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Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

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Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#261

Post by macspoofing »

jpttsn wrote: post #249
macspoofing wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There would be a significant portion of the working population that understood the idea of what their computers were made to do You don't need programming for that. A good mental model of modern computing is important but programming is overkill. >improve their ability ability to leverage these machines to assist them in achieving their tasks even more efficiently. Ok but it doesn't work like that. I don't know what…

Is it easy to get to a good mental model of computing, without programming?

Yes. What I meant by that term are things like the user understanding enough about modern file systems that when they download a file they understand where it's stored as well as typical file CRUD operation. They know enough of the web to reasonably protect themselves from malware and are able to distinguish between a valid site and a generic phishing attempt. They understand the point of a browser or mail client and not think that IE and Internet or Outlook and Email are interchangeable. They are able to diagnose and debug the most basic issues (print job failing to print because the wrong print target was selected, able to understand network connectivity issues vs. application not working).

You'd be surprised how many people fail at those very basic computing tasks, and those are the kinds of things people need to know to get their jobs done. Knowing how to program in Python isn't going to do anything for the VP of Business Development.

Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#262

Post by pmarreck »

greggman wrote: post #182

I would love for more people to code and I would love for veterans for find work but .... My impression is those who excel at coding (like everything else) love doing it. So, I would expect the majority to fail. It's doesn't seem like a skill like riding a bike where you learn it once and then it's just this thing you can pull out whenever (or maybe it just takes longer to get to that point). My point is, whenever I…

The folks who do not have an "absolute" love of programming often bring valuable/important things to the IT table that those who DO have that love, do not. They have useful perspectives that end up working in IT in ways that even they probably didn't expect. That's what I've found, at least.

They are also less prone to "programming fashions" and behavior such as begging the boss to let them use the latest language on some new project (with associated risk).

I say this as a person who DOES have an irrepressible desire to learn more computer languages. I've come to respect those in IT who just get the job done and are less prone to "shiny-thing syndrome"

Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#263

Post by muninn_ »

jlarocco wrote: post #254
muninn_ wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They do fine for a lot of programming jobs. If you're going to work at a DoD contractor or something, work on the team maintaining a hospital website, or work in enterprise architecture you don't need a 4-year college degree in CS. I actually think you're better off getting a degree in something else and just learning to code on your own time for the vast majority of people.

> If you're going to work at a DoD contractor or something, work on the team maintaining a hospital website, or work in enterprise architecture you don't need a 4-year college degree in CS. You've got to be kidding. The thought of somebody with only a coding school certificate writing software for missile guidance systems, aircraft, nuclear submarines, etc. is a bit terrifying.

No I'm not. Most of those systems are proprietary for obvious reasons, and the training to work those systems is going to be a lot of on-the-job training. A CS degree would help, but Lockheed Martin isn't hiring people to rewrite data structures for missile guidance systems. Well, they could be, but that's an entirely different demographic.

But even with that being said, you're not including the multitudes of DoD services that are not critical, military email accounts and websites, payment processing, web portals for HR, etc etc.

I don't think you even need a coding school certificate for any of those jobs.

Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#264

Post by jungletek »

taway_1212 wrote: post #189
aphextron wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Can you give some examples where you hid road blocks because of your lack of education? At a certain point I was working on an iOS app attempting to do some really advanced animations with Core Animation/Core Graphics and my total lack of geometry and basic algebra knowledge started to show. One of my colleagues started talking about the movement of an animation in terms of radians and pi and I felt completely lost.…

A lot of the hardcore game developers (which use way more math and advanced CS concepts that most other devs) didn't go to college. This stuff is totally learnable on your own. I recommend for example "Essential mathematics for games" by Bishop and Van Verth.

Thanks for the recommendation. As someone pursuing gamedev who also knows their math background is lacking, I'm always looking for tailored stuff like this.

Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#265

Post by wutbrodo »

mratzloff wrote: post #147
wutbrodo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, someone with years of coding instinctively develops such mathematical understanding FWIW, this isn't my experience. I have a CS/math background, spent the first few yrs of my career at Google, and then moved to a startup as the first employee. We had a lot of difficulty sourcing good candidates, and our first two hires were 1) a guy with no engineering experience and domain knowledge that had programme…

I would invite you to consider the possibility that you are coming into a situation with a pro-academia bias that creates the reality you find yourself in. That's not at all unusual for someone who's worked at Google. As long as we're trading anecdotes, I have some that could easily show the opposite. In my experience, intellectual curiosity, intellectual openness, raw intelligence, initiative, and attitude are much…

> I would invite you to consider the possibility that you are coming into a situation with a pro-academia bias that creates the reality you find yourself in. That's not at all unusual for someone who's worked at Google.

That's a very good point and I have actually been very careful to consider that. There's still a tiny chance that it's possible, but I'm pretty sure that's not the case. The fact that we ended up hiring this other guy against my wishes gives me a nice little counter to confirmation bias. He's pretty horrible even on the stuff where he has a huge (theoretical) advantage over me and the other engineer, due to having much more real-world experience with it. You just can't work around a lack of creativity, conscientiousness, and problem-solving skills.

For example, I set up most of our non-core-logic systems stuff by the seat of my pants (servers, DBs, caches, etc etc etc). I got roughly zero experience with this stuff at Google because the tooling was so excellent and taken care of by large, expert teams. It's been a great learning experience both in terms of familiarity with the tools and the trade-offs that come with small size/too much to do. Learning these skills is part of why I wanted to try a small company. Since this guy has proven himself utterly useless at anything even remotely involving engineering, he's been reduced to marginal changes to this kind of systems stuff, setting up things that are very low-priority so far. He still manages to mess up most of these! Every time he pushes a config change, or sets up a new service, or does _anything_, something is broken and I need to fix it. Most recently, he burned through a few thousand dollars in a couple weeks by making an entirely unnecessary switch away from our key-value store without noticing that his new set up used a dozen beefy reserved instances.

I don't have 100% confidence in my view here since my sample is so small, but the original point I was arguing against was that "years of coding will teach you mathematical understanding" and that this obviates a math degree. Everything I've seen from different vantage points has pointed to this not being true. It's entirely possible for someone with a decade of engineering experience to be almost utterly useless (cf Jeff Atwood's old post about "senior engineers" being unable to FizzBuzz).

Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#266

Post by wutbrodo »

RealityNow wrote: post #141
wutbrodo wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Furthermore, someone with years of coding instinctively develops such mathematical understanding FWIW, this isn't my experience. I have a CS/math background, spent the first few yrs of my career at Google, and then moved to a startup as the first employee. We had a lot of difficulty sourcing good candidates, and our first two hires were 1) a guy with no engineering experience and domain knowledge that had programme…

What are these basic engineering habits, and why was engineer #2 not able to adopt them?

> What are these basic engineering habits

IME, a lot of them boil down to the principle of least surprise and not keeping silent dependencies on things in unexpected ways. These sound trivial and obvious, but they manifest in a thousand different ways, and the habit of constantly and subconsciously checking for these things in the back of your mind while designing/coding/reading code is something that comes with practice. As I said, I don't think it's very difficult for intelligent people to learn this give a little bit of time, which is why I hire for creativity and problem-solving skills instead of direct experience with certain tools. Particularly at our current size, dead weight is infinitely costlier than it would be to a behemoth like Google. Our latest hire has never worked in anything but C and he's already more productive on our Python codebase than hire #2, who has the advantage of years of Python experience and months more tenure at this company.

> why was engineer #2 not able to adopt them?

It's not so much that engineer #2 couldn't adopt these habits: it's that he's apparently not capable of doing any actual functional implementation, which is a prerequisite for a functional implementation that's well-engineered. The point I was making was that an intelligent, creative hire missing engineering experience can easily and quickly be taught. But an experienced engineer without creativity and intelligence is not very useful.

As far as why he can't do any functional work: Every time I mention this to someone[1], people seem pretty put off, but I honestly just think he's just not a very smart guy. For some reason, the very idea of differing levels of intelligence seems to offend people, but I'm racking my brains here and I can't think of another reason why he would be so abysmally unable to do anything. In conversation with him, your response never gets addressed and he just rephrases his last point ad nauseum with no hint of comprehension. My (semi-technical) founder has pretty much been working directly with him and he hasn't had any luck in finding things for him to do either. I guess the silver lining here is that I'm batting 1000 on hiring recommendations so I hope in the future I won't be overruled on tech hiring.

[1] Not at work: that would be entirely inappropriate. I mean to friends/confidantes when they ask me how the new job is going etc.

Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#267

Post by wutbrodo »

dba7dba wrote: post #158
RealityNow wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are these basic engineering habits, and why was engineer #2 not able to adopt them?

My uneducated guess is that the engineer with 10 years of experience is just very complacent. He probably can get another job even after this one, because of the 'experience', and he knows this. But the 1st engineer is starting out so he's extra motivated. Motivation brings out creativity, energy, and result.

That doesn't really comport with what I see day-to-day. This guy definitely doesn't enjoy not being able to do anything and breaking everything that he touches; you can see that it upsets him. I don't know why HN (and people in general) are so desperate to avoid the possibility that differences in ability can exist.

Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#268

Post by jlarocco »

muninn_ wrote: post #263
jlarocco wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you're going to work at a DoD contractor or something, work on the team maintaining a hospital website, or work in enterprise architecture you don't need a 4-year college degree in CS. You've got to be kidding. The thought of somebody with only a coding school certificate writing software for missile guidance systems, aircraft, nuclear submarines, etc. is a bit terrifying.

No I'm not. Most of those systems are proprietary for obvious reasons, and the training to work those systems is going to be a lot of on-the-job training. A CS degree would help, but Lockheed Martin isn't hiring people to rewrite data structures for missile guidance systems. Well, they could be, but that's an entirely different demographic. But even with that being said, you're not including the multitudes of DoD ser…

And people wonder why software is in the state that it's in...

Re: Thousands of Veterans Want to Learn to Code But Can’t

#269

Post by dba7dba »

wutbrodo wrote: post #267
dba7dba wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My uneducated guess is that the engineer with 10 years of experience is just very complacent. He probably can get another job even after this one, because of the 'experience', and he knows this. But the 1st engineer is starting out so he's extra motivated. Motivation brings out creativity, energy, and result.

That doesn't really comport with what I see day-to-day. This guy definitely doesn't enjoy not being able to do anything and breaking everything that he touches; you can see that it upsets him. I don't know why HN (and people in general) are so desperate to avoid the possibility that differences in ability can exist.

I agree with you. Some people are just better than others. I don't deny that. I didn't know that the guy definitely does not enjoy breaking things.
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