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Bootcamps vs. College

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Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#141

Post by andrewvc »

balls187 wrote: post #116
andrewvc wrote: post #107

What a load of crap. What, they bred the capacity for abstract thought into you in college? College attracts a generally higher quality applicant pool. You're mistaking selection bias for an effect. Let me tell you, I've interviewed programmers from all over. There are boatloads of people with CS degrees with close to zero capacity for creative thinking. There are also boatloads of CS grads who can barely code their…

Are you the standard, or an outlier? // The ELK stack is pretty sweet.

Maybe I am an outlier, maybe not. That would need to be quantified. I don't think I'm an outlier. I think there's a wide range of skill sets across the percentiles in the non-CS set. Maybe those %s are different than in the CS degree set, but that's really hard to quantify.

Parent made the point that "All those concepts that they teach in CS isn't about knowing the name of an algorithm, it's about thinking abstractly."

The point is that making that sort of sweeping generalization is harmful to everyone. Parent is implying that there's a secret skill set that can exclusively be unlocked by getting a CS degree. I think we can all agree that as a categorical statement is plainly false.

These statements encourage people to not look at the individual but instead rely on a set of biased and unquantified assumptions.

// P.S. glad you like the ELK stack :)

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#142

Post by brador »

andrewvc wrote: post #107

What a load of crap. What, they bred the capacity for abstract thought into you in college? College attracts a generally higher quality applicant pool. You're mistaking selection bias for an effect. Let me tell you, I've interviewed programmers from all over. There are boatloads of people with CS degrees with close to zero capacity for creative thinking. There are also boatloads of CS grads who can barely code their…

Anecdotes on every side.

Even so, given the top 10% of their respective classes i'd easily take the CS grads over the bootcampers. Mid tier could go either way. Bottom tier i'd take the bootcampers.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#143

Post by spraak »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #115
nostrebored wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My CS degree was four years of heavy abstract thinking. If you can get those skills elsewhere great, but I don't think it's that common.

Based on what? The amount of bias in this thread is very strange. I think what's going on is that the people with CS degrees invested a significant chunk of their life and a significant amount of money into getting a CS degree. Therefore they're invested in denying the possibility that the qualities they achieved through their program can be achieved without. The article presents some evidence in support of this poss…

Very good critical reply. Anecdata - what a perfect word :)

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#145

Post by dionidium »

andrewvc wrote: post #107

What a load of crap. What, they bred the capacity for abstract thought into you in college? College attracts a generally higher quality applicant pool. You're mistaking selection bias for an effect. Let me tell you, I've interviewed programmers from all over. There are boatloads of people with CS degrees with close to zero capacity for creative thinking. There are also boatloads of CS grads who can barely code their…

I think you might be attacking a straw man. I'm a strong believer in the traditional CS path, but when I argue for it in the context of a 4-year degree, I'm really just using shorthand to describe the most obvious way to get there.

Will Hunting was right about a library card, but many -- I think most -- people require the discipline imposed on them by a university setting to actually do the work. Obviously -- obviously! -- you can learn this stuff on your own. But I doubt there are many self-taught programmers who've actually spent hours drawing out trees and solving recurrences and so on. To the extent that you've done that, then hooray for you!

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#146

Post by GrumpyYoungMan »

bunnymancer wrote: post #19

Bootcamper here, Of course 3 months is going to get you running with a solid basic knowledge of your stuff. In what world would low-level, algorithms and data structures be doable in 3 months? Point is, I don't think Bootcamps and Colleges are comparable. It's like being a woodworker and a forester.. There's a place for each and it's not the same positions... Now, here's my big question: If your interview includes Pr…

>Had it been for a trucker position you'd be asking for "driving license, laws and regulations, engine design and car physics".

There nothing wrong with a trucker just knowing "driving license, laws and regulations", ... as long as they don't mind being laid off when there's no longer a need for that skill.

You're essentially arguing that it's okay to be a one-trick pony. It's not.

1) IT and the software industry change too fast for that to be anything other than career suicide. What do you do when your tricks become out of date?

2) You're competing with all the other one-trick ponies out there. There are a whole lot of them and that makes one-trick ponies an easily replaceable commodity. Yes, yes, everyone's replaceable in theory but its best to minimize that as much as possible.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#147

Post by lloyd-christmas »

busterarm wrote: post #127
lloyd-christmas wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there is nothing of distinguishing value between all three of those boot camps. Trying to place them in tiers, I assume, is just a form of self-flattery.

While you're largely right, there are pay in full and up front boot camps out there that tend to churn through people and either not care about or grossly inflate their placement rates. And there's a big difference between "12 weeks of structured curriculum" that you get from the ones mentioned vs the "12 weeks of follow the Hartl Tutorial and meet with a mentor for 3 hours a week" variety like Bloc.

I can definitely see that distinction. We've never interviewed from anyone excluding the three you mentioned and fullstack academy, which all have the same general process.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#148

Post by dionidium »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #115
nostrebored wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My CS degree was four years of heavy abstract thinking. If you can get those skills elsewhere great, but I don't think it's that common.

Based on what? The amount of bias in this thread is very strange. I think what's going on is that the people with CS degrees invested a significant chunk of their life and a significant amount of money into getting a CS degree. Therefore they're invested in denying the possibility that the qualities they achieved through their program can be achieved without. The article presents some evidence in support of this poss…

"I think what's going on is that the people with CS degrees invested a significant chunk of their life and a significant amount of money into getting a CS degree."

A few people have made a similar claim in this thread. I think that's a pretty lazy argument for which no real evidence exists. A big clue is that you could say that about literally anything.

Oh, sure, of course you'd think cooking classes were a big help in learning to cook. You paid all that money for them and spent all that time attending, so you feel the need to justify the expense.

It explains everything and nothing.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#149

Post by ldehaan »

andrewvc wrote: post #107

What a load of crap. What, they bred the capacity for abstract thought into you in college? College attracts a generally higher quality applicant pool. You're mistaking selection bias for an effect. Let me tell you, I've interviewed programmers from all over. There are boatloads of people with CS degrees with close to zero capacity for creative thinking. There are also boatloads of CS grads who can barely code their…

Same here, I have dealt with this since I was 13 years old, and it's total bs.

my first job in computers was 13 at a local college and I got so much crap from the it team there for being too young and not having enough experience even though I was hired because nobody there could write code well enough to parse dirty data from spreadsheets to pass into spss.

most of my family has a degree and some even teach, but I found it tedious and uninformative and always ended up the teachers pet, helping fellow students, which was fun, but I wanted answers to My questions.

I found the best way for me to learn is complete immersion in a subject, 24/7, read about it, write about it, if it's a language write in it, if it's a technology use it for everything possible and potentially possible. at the outset if you can get answers to the starting questions then that is useful (like training), but once you move out of the basics, in my experience, you will only progress to higher levels by answering your own hard to answer questions, and if it's easy to find answers to your questions, you're not there yet.

break things all day long and then fix them has been my learning mantra for many many years and like the parent poster, I've surpassed pretty much everyone who I've known with a degree in CS.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#150

Post by pdabbadabba »

andrewvc wrote: post #107

What a load of crap. What, they bred the capacity for abstract thought into you in college? College attracts a generally higher quality applicant pool. You're mistaking selection bias for an effect. Let me tell you, I've interviewed programmers from all over. There are boatloads of people with CS degrees with close to zero capacity for creative thinking. There are also boatloads of CS grads who can barely code their…

No, they don't breed the capacity for abstract thought in college. But they do teach it. That the typical student could learn as much in a short bootcamp as someone learns in a CS program over four years is wishful thinking.

Of course, it may well be that much of what you learn in all that extra time in a CS department is not that important to the typical working programmer. And many people pick up a knack for abstract thought somewhere other than a CS program.

I'm sure it's also true that a CS education often fails in instilling the deep knowledge of the topic that it is designed to. Lots of students are just not that bright, or don't do the work. And sure, selection bias surely has some effect. But it doesn't change the basic fact that you can learn more stuff in four years than you can in three months.

The fact that you consider yourself to be superior to most of the CS grads you've met is just the worst kind of anecdotal evidence. (Did you also do a lot better than the bootcamp grads you worked alongside? How do you know you aren't just more competent than the average student in either program? How do you know that the CS grads you've worked with are representative.) Meanwhile, the very post you're commenting on presents real data to suggest that, whole bootcamp students are just as good as CS students for most practical purposes, they typically lag far behind on knowledge/understanding of algorithms and data structures.

I really don't mean any of this as an insult. I have no doubt that you really are more talented than most CS grads. And in your case (and perhaps in many other cases!) perhaps it really was a smart move to save your money and skip college. But you've given the rest of us very little reason to think that your experience generalizes.

And by the way...

> Four years of school + the associated debt creates a big incentive to believe that you got a square deal out of college.

You could say the same thing about not going to college.

(I myself do not have a CS degree.)

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