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The Apprentice Programmer

tobi.lutke.com

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Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#31

Post by herdrick »

templaedhel wrote: post #5

I feel like confirmation bias is in play when you read about successful people who have dropped out of school, succeed, and then blogged about it. You have to keep in mind the hordes of people who have followeded a similar path only to archive not enough to blog about. Self education may appeal to many of us here, but it applies to less than it appeals to.

A key point of the post is that in Germany it wasn't dropping out. It was joining a school of a different sort, a much better one for certain kinds of learners.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#32

Post by [deleted] »

templaedhel wrote: post #5

I feel like confirmation bias is in play when you read about successful people who have dropped out of school, succeed, and then blogged about it. You have to keep in mind the hordes of people who have followeded a similar path only to archive not enough to blog about. Self education may appeal to many of us here, but it applies to less than it appeals to.

[deleted]

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#33

Post by mijustin »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #17

I'm so sick of success being portrayed as an institutional choice rather than a process of individual choices.

I'd say that Tobias' post portrays both: his individual choice to make certain choices (and pursue Jürgen's team), and the context of the German apprenticeship.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#35

Post by ahoyhere »

jmduke wrote: post #9

This is well written, but I feel as though I'm missing something. The best way to get better at being a career programmer is to be a career programmer. This is understandable! And the author's initiative at 16 years of age to identify his passions and stick with them at the exclusion of higher education is commendable. But I've learned a whole, whole lot in college -- and yes, I completely agree with the author that…

I think the confusion here is that Tobi is telling his story, not your story, and he's not telling anyone what to do. If you reread the essay and don't believe he's talking about your choices, it will make sense.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#36

Post by ams6110 »

blt wrote: post #18

I wish I could have a mentor like Juergen in the article. Ever since I started writing code, nobody has had enough time or dedication to go over my work line-by-line like that. I learn those lessons by trial and error when my code breaks. And they aren't lessons I could have learned in college. I've got a long way to go, but one day if I'm actually a good programmer I'll try hard to be a mentor like that to the new g…

This is a good point. A university CS education will not be about writing good code in any particular language (at least mine wasn't). If you are not at an engineering school there will not be a lot of emphasis on software engineering practices. And you can't really lean on your peers very much because they are as inexperienced as you are. Even your TAs and professors likely don't have any experience writing production quality, maintainable code in a commercial/business setting: they are more likely to write "proof of concept" code for their particular research interests.

In short, a traditional Computer Science curriculum is not designed or intended to churn out e.g. Rails developers who can be immediately productive. An apprentice-style training system could do that, however at the expense of not teaching some of the more theoretical computer science (or teaching it in a much more applied style).

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#37

Post by ams6110 »

jmduke wrote: post #11
jdotjdot wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but you could say the same thing about people who went to traditional schools. How many people went through that system and succeeded--and then how many people went through that system and didn't? I agree with you in that I don't know we have the data to argue that apprenticeships are better, but I don't think we have data to argue that they're worse either, and I can't see how having it as an option is bad at a…

> Yes, but you could say the same thing about people who went to traditional schools. How many people went through that system and succeeded--and then how many people went through that system and didn't? I think the whole point is that, statistically speaking, many many more people go through the system and succeed than otherwise. That's why it's the system. (I'm not saying that's still true.)

More people start an undergraduate education than finish it. If you're only looking at people who got through the system, you've already filtered out a number of those who have low motivation or low ability.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#38

Post by dxbydt »

I simply do not understand this anti-college anti-credentialling sentiment. I am featured in the latest Hacker Monthly ( print version of HN). So they asked me for a bio. I wrote something about how I learnt everything in college...am not a hacker...and that you should go to grad school if you want to get better at CS. So they edited out all of the pro-college stuff and just said this guy is data scientist. You don't figure out Dirichlet allocation and principal components and matrix regularization hacking away in your garage. This stuff isn't going to occur in your mind out of the blue. Its fairly complicated and even those of us who were systematically taught these things at school take years to internalise it. Don't downplay education. You are missing out on a treasure trove of knowledge humanity has collated over centuries, just to hack away and reinvent the wheel by yourself...well, good luck with that.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#39

Post by jmduke »

dxbydt wrote: post #38

I simply do not understand this anti-college anti-credentialling sentiment. I am featured in the latest Hacker Monthly ( print version of HN). So they asked me for a bio. I wrote something about how I learnt everything in college...am not a hacker...and that you should go to grad school if you want to get better at CS. So they edited out all of the pro-college stuff and just said this guy is data scientist. You don't…

I agree with what you're saying, but I think that sentiment is more present in HN's comments on the submission than the submission itself.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#40

Post by invalidOrTaken »

seubert wrote: post #23
ender7 wrote: post #21

The OP was incredibly lucky to find a mentor like Jurgen. Being handed a thoroughly "proofread" review of your work is perhaps the best way to improve at almost anything. Unfortunately, creating such high quality feedback demands more time than most people are willing to spend, especially if it's above and beyond their normal duties.

I wonder if a company that stressed a role like this up the career ladder as an alternative to a high-level architect role would see much success.

I don't know, but I can think of several things to make it more workable:

---you could probably pay less. Programmers' opportunities for meaningful, understood-by-the-recipient service are few and far between. I don't think it gets any more meaningful than this. One of my favorite gigs ever was tutoring Python for Tutorspree, and watching my students progress. ---It has a higher meaningful skill ceiling. The problem with "architects" is that every programmer is an architect, or should be. The title creates the idea of "one smart architect, many stupid implementors." But the 10x phenomenon means this is the last thing you want: you want a few smart developers, not a lot of dumb ones. So why waste your talent managing labor, when the labor is useless and what you need is more talent?

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