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A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

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Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#51

Post by Sagat »

juliendorra wrote: post #12

There is more to it than this idealistic view: 42 is very excluding for women, succeeding in bringing in les than 7% women. Less than a classic computer engineering school in France apparently. So much for inclusiveness. (They managed that by only showing bearded old men on their website, bringing a frat-house culture from their experience in older schools, with "fun" bonding games like taping a student to the trees,…

Diversity isn't a magic pill that automatically improves everything. Students should be selected based on their merits. If this results in non-diverse samples, then so be it.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#53

Post by yodsanklai »

nathanappere wrote: post #39
yodsanklai wrote: post #22

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…

2. It all depends the kind of projects you want to work on. In

Programming projects are great for some things, but not so much for others. The problem when learning CS with projects is that you face two difficulties at once. One is the "technology" side: syntax, bugs, programming environment and so on. The other are the concepts you're trying to learn. For instance, I wouldn't want to learn 3D graphics and C++ at the same time.

Actually, my main grief with 42 is that it is presented as something revolutionary, which it isn't. And very little information is given on the website. There's is some sketch of a curriculum that is clearly out of reach for ordinary students. It's unclear how the teaching is going to be organized, or even who the staff is.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#54

Post by yodsanklai »

namenotrequired wrote: post #50
mekoka wrote: post #21

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…

Thank you. 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.

No, the alternative is to study (for free) in any French university.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#55

Post by alanctgardner2 »

yeukhon wrote: post #30
alanctgardner2 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily, but they do have less women than the average French school, and the OP gave a bunch of serious reasons why this might be the case. They could try to eliminate those policies, and see if it increases female enrollment.

You have to count how many women applied and how many were rejected. A fair policy is to have a balance percentage. For this number of male applicants, there must be this number of woman accepted.

I think that's a very narrow view, and it leads to a situation where female applicants might use the school as a 'safety' - it isn't desirable, but it will definitely accept you to boost numbers and look "equal". A better approach, which I think the OP promotes, is to look at why you don't have as many female applicants as other schools. If your messaging is turning off the good female candidates, who know they can get into the school they want, then consequently you will either accept less-good female candidates (under a quota system), or have a significant imbalance.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#56

Post by nathanappere »

yodsanklai wrote: post #53
nathanappere wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

2. It all depends the kind of projects you want to work on. In Programming projects are great for some things, but not so much for others. The problem when learning CS with projects is that you face two difficulties at once. One is the "technology" side: syntax, bugs, programming environment and so on. The other are the concepts you're trying to learn. For instance, I wouldn't want to learn 3D graphics and C++ at the…

Well I don't know many schools where you only do projects, classes are absolutely optional, you organise your time exactly the way you want, you don't need any kind of diploma to enter. The only mandatory part is being present for the project defense.

Never saw this kind of teaching in any US university / school, so it's not that far fetched to call it "revolutionary".

It certainly is in France, especiall (Epitech has been doing that for 10 years but you had to pay something like 40k which for us is a lot for education, and also you need a high school diploma, which is mandatory if you want the bachelor/master diploma delivered by the school to be officialy recognised by the government.)

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#57

Post by nathanappere »

yodsanklai wrote: post #54
namenotrequired wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. 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.

No, the alternative is to study (for free) in any French university.

Sure, not the same quality of education for programming though. Since the two are free, I really see no reason to choose university over 42 now.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#58

Post by nathanappere »

nitrogen wrote: post #47
nathanappere wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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. 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.

Yes, but it's like a thousand other things that can make you a better developer.

It has always seemed quite useless to me to try to learn as much theory as you can before starting to actually do significant projects. You should learn by doing those project, and when it appears that you need theory to make it better, then you learn it.

I think there is a huge parallel with the lean model for CS teaching, programming yourself should always be the starting point.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#59

Post by nitrogen »

nathanappere wrote: post #58
nitrogen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. 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.

Yes, but it's like a thousand other things that can make you a better developer. It has always seemed quite useless to me to try to learn as much theory as you can before starting to actually do significant projects. You should learn by doing those project, and when it appears that you need theory to make it better, then you learn it. I think there is a huge parallel with the lean model for CS teaching, programming y…

It has always seemed quite useless to me to try to learn as much theory as you can before starting to actually do significant projects.

I agree with this, but I also advocate occasionally exploring random theory that's unrelated to your current projects, expanding your mental toolbox. Sometimes you don't know you have a problem until you've already heard of the solution.

Re: A School With No Teachers, Where Students Teach Themselves

#60

Post by Snoptic »

Sagat wrote: post #51
juliendorra wrote: post #12

There is more to it than this idealistic view: 42 is very excluding for women, succeeding in bringing in les than 7% women. Less than a classic computer engineering school in France apparently. So much for inclusiveness. (They managed that by only showing bearded old men on their website, bringing a frat-house culture from their experience in older schools, with "fun" bonding games like taping a student to the trees,…

Diversity isn't a magic pill that automatically improves everything. Students should be selected based on their merits. If this results in non-diverse samples, then so be it.

Define 'merits'. There's the rub.
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