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Fast Crimes at Lambda School

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Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#211

Post by strken »

jayd16 wrote: post #197
IshKebab wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah my impression is that there are a decent number of people who are probably smart enough to learn to program, at least in an "easy" language like Python, but it's just too boring for the average person. I think law is similar. Do you really need to be super smart to be a lawyer? Probably not. But you do have to be vaguely interested in reading legal texts and... Jesus no thanks.

Most people are smart enough to program, I think. The biggest hurdle is being able to sit down and work on a program for 8 hours a day. All the other skills can be learned.

"Most people" as in "most people jayd16 interacts with", "most people who hold a white-collar job", "most people who hold any job at all", "most working-age adults", or "if you randomly selected a big enough group of people, more than half of them could become professional programmers"?

I suspect we're in a bubble. Consider the charts at the end of https://users.ssc.wisc.edu/~hauser/merit_01_081502_complete...., specifically the "Computer occs." results. I don't think most people are smart enough to become professional programmers if they have to compete with existing professional programmers for jobs. I do think that if you look around the average office which employs programmers, most of the people in non-technical roles could have become a professional programmer, but that's a biased sample.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#212

Post by philwelch »

TrackerFF wrote: post #129
salamo wrote: post #62

It's really too bad. Higher ed needs disruption. The problem is, a responsibly-run university is a slow/medium growth enterprise, not an overnight unicorn. The Vanderbilts and Carnegies of today could do a major public service if they wanted to. Use their names and hire the best researchers in their respective fields and pay them well.

Higher education works fine in other countries, where it is heavily subsidized by the government. But, I guess, for many people in the US - they want any solution other than that.

Higher education in the US is heavily subsidized by the government, but the administration just grows to consume all of those subsidies.

Almost none of the US’s problems are the result of not throwing enough taxpayer money at the problem. We throw as much taxpayer money at problems as any other country in the world.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#213

Post by kagakuninja »

lispisok wrote: post #178
itronitron wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how much Calculus as a prerequisite is a barrier to entry for students. CS as a topic is not hard, but a lot of students are blocked from entry with fairly rigorous Calculus requirements.

I dont get why so many people want to drop calculus from computer science curriculum. Calculus is necessary for basic science and math literacy. People act like it's graduate level math and not something easily learned by any somewhat studious high schooler. 4 year CS programs are supposed to give you an education which is a foundation for wherever your career takes you not teach you to be a create-react-app code mon…

I'm 60, and have never used any calculus on the job. I did need to relearn some linear algebra when doing game programming, but these days most of the heavy lifting is done in the game engine for us.

Nothing I've done on the job involves deep computer science. There are people who need to know that stuff, but they are specialists. Building CRUD servers or web frontends uses very little of what I studied in college, beyond basic understanding of data structures and algorithmic complexity.

I'm glad I learned CS, and wish I had learned more of it, but it should not be a requirement for getting a code-monkey job.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#214

Post by monero-xmr »

dang wrote: post #193
bitwize wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackernews has "protected people", typically high-ranking Silicon Valley types, for whom, if it is revealed they are scumbags, they will run interference, changing account names and replacing their powerwords with [redacted]. An example is the high-ranking GitHub engineer who has an Indian first name but goes by "Alex", who was accused of mistreating women, and actually pled guilty to at least one incidence of such.

Renaming accounts, redacting posts, etc. are all things that we do for users in general. We make no distinction between "high-ranking" users and others. We take care of these requests every day and have bent over backwards (e.g. spending hours writing code) to help people individually in cases where their needs were unusually complex. I can tell you for sure that whether the person is high- or low-status in $whoever'…

I was totally unaware that HN mods would treat certain accounts better than others, and give special anonymous edits, totally news to me.

I have seen a lot of selective application of HN rules over the (many) years. My 2 cents.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#215

Post by j-bos »

dang wrote: post #193
bitwize wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackernews has "protected people", typically high-ranking Silicon Valley types, for whom, if it is revealed they are scumbags, they will run interference, changing account names and replacing their powerwords with [redacted]. An example is the high-ranking GitHub engineer who has an Indian first name but goes by "Alex", who was accused of mistreating women, and actually pled guilty to at least one incidence of such.

Renaming accounts, redacting posts, etc. are all things that we do for users in general. We make no distinction between "high-ranking" users and others. We take care of these requests every day and have bent over backwards (e.g. spending hours writing code) to help people individually in cases where their needs were unusually complex. I can tell you for sure that whether the person is high- or low-status in $whoever'…

Thanks dang

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#216

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #193
bitwize wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackernews has "protected people", typically high-ranking Silicon Valley types, for whom, if it is revealed they are scumbags, they will run interference, changing account names and replacing their powerwords with [redacted]. An example is the high-ranking GitHub engineer who has an Indian first name but goes by "Alex", who was accused of mistreating women, and actually pled guilty to at least one incidence of such.

Renaming accounts, redacting posts, etc. are all things that we do for users in general. We make no distinction between "high-ranking" users and others. We take care of these requests every day and have bent over backwards (e.g. spending hours writing code) to help people individually in cases where their needs were unusually complex. I can tell you for sure that whether the person is high- or low-status in $whoever'…

[deleted]

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#217

Post by bee_rider »

HeyLaughingBoy wrote: post #194
bee_rider wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with students in a “intro calculus for humanities” type class for many years (as a sort of undergrad tutoring role, so, it was a while ago, I’m old now). Despite this experience it is pretty shocking to me that there are, like, actually adult people walking around who can’t at least do a derivative. Spending too long in STEM academics absolutely warps your view of the mathematical skill floor I think.

At one point, I was able to do 3-dimensional vector calculus on electromagnetic fields. Now, I'm not sure I could do even a basic derivative. Use it or lose it.

I mean, even when I was tutoring it I’d double check most of the equations just to be sure.

I’m sure chain rule, product rule, and polynomials would come right back to you, and everyone has to look up the trig functions anyway.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#218

Post by darkerside »

michaelrpeskin wrote: post #109
darkerside wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's not going to recognize the pattern on his own, no matter how obvious it is to you. You will do him a disservice if you don't pull him aside one day and say, hey I noticed you have a blind spot, and I need to point it out to you because it's going to be a limiter for your career unless you learn to deal with it.

Yeah, you're right. This is the non-technical part of being a leader that I really struggle with. I'm much more comfortable "leading by example" and modelling behaviors and much less comfortable with how to frame a discussion like this. Much of my company and field is full of nerds that are a bit outcast (including me). I hate the overuse of the term "bullying", but I'd say that most of the people I work with daily w…

You're not alone. Hard conversations are a difficult skill, and not one most people learn or even think about as a skill. Check out radical candor. https://www.radicalcandor.com/blog/what-is-radical-candor/

It gets a bad rap, but for me, it was a really useful way to think about giving people the messages they need to hear.

Good luck! It's not easy, but it's key to leveling up as a professional, and I would argue, as a human being.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#219

Post by hintymad »

> Students got a taste of programming, but when it came to getting hired, neither the training nor credentials held a candle to a college degree. Yet Lambda School regularly compared itself to college in its marketing, promising, "The depth of a 4-year degree, the practicality of a bootcamp."

I thought people in the US already knew that part of the value of a college is accreditation. Some people would fail in a rigorous 4-year program. Some courses are like grand filters: it does not mean much if one excels first-year calculus, but it is a strong signal that one's talent or discipline is in question if the person fails the first-year calculus. So, statistically, companies get a pretty good signal, at a relatively low cost, on how good a college graduate is.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#220

Post by doubloon »

virissimo wrote: post #33
dustincoates wrote: post #14

I'm convinced that Lambda School was shady, and I'm not debating that, but some of this seems over the top. ISAs as indentured servitude? The shadowy negotiating a company's validation "behind closed doors?" (Where else are you supposed to do it.) The criticism of Lambda School can stand on its own without wading into the extreme hyperbole.

I did a year of computer science, but ended up going to App Academy with an ISA, because I couldn't really afford another couple of years. If ISAs are indentured servitude, but are still better than going to university, then what does that say about universities?

it says that Universities should be free.
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