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

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

#161

Post by arash_milani »

exhilaration wrote: post #136
talkingquickly wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's basically what we do with https://www.makeitwithcode.com , we take people through building things and teach them theory as they go along. Then we go through deploying something to Heroku etc as part of subsequent lessons, so by the end they've got a mixture of the theoretical stuff as well as the more practical "how do I make this be on the internet". I think there's a few others which also follow the approach…

Your website isn't clear - is there a cost?

on the homepage bottom-right it says: The course costs just $200. If, during the course, you feel you're not getting value for money, we'll give you a refund.

You'll get a lesson a week for 10 weeks. The lessons are text-format, combining a balance of challenges with instruction.

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

#162

Post by vegggdor »

roywiggins wrote: post #121
vegggdor wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and the people who get the most upset by that notion are often those who have taught 0 students Does that apply to you?

To me? Yes and no. Yes I've taught precisely 0 students. No, I'm not at all upset with teaching PHP, I coded up my fair share of awful PHP web apps. My first favorite language was ActionScript which everyone loves to hate! But at the time, nothing beat PHP and ActionScript/Flash for simple, fun web development for beginners. I think something like Flask might be a worthy successor. Heck it even includes a webserver,…

I somehow missed your actual arguments for flask, so my impression of you over-enthusiastically praising flask was all wrong, sorry. Still, if Flask does everything for you, what are students left to learn? A lot, i guess :)

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

#163

Post by collyw »

TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #101
philangist wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's controversial about having a coding problem? I would assume that I'm going to write code for any position I apply to, otherwise I probably wouldn't want to work at that company. Or do the applicants just feel like you're asking an unreasonably difficult question for the amount of time provided?

In HN the general feel I've gotten for interview problems is that people prefer being given a day or two to accomplish a small coding project instead of being given a coding problem on the spot. I agree with that approach as well, but it's probably because I consider on the spot coding problems to be nerve-wrecking.

I am looking for a new job these days. Fine if the first job you come across is ideal, and the test is OK. But its going to be frustrating if I have to dig into a lot of my personal time doing coding tests, because I want to apply for a few jobs and see what one is best.

I would rather code with the interviewer, and let him know my thought processes, and why I do things the way I do.

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

#164

Post by mhurron »

cschneid wrote: post #137
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?

Probably just that nobody has sat down and done it. Maybe that could be you... :) https://github.com/exercism/x-api/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...

> Maybe that could be you... :)

I was wondering why no C because that is one I could use, and would like, the practice on. So for everyone else's sake, I won't.

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

#165

Post by techpeace »

aianus wrote: post #149
techpeace wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am I correct in assuming that your assertion here is that women don't contribute to Open Source in as high a number as men because they're "unwilling to do the extra work?" This is based on your one experience in college, and its extrapolated gross generalizations. Did you happen to survey 11% of your classmates to determine their specific circumstances? Were there, perhaps, any other offerings of those same classes…

My assertion is that women shied away from this sort of unpaid time-intensive work even when they were not subject to the disadvantages you outlined (childcare and lower income). The real reason, in my opinion, must be something else. In response to your questions: there was a single offering of the course. All of the women I encouraged to enroll said they were uninterested due to the perceived difficulty and workloa…

Well, I would have to disagree with your assertion that the women were not subject to any disadvantages, even the ones I mentioned. To know that outright would require something bordering on omnipotence. But feel free to believe that it must have been "some other reason," rather than the myriad entrenched disadvantages that exist in both our society at large and this industry in particular.

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

#166

Post by djur »

LLWM wrote: post #154
lutusp wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know anything specific about the site, but that might reflect an aesthetic bias overcoming the realization that Java is ubiquitous. It all depends on the degree to which a site's operators care about teaching what's being used in real-world projects. If I ran such a site, I might want to suppress my own aesthetic preferences, but even I would probably exclude PHP, as one example, only because it doesn't repre…

It's a conspicious omission for something that's being sold as "The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job".

I've been on exercism for a while and this is the first time I've ever heard such a claim. The headline seems to be based on this weaker remark in the article: "it could help the legions of people out there trying to learn to code well enough to land a job in this fast-growing field". And even that isn't directly based on any quote from anyone related to the site.

exercism is definitely a volunteer-driven, open-source operation, and the exercises come from people willing to contribute them. I was going through the OCaml exercises and found that one of them had an error[1]; I submitted a pull request and it was accepted within hours.

I think this is a case of a clickbait headline that doesn't do justice to the article nor the subject.

[1] Unlike some similar sites, exercism doesn't actually build and test your submissions. This makes the site much simpler and cheaper to run, but also makes a point that simply passing the included test suite is only the first step. But it also sometimes results in sloppily-written exercises for the more marginal languages.

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

#167

Post by yappy »

techpeace wrote: post #129
yarper wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github contributions & open source is not a "white male only" affair. I don't know if you're trolling, but you're actually lowering the bar for women which is a massive disservice. Good coders spend time outside work keeping up to date on their skills - trying stuff out. This stuff needs to go somewhere. Why not put it in github and show me that you're regularly learning new things? Also, "pick up" meaning I would no…

I assume this was meant to be a response to me, even though it's not in the correct thread. I'd suggest you read the article I linked to, since it addresses each of the points you made fairly directly - with data and references, rather than empty assertions. It was also written by a woman, who would likely take issue to the claim that it's doing a disservice to women by pointing out discriminatory hiring practices.

It was yes, my mistake.

I read your link and it was a snoozefest, and I'm not really sure twitter posts count as references.

People want to see your code before they hire you. Github is a place to share code. That's it really - white male or not.

This is especially relevant to OP because he doesn't have commercial experience coding. Most interviewers will be nervous of this, a large portfolio accessible in a familiar format will alleviate much of their tension.

Don't forget, most interviews for the interviewer are basically an ass covering exercise. Nobody wants to be remembered as "the person that hired THAT guy".

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

#168

Post by techpeace »

yappy wrote: post #167
techpeace wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume this was meant to be a response to me, even though it's not in the correct thread. I'd suggest you read the article I linked to, since it addresses each of the points you made fairly directly - with data and references, rather than empty assertions. It was also written by a woman, who would likely take issue to the claim that it's doing a disservice to women by pointing out discriminatory hiring practices.

It was yes, my mistake. I read your link and it was a snoozefest, and I'm not really sure twitter posts count as references. People want to see your code before they hire you. Github is a place to share code. That's it really - white male or not. This is especially relevant to OP because he doesn't have commercial experience coding. Most interviewers will be nervous of this, a large portfolio accessible in a familiar…

I was actually referring to the multiple listed references at the bottom of the article you "read." There are several other ways to see someone's code than expecting them to do work that they aren't getting paid for. Being "nervous" about people that don't do work for free perpetuates inequality. Try to see past your privilege and perhaps you won't hire "THAT guy."

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

#170

Post by Tyrannosaurs »

Nursie wrote: post #97
Nursie wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that paper experience is not actually a good indicator of anything, but lack of it will keep you out of a job. Recently I've been working with a team of 3 other engineers. 2 Were average if a touch lazy. The third had ~30 years experience on paper. He was without a doubt the most incurious, unproductive, useless programmer I've ever encountered. He must have committed less than 1% of the new code over…

2 more things. Firstly, I suppose one solution would have been for management to pay attention to the atmosphere.on the team and do some sort of productivity assessments on their staff. Secondly - to get a start somewhere good I would (if you don't have a tech degree or experience) show some interest in the topic and an ability to be a self-starter. Do a couple of coursera/udacity courses. Stick up a webapp or try to…

Accurately measuring productivity of programmers in a way which doesn't negatively distort performance...

Crack that and you'll not need to program, you'll be rich.

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