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Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

nytimes.com

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Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#21

Post by dyeje »

oftenwrong wrote: post #12
swalsh wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about programmers though, is bad coders are actually job creators. Bad code bases require more and more resources to maintain (as entropy increases), until ultimately they hit that breaking point where you need to hire a bunch of contractors to rebuild it. Good code bases are built in a way that you can pay down technical debt while enhancing the product. I view programming as more of an art then a science,…

Are those job opportunities you want? For me, maintaining poorly-written code bases is not enjoyable.

Yes, but not eating is even less enjoyable.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#22

Post by nilkn »

the_duck wrote: post #8

Whenever I read about coding bootcamps I feel a tinge of worry that they might mean the end of the "good old days" for software developers. Do we expect that they'll have any tangible impact on the labor market by pumping out so many graduates with basic coding skills?

People who made fun of me in high school for being interested in programming are now trying to get programming jobs. People I know who flunked out of college or were expelled for cheating are now programmers. I'm now the only programmer at my company with a math or CS degree. (The others have degrees, but in biology, history, etc. -- they were all career switchers.)

That's how pervasive it's becoming. If there's any sort of contraction in the industry, the situation will be bad.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#23

Post by porter »

mgirdley wrote: post #15
UK-AL wrote: post #3

Reminds of the late 90's, early 2000 era, when every man off the street was doing mcse, cisco qualifications etc with the promise of highly paying jobs. Then a few years later there was gut of unemployed techies.

Disclaimer: I run a bootcamp in San Antonio called Codeup. While the media paints the camps as "get a great paying job", I see more people wanting a more meaningful life. They've got an expensive degree in English or something similarly un-useful and want to work on things that matter. They see coding as the path to get there.

Can you define what "matters"? What exactly are people finding more meaningful about programming as opposed to English?

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#24

Post by checker659 »

nilkn wrote: post #22
the_duck wrote: post #8

Whenever I read about coding bootcamps I feel a tinge of worry that they might mean the end of the "good old days" for software developers. Do we expect that they'll have any tangible impact on the labor market by pumping out so many graduates with basic coding skills?

People who made fun of me in high school for being interested in programming are now trying to get programming jobs. People I know who flunked out of college or were expelled for cheating are now programmers. I'm now the only programmer at my company with a math or CS degree. (The others have degrees, but in biology, history, etc. -- they were all career switchers.) That's how pervasive it's becoming. If there's any…

What do you work on?

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#25

Post by mjhea0 »

swalsh wrote: post #6
UK-AL wrote: post #3

Reminds of the late 90's, early 2000 era, when every man off the street was doing mcse, cisco qualifications etc with the promise of highly paying jobs. Then a few years later there was gut of unemployed techies.

The thing about programmers though, is bad coders are actually job creators. Bad code bases require more and more resources to maintain (as entropy increases), until ultimately they hit that breaking point where you need to hire a bunch of contractors to rebuild it. Good code bases are built in a way that you can pay down technical debt while enhancing the product. I view programming as more of an art then a science,…

Skip the middle man - bootcamps. Hire non-developers to screw up he codebase!

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#26

Post by llamataboot »

I graduated from a bootcamp a year ago after working in the non-profit field for over a decade as a researcher and a social worker, and doing a few years of standing up wordpress sites for small non-profits and doing other IT support for them (setting up better CRMs, networking their office, setting up online donation systems, etc)

A few things:

1) Bootcamp graduates shouldn't lead to poorly written codebases if they are being mentored properly. This means good code review at a minimum, as well as pairing, as well as onboarding and assigning appropriate tasks. If you are a company bringing on junior developers and just letting them loose in a codebase you are doing a disservice to those junior developers - they are going to feel exhausted and overwhelmed and lost most of the time - as well as to the rest of your team (trying to deal with their code) and your clients.

2) No one should be claiming that you can come out of a bootcamp with the same experience as someone that's been coding web software for 3+ years, but you come out with a solid foundation in a framework, with basic coding skills, and a hunger for learning more.

3) Demand for coders is still outstripping supply. Demand for experienced coders even more so.

--

Arguably we are stuck with the 10 week-3 month model though. I think the 6 month model offered by Turing School makes a lot more sense, up to a year.

I have a lot more thoughts about bootcamps but these will do for now.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#27

Post by VLM »

shoover wrote: post #18

It sounds expensive, hectic, and really time-consuming, which raises concerns about the kinds of jobs that one should expect waiting at the end of the chute. I feel Lou H's comment: "Mostly they prove they can work insane hours for months on end." Is that mainly how trade schools work, though? I've heard similar pictures of automotive and commercial pilot schools.

That might tie in with the excellent question of why there's no people with 3-5 years of experience willing to work in those environments. Don't kid me/us that 3 years ago no one knew how to code, or computers were invented six months ago so there are no living people today who started out four years ago, LOL. You can seamstress your whole life, and the seamstress in the article needs to ask herself why her theoretical future employers can't get anyone to work for them longer than 36 months in their environment, in their career field.

Also I remember when I only had 3 years experience programming and that was in 1984 and I was... not quite as wise as I am now. Optimistically I'll still be alive in 2044 and looking back at code I wrote in 2014 and asking myself WTF I was thinking, what noob wrote that and signed my name on it, way back in '14. A labor market of 40 or 50 years duration where 3 year olds are being marketed as being senior citizens is another strong indication of "peak of bubble".

I'll make a lot of money cleaning up after the kids, so I am grateful, but there should be more to life than spending all my time wearing a mental hazmat suit and wielding a virtual manure shovel.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#28

Post by spenuke »

mgirdley wrote: post #15
UK-AL wrote: post #3

Reminds of the late 90's, early 2000 era, when every man off the street was doing mcse, cisco qualifications etc with the promise of highly paying jobs. Then a few years later there was gut of unemployed techies.

Disclaimer: I run a bootcamp in San Antonio called Codeup. While the media paints the camps as "get a great paying job", I see more people wanting a more meaningful life. They've got an expensive degree in English or something similarly un-useful and want to work on things that matter. They see coding as the path to get there.

There is a competing interpretation that this lack of a meaningful life you allude to is in fact the RESULT of a society built on strict financial benefit.

You've conflated the terms "meaningful" and "useful". These are not equivalent terms. Meaning is a story we tell ourselves to make sense of our lives. Use is an observable action.

If I help make a product that gets 16% more people to click on ads for something they didn't need in the first place, I will have been _useful_ to the advertiser (and my own pocket). But to say that gives my life _meaning_ merely displays a twenty-first-century version of the lazy and ignorant naivete that the Humanities have tried to fight against all along.

I am not against having a better paying job, nor am I saying folks can't find meaning in software development (or any field, for that matter). And I'm not implying that an English degree should make you a bunch of money. It's just that this whole "learn to do some JavaScript and CSS, change the world!" technohype is just plain bullshit.

Do you need to pay $100k to learn the skills to see through such bullshit? No. But the sort of things that the Humanities teach are exactly the prophylactic that one needs to guard against such existential wheel-spinning.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#29

Post by michaelvkpdx »

mgirdley wrote: post #15
UK-AL wrote: post #3

Reminds of the late 90's, early 2000 era, when every man off the street was doing mcse, cisco qualifications etc with the promise of highly paying jobs. Then a few years later there was gut of unemployed techies.

Disclaimer: I run a bootcamp in San Antonio called Codeup. While the media paints the camps as "get a great paying job", I see more people wanting a more meaningful life. They've got an expensive degree in English or something similarly un-useful and want to work on things that matter. They see coding as the path to get there.

If you classify an English degree as "un-useful", you should not be involved in educating developers.

I studied both CS and English in college, and got my degree in English. The communication skills and translation techniques I learned as an English major have been tremendously useful to me in my career as a software engineer. In my experience hiring developers, I've found that those with liberal arts degrees do very well, particularly when they leverage their humanities background as an asset.

Anyone can write code, but it takes a breadth of knowledge and perspective to effectively maintain and engineer software that has societal value.

Re: Web-Era Trade Schools, Feeding a Need for Code

#30

Post by pessimizer »

mgirdley wrote: post #17
never_snapped wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they will put some downward pressure on the lowest of entry level jobs in languages/frameworks that are becoming a commodity (rails in particular), but wont affect jobs outside of that too much. Many people switch careers (moving over to software sales, for example, or getting out of IT all together) after an entry level job, or become more specialized in different a subset of skills.

If bootcamp grads are "doing it right", they'll keep developing and evolving their skills.

This is probably unfair, but I think that most of them are going to lack the math background to advance their skills very far from implementing simple CRUD apps in common frameworks.

I don't know that STEM people are going to code schools; I think they probably just google the manual, read a few tutorials and have at it.

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