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42 (school)

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Re: 42 (school)

#51

Post by jerrre »

valw wrote: post #50
tripue wrote: post #35

There is a bunch of successful companies led by graduate from theses kind of school. Check out vente privée CTO. Another example could be the core team that developed docker that was from there as well.

Sure, but this doesn't tell us anything about the role 42 played in these successes - there's also a fair number of successful entrepreneurs without any higher education, should we infer from it that no education is the key to success?

you might also conclude this school creates better founders than employees

Re: 42 (school)

#52

Post by liotier »

valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

Development requires analysis and programming. Some people are both analysts and programmers - they are the elite, not the norm.

I can manage large business requirements, I write functional specifications and negotiate them with users, I plan technical architecture... And then I'm happy enough with programmers who need hand-holding at every step - anyway my telco employer has long stopped having budget enough to pay contractors who understand our business.

Pure programmers may be short sighted but they provide the value some of the market needs, for people such as me who are decent analysts and exceptionally bad programmers - learning the latest Javascript framework is a dirty job but somebody's got to do it !

Re: 42 (school)

#53

Post by tripue »

valw wrote: post #50
tripue wrote: post #35

There is a bunch of successful companies led by graduate from theses kind of school. Check out vente privée CTO. Another example could be the core team that developed docker that was from there as well.

Sure, but this doesn't tell us anything about the role 42 played in these successes - there's also a fair number of successful entrepreneurs without any higher education, should we infer from it that no education is the key to success?

Docker was a school project at the origin. The CTO of vente privée said in multiple interview how he use to be challenged in his previous school.

Re: 42 (school)

#54

Post by arcatek »

titanix2 wrote: post #26
EZ-E wrote: post #10

This kind of discussion will end up being the typical (French) disdain between people learning engineering in the public schools v/s the ones learning in these "practical teaching" private schools and vice versa. There are good engineers in both, both have different approach to teach which fit different people. Both do generally good in the private sector after they're done with it. As usual the people graduating fro…

You forgot to mention the private schools are expensive and use a somewhat pyramidal scheme where older students teach newer ones to repaid part of their school fees. In public education all teachers hold PhD or engineer titles so they have more years to think about what they teach than the guy who is only year+2 of the teachee. Edit: I checked Epitech tuition fees, it's around 40k€ for the whole 5 years curriculum.…

Something interesting is that the way Epitech (and 42) work is completely different from what you would have in public schools (at least in France).

For example, one key part for me was that the school allowed me to practically don't go to classes as long as I could prove that my work wasn't affected. It's something that you won't find everyday. I'm 100% sure I'd have failed university otherwise because the lack of freedom would have bored me to death Conversely, friends of mine have dropped from Epitech in the first two years because they didn't get enough support, so it shows that the most interesting thing the school has to offer is its learning devices. They understood that one size doesn't fit all (which is against the French public school philosophy).

So yeah, the tuition is expensive (and frankly given how the school works you sometimes wonder whether they eat luxury cars for lunch), but there's simply no public alternative.

One other factor I've also wondered is if people paying for their scholarships weren't more invested in making it a success? I knew my fair share of people who weren't thriving as developers at Epitech as well, mind you, but most of them dropped before the end.

Re: 42 (school)

#55

Post by hycaria »

Honestly I'm unsure about this (except if you're a fresh high school graduate). Sure you will probably land a job in tech but considering how easy it is now for ANYONE to land a job in tech, is such a school really needed ?

Resources online are plenty (and actually 42's main way of learning), so learning material is not the problem.

If you're already in the workforce, you can get yourself a training through the employment agency, or even better an apprenticeship.

Consulting firms hire science graduates and train them to be developers. I went that way, switched for a small company after a few months where I am better tutored. Some friends stayed in consulting and still improve. Sure the pay is low in consulting firms, but it is immediate and you build professional experience directly instead of wasting 3+ years.

Doing 42 when you already have a degree sounds like a waste of time to me. I guess it's fine if you're 18 and need guidance though. But I'd still prefer prepa and engineering schools over 42...

Re: 42 (school)

#56

Post by thomasbachem »

Somewhat related to this, we founded https://code.berlin, an accredited university in Berlin with strictly project-based, interdisciplinary and self-directed 3-year Bachelor programs in Software Engineering, Interaction Design and Product Management.

We're in our 2nd year now, with 230 students from more than 40 nations. We've partnered with 42 US for student exchange last summer, and it was an awesome experience for our students who went there.

Re: 42 (school)

#57

Post by zapita »

I am very happy about this trend of project-oriented, deferred-tuition programming trade schools. So far I know of:

- 42 (France and Bay Area)

- Lambda School (online)

- Holberton (Bay Area)

- There is also Epitech (France) which is the "ancestor" of both Holberton and 42. They don't defer tuition, but have the same project-oriented, TA-intensive curriculum.

It's still early and all these schools have their strengths and weaknesses... But I think this is a positive trend. It makes tech education more accessible to a lot more people, and can produce quality engineers. It's definitely much better than the horrible coding bootcamps popping up everywhere, that charge 5 figures and leave you completely unprepared for a software development career.

Re: 42 (school)

#58

Post by arkh »

valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

> To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before they shoot.

People should learn this mantra: coding is to software development what moving pieces is to chess.

Re: 42 (school)

#59

Post by valw »

liotier wrote: post #52
valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

Development requires analysis and programming. Some people are both analysts and programmers - they are the elite, not the norm. I can manage large business requirements, I write functional specifications and negotiate them with users, I plan technical architecture... And then I'm happy enough with programmers who need hand-holding at every step - anyway my telco employer has long stopped having budget enough to pay…

Even without the burden of understanding business requirements, it still takes programmers a fair amount of analysis to program without making a mess that will kill their ability to make progress; learning the latest JavaScript framework does not help at all in that regard. I'm glad to hear you manage, but your employer may want to consider hiring fewer programmers and paying them higher wages - I know a lot of companies would benefit from that.

Re: 42 (school)

#60

Post by eloisant »

valw wrote: post #32

Having interviewed a bunch of 42 graduates, my main issue with 42 is that it doesn't teach their students to think about what they're doing, encouraging them instead to rush to the keyboard and emit as much code as they can as if programming for the last day of their project. This seems to resonate well with the culture of piscines at 42. To me, this is as silly as training Biathlon athletes to not even aim before th…

Yes, they modelled it after Epita which was also about code, code, code.

Also, while it's nice that Xavier Niel finances a school that is free, most of the universities and Grandes Ecoles (where many developers graduate from) are also free, and financed with public money. They work great and produce really skilled developers and architects.

The reality is that Xavier Niel didn't do a Grandes Ecoles, he's mostly self-taught. When he started to succeed in the telecom industry other companies, full of alumni from Grandes Ecoles didn't see him with a good eye because he didn't have the pedigree (and didn't hire many of them either). So he has a grudge about the Grandes Ecoles system, and creating a school with private money is kind of a middle finger to them.

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