Bootcamps vs. College • Hacker News Board

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#151

Post by busterarm » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:51 PM UTC

lloyd-christmas wrote: post #147

busterarm wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

FA and I think Flatiron School are also in the "alright" category. All of these mentioned are just "alright".

I don't think any of them are really excellent.

I have just met a high percentage of GA grads who aren't successful in their search and give up after a few months.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#152

Post by nostrebored » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

humbleMouse wrote: post #46

eropple wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The only thing most grads have on bootcamp people is algorithm knowledge. "Just teach algorithms." Do you have two years to spare to do so? Because I'm a platform engineer and I regularly use the extent of my CS mathematics education to write better code--you'd think this'd just be Ruby slinging, "what sort of math do you need to automate systems", but it ends up being remarkably more than that! But you know what e…

I like your post and agree with most of what you said, except about the algorithms. I don't think you need 2 years to teach them. You need a highschool level understanding of Math and about a week. Obviously this varies from person to person - but I learned them extremely quickly. I think where we are not seeing eye to eye here is that I envision a bootcamper that has a high aptitude for abstract thought, can read qu…

If you seriously think you can learn, with any amount of rigor and understanding, algorithms in a week you're absolutely delusional. I think that you would struggle to teach recursion including time complexity and practical applications in a week, and that's not even getting into simplex, dynamic programming, minimax, flow, etc...

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#153

Post by ConnorG » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

andrewvc wrote: post #141

balls187 wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

//I work with Splunk currently and have been interested in looking at the capabilities of the ELK stack. have any recommended places to start?

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#154

Post by lyime » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:52 PM UTC

It's hard to measure hunger. My intuition is that it plays a big role when it comes to finding success after going through a bootcamp.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#155

Post by egonschiele » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

Hey, I wrote an algorithms book aimed at bootcampers! The epub is out today, print book to follow: http://amzn.com/1617292230

I'm hoping this will be an easy to read algorithms book for bootcamp grads. Here's a sample chapter for anyone interested: https://manning-content.s3.amazonaws.com/download/f/a75f93d-...

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#156

Post by savrajsingh » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

One of my close friends said it best: "savrajsingh, Lebron James doesn't care if you start playing basketball."

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#157

Post by analognoise » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:53 PM UTC

Of course employers love bootcamps - they need business logic monkeys who lack the fundamentals and therefore don't increase in value over time as much as the people who actually put in the time with said fundamentals.

It's cheaper to have somebody who doesn't have a real education.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#158

Post by dang » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

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…

> What a load of crap.

> What, they bred the capacity for abstract thought into you in college?

> I've had to deal with this kind of idiotic commentary

Please edit this sort of name-calling and abrasiveness out of your comments to HN. It breaks the site rules, degrades the discussion, and provokes worse. Your comment would be much better without it.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11732185.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#159

Post by joshmn » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

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've gone further, faster, than most of them.

I'd like to believe there's a trend where CS grads think that because they got their degree, they're done learning. I have a handful of friends — with their CS degree — who did exactly this.

But when you're self-taught, it's often out of a mix of passion and curiosity, and sometimes desperation ("man if I could just automate this, I'd have a killer startup!").

While I've spent only a few minutes in a post-secondary classroom, I think it'd be hard to find those qualities in the minds of students.

Re: Bootcamps vs. College

#160

Post by fapjacks » Thu, May 19, 2016, 6:54 PM UTC

dionidium wrote: post #145

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 -- obviou…

> doubt there are many self-taught programmers who've actually spent hours drawing out trees and solving recurrences and so on

I am a self-taught programmer that has done exactly this. What good is reading the material if you don't pound some of that stuff into your brain? I never did homework in school, but I have done tons of it for myself.