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A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

wired.com

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Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#71

Post by mattetti »

lutusp wrote: post #30

Article title: "Out in the Open: The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job" It's a good thing the site's originator didn't make this claim. Even a first-rate site with an enviable effect on students wouldn't want to say this. Maybe there should be a rating system for article titles, one that measures how far the title deviates from the article itself. In many cases such a title hurts the credibility…

You are totally right, Katrina never ever said anything about exercism being a place to help you land a job. As far as I know, this has never been her goal not does she intend to make it a future goal. Articles are rated based on page views, education doesn't attract tons of reads, so journalists try to be smart and come up with "catchy headlines"

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#72

Post by jiggy2011 »

wyager wrote: post #64
jiggy2011 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage for typical PHP here is that the webserver runs the programs somewhat transparently rather than the other way around with your program creating the webserver and then managing requests. PHP/Apache provides a very simple routing model that correlates 1:1 with the filesystem.

>PHP/Apache provides a very simple routing model that correlates 1:1 with the filesystem. Might that give students a false impression of what a webserver does and is capable of doing? The students can implement the same thing themselves in a few lines of python, rather than offload most of the functionality to a monolithic and unapproachable black box like apache or nginx.

It's useful to black box some of the things when you are first learning. The specifics of serving a request are probably not the first thing you want to teach, especially when it requires some notional understanding of threading/blocking which Apache can take care of automatically. Also mod_rewrite and .htaccess provide powerful methods of adjusting behaviour of routing and the like.

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#73

Post by mattetti »

lorddoig wrote: post #58

Without a reason to attract (relative) experts beyond philanthropy I think there's a risk that a ballooning amateur/expert ratio could soon cripple this, as happened to the way Matasano Crypto Challenges used to be run. I hate to be critical as I like the idea, and obviously there's some utility in it for experts as it is but it's much, much less so than for amateurs, and there's no reason to think that this imbalanc…

I see that as a good problem to have, if Exercism gets big enough that it's an issue Katrina will be able to adapt her product to respond to the request.

Remember that this is a side, open source project, run by one person ;)

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#74

Post by lazyant »

mmcru wrote: post #5
Tyrannosaurs wrote: post #2

Based on many of the people I've worked with "well enough to get a job" is a pretty low bar to clear.

these comments are always discouraging to me. i work in a different field (sysadmin), and i've been struggling to get a job programming. am i that bad at programming? or that bad at finding work? i feel like i know the basics of several languages as well as html, css, sql and git. i wrote an IT-ticket system for a healthcare clinic in python consisting of a basic html form and a SQL database backend (i know this isn'…

An option is to market yourself as "DevOps" engineer, seriously.

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#75

Post by agumonkey »

roywiggins wrote: post #61
GuiA wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is why I always use PHP as an introductory language if I have to teach web dev; the setup part is much more straightforward than it is for Rails/Django/etc., and you don't have to spend a ton of time teaching dozens of concepts (MVC, routes, templating, git, unit tests, ORMs, etc.) before the students can have mini web apps written. Some programmers balk at the idea of teaching PHP with plain HTML/CSS instea…

Flask. Flask Flask Flask. It's well-documented, in Python, and you can push it to Heroku easy as pie. You can add things like templates (they're built in, and can be really simple) or just concatenate HTML the old-fashioned way. You can program very imperatively and work up to abstractions. It's very friendly. I haven't seen it used as an introductory "language" but I feel like it would work well.

Also blueprints, a good exercise in separation of concerns, flexibility etc

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#76

Post by mhurron »

tejon wrote: post #60
mhurron wrote: post #50

" Exercises consisting of a test suite and a README are available in Clojure, CoffeeScript, C#, C++, Elixir, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, JavaScript, Lua, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl5, Python, Ruby, Scala, and Swift." I wonder why no plain C?

Doesn't matter; supports Haskell.

Which doesn't matter since it supports languages people actually use, except C.

What kind of response was that?

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#77

Post by dpritchett »

mhurron wrote: post #50

" Exercises consisting of a test suite and a README are available in Clojure, CoffeeScript, C#, C++, Elixir, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, JavaScript, Lua, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl5, Python, Ruby, Scala, and Swift." I wonder why no plain C?

Likely no one's submitted a PR with C exercises yet. github.com/exercism has repos for many languages.

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#78

Post by city41 »

mmcru wrote: post #32
yarper wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also took a look at your contributions - looks a bit spotty! https://github.com/mmcru No activity in the last month? Something I personally would pick up on.

you're definitely right. unfortunately i've been busy with a move and learning angular, which was new to me, so i haven't had much new code. i plan on adding more this week. thanks for your advice =]

Some easy things you can do is get an avatar, star some projects and try to get some followers (people often follow back if you follow them). Not huge wins, but they help make you github account look more active.

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#79

Post by techpeace »

yarper wrote: post #29
mmcru wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i do have a github, but i don't think i would call it "good": https://github.com/mmcru?tab=repositories i can definitely improve it, and that is something i have been working on. thanks for the advice though; i really appreciate it. i agree with you that ideally i would be working under some more senior programmers to improve my skills.

I also took a look at your contributions - looks a bit spotty! https://github.com/mmcru No activity in the last month? Something I personally would pick up on.

Basing hiring decisions on open source contribution rates contributes to the homogeneity (read: white maleness) of the industry at large. Women especially may not have as much time to contribute, since they are likely getting paid 30% less than their male counterparts and are more likely to be single parents than men. Ashe Dryden has a great breakdown of the issue, as well as some suggested alternative hiring techniques: http://www.ashedryden.com/blog/the-ethics-of-unpaid-labor-an...

This isn't a criticism of your comment, just something to keep in mind when making hiring choices. :)

Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

#80

Post by vegggdor »

wyager wrote: post #64
jiggy2011 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The advantage for typical PHP here is that the webserver runs the programs somewhat transparently rather than the other way around with your program creating the webserver and then managing requests. PHP/Apache provides a very simple routing model that correlates 1:1 with the filesystem.

>PHP/Apache provides a very simple routing model that correlates 1:1 with the filesystem. Might that give students a false impression of what a webserver does and is capable of doing? The students can implement the same thing themselves in a few lines of python, rather than offload most of the functionality to a monolithic and unapproachable black box like apache or nginx.

Writing web apps or servers are two different things. well, mostly ... almost, at least if you teach for productive use. especially for anyone who just started coding, a few lines of python can be a lot, so KISS.
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