Major fail to me. I've been working on a similar project for 2 years and this may work in a classroom but going through the exercises it's tremendously underdone for the general public. I don't think this is going to go anywhere which is disheartening because I was so excited when I saw the title of the post and read the article. The actual program is a huge let down.
A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
111–120 of 200 posts
Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
>you can push it to Heroku easy as pie Having worked with absolute beginners, this isn't nearly as easy as you think for someone just getting started. You're adding ssh keys, getting set up with git, installing the heroku client, running things from the command line, dealing with dependencies, dealing with heroku config file issues... These are the things that get extremely frustrating very quickly to someone who doe…
Yes, anyone that says "you can push it to Heroku easy as pie" clearly hasn't spent hardly any time teaching anything to actual beginners.
Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#113Earlier 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.
We use Flask at Thinkful in our Python course for precisely this. Ran into some disappointment from folks who'd prefer to dive directly into Django, but from an instructional perspective we'd much rather introduce something comprehensible than ask students to memorize magic words or incantations.
Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
Exactly! If 80% of practical software engineering is what i described above, then how come no one is teaching it! Also, I feel we are talking about students quite a few steps below the stage where engineer vs. academia discussions become relevant.
There's no decent way (IMO) to learn generic problem solving skills other than solving a lot of problems for yourself. That's what worries me about these bootcamp things. The comment about academia was a bit silly, true. I was trying to say that it's the only place where you can have the luxury of thinking about "pure" programming as a primary concern.
> There's no decent way (IMO) to learn generic problem solving skills other than solving a lot of problems for yourself. That's what worries me about these bootcamp things.
Hm, though I see your point, and agree that "googling" is an actual skill you can acquire and improve by yourself, I feel it's not that different from any other skill, generic or not. I mean, before structure dawned upon playing piano or coding, to learn, the task was problem solving.
To me, there's no essential difference between "this note sounds wrong, why is that, let me try another one" to "how do I get my damn website online". If one beginner's learning process can have structure, why not the other's.
Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#115Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr)…
How much were you teaching him personally vs pointing him at the right resources and letting him mostly learn himself?
The biggest concern I think that a lot of people have about this approach is that your own productivity would suffer if you have to spend too much time handholding the apprentice with their own work. If the person is already a mathematician then they obviously have an advantage because a lot of the logical parts of programming will already make sense to them. I wonder how well this would work if you applied it to someone with only a basic education. Also people are used to school learning where they are micromanaged so might have problems shifting to this model.
This approach seems to work well in fields like plumbing where an apprenticeship will consist of 4 working days a week and 1 day of classroom learning at a technical college. The difference between plumbing and programming though is that plumbing is a far more standardised set of skills.
Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#116Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr)…
I would have loved an internship like that! I'm afraid that some would accuse you of oppressing your friend by exploiting his labor at the unlivable wage of $12/hr though :)
Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you can push it to Heroku easy as pie Having worked with absolute beginners, this isn't nearly as easy as you think for someone just getting started. You're adding ssh keys, getting set up with git, installing the heroku client, running things from the command line, dealing with dependencies, dealing with heroku config file issues... These are the things that get extremely frustrating very quickly to someone who doe…
Yes, anyone that says "you can push it to Heroku easy as pie" clearly hasn't spent hardly any time teaching anything to actual beginners.
I was working on the assumption that environment would be already set up for them. Setting up Apache to test stuff locally, getting FTP set up to get into your remote server, etc is all a pain with PHP too.
Once everything is set up, it's two-ish commands to commit and push to somewhere like Heroku.
And no, I haven't taught beginners at all, I'll fess up to that. I've learned alongside them, though. PHP is a perfectly cromulent language/framework for this sort of thing, but something like Flask could be just as accessible.
Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
>you can push it to Heroku easy as pie Having worked with absolute beginners, this isn't nearly as easy as you think for someone just getting started. You're adding ssh keys, getting set up with git, installing the heroku client, running things from the command line, dealing with dependencies, dealing with heroku config file issues... These are the things that get extremely frustrating very quickly to someone who doe…
Yes, anyone that says "you can push it to Heroku easy as pie" clearly hasn't spent hardly any time teaching anything to actual beginners.
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Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#119Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr)…
I would have loved an internship like that! I'm afraid that some would accuse you of oppressing your friend by exploiting his labor at the unlivable wage of $12/hr though :)
...I make $12/hr...
... :(
Re: A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job
#120Based 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'…
Getting past HR is a totally different and unrelated skillset from the craft of programming.