasising their inability. If anything, it may have backfired and created a perception that women just can't do the job (which is far from the truth). I remember them being away frequently on training, so there was no apparent lack of support that I could see.
Unfortunately, that's what you get when you play numbers games. You should NEVER, EVER promote anyone because of their race, religion, colour or gender... Nor should you discriminate against someone for those reasons.
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That is one type of policy. But if all female applicants are not "fit" for the school, you get all male and zero female. So the other kind of fair policy (which is kind of like affirmative action) is to ensure X number of a particular group of applicants must be accepted.
Let me tell you how that turns out ... first hand (from a real experience). An entity in Australia called DSTO started thrusting women into management positions back in the early 90s - so they could say they had 50% (or as close to 50%) of women in management roles. I had the misfortune of working with a few of the bad ones. The ones that were capable (ie. competent) were great to work with, but there were some that…
A better way to do it is to maintain the same admission standards for everybody, but actively seek out more applications from women. It'll indirectly raise the number of women who get admitted, without distorting things in the way that you describe.
I'm very skeptical about this. The idea is that computer science isn't properly taught in French old fashioned universities and "grandes ecoles". As a result, some students fail while they would succeed with a more pragmatic, project-based education. It sounds like a good idea. After all, we all know stories of bright people or great hackers that felt academic education wasn't for them and followed a different, succe…
Epitech Alumni here (42 is basically the same thing but free). 1. Studied in CSULB / UCB, you really don't do enough of them. More theory than practise when you should probably seek theory when you're confronted to a problem that needs it. 2. You really don't need to know about automata theory, linear algebra or whatever to be a good developer. Brings me back to what I said in 1. 3. Actually the paper doesn't depicts…
No, but all of those things (like the Fourier transform you skipped mentioning) can be used to turn difficult problems into simple ones, making you an even better developer.
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Let me tell you how that turns out ... first hand (from a real experience). An entity in Australia called DSTO started thrusting women into management positions back in the early 90s - so they could say they had 50% (or as close to 50%) of women in management roles. I had the misfortune of working with a few of the bad ones. The ones that were capable (ie. competent) were great to work with, but there were some that…
That's what you get when you play numbers games poorly . A better way to do it is to maintain the same admission standards for everybody, but actively seek out more applications from women. It'll indirectly raise the number of women who get admitted, without distorting things in the way that you describe.
Not necessarily and it could certainly lead to distortion due to simple error in evaluation.
If you encourage applicants from an underserved pool, do you believe the average quality of these new applicants from the pool will be equivalent to the average quality prior to the new programs?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That is one type of policy. But if all female applicants are not "fit" for the school, you get all male and zero female. So the other kind of fair policy (which is kind of like affirmative action) is to ensure X number of a particular group of applicants must be accepted.
Let me tell you how that turns out ... first hand (from a real experience). An entity in Australia called DSTO started thrusting women into management positions back in the early 90s - so they could say they had 50% (or as close to 50%) of women in management roles. I had the misfortune of working with a few of the bad ones. The ones that were capable (ie. competent) were great to work with, but there were some that…
I see some comments already heavily criticizing this school. A few things to note before taking those comments at face value. - This is the school's website http://www.42.fr . If you can't read in french, but want to know more, I'd suggest to use some translation tool, or lookup other articles that talk about it. - I also encourage you to lookup who is behind the project http://www.42.fr/lequipe-et-les-moyens/ - The…
I also think that, even if some of the criticism is right, for a lot of those students (and their future employers) this project will still be a lot better than the alternative of them staying unemployed or working bad jobs while full of this untapped potential.