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DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

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Re: DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

#51

Post by flatline3 »

dladowitz wrote: post #43
flatline3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

9 weeks isn't enough time for anyone to be learning how to write production-quality code, much less take a job as anything more than an engineering intern. The fact that TapJoy is hiring people straight out of DevBootCamp makes me seriously question the quality of their engineering organization, rather than causing me to think highly of DevBootCamp (which may be an excellent program).

I'm a Dev Bootcamp grad from the summer program. I also just got hired on at Tapjoy. Can I write production-quality code? Probably not just yet. What I do know is that Tapjoy isn't the only company hiring grads. In the last 4 weeks since graduating about 20 people have been hired as Jr Ruby Developers at multiple companies. Every single one of them had to go through technical interviews to get the positions. Many com…

$84k average salary is surprisingly high for non-production-ready engineers who are still in training, especially when compared to the rest of the industry.

I wouldn't have expected there to be so much money in a field that is so approachable. Is there a dearth of quality rails engineers, or is it related to web engineers in general?

To tell you the truth, this makes me wonder whether there's significant opportunity in the web space for senior engineers with traditional software engineering backgrounds. If people are so desperate that they're willing to hire brand-new engineers at an $84k average and spend months/years training them, how much will they pay for people that require no training at all?

Re: DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

#52

Post by roguecoder »

nhangen wrote: post #39
keemoboy wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it will there in its own due time" is naive at best! Those comments dinging Dev Bootcamp as "toxic" or practicing "reverse discrimination" are revealing a dangerous ignorance. Decades of sexism, racism, and systemic oppression of certain groups are not fixed in their own due time just by natural evolution or luck, they need opposing, direct, and intentional forces such as the one attempted here. I recommend if you r…

Give me an example of this 'injustice' that you speak of? I try to convince everyone I know to become a programmer, white, black, man, woman, etc...and it doesn't matter. People gravitate to whatever they want to work on. It's not like you minorities can't buy programming books from Barnes and Noble, or can't login to online courses and start learning. If they don't have a computer, then we're talking strictly about…

You have no idea what you are talking about: the research on aggressions, alienation and social dynamics in male-dominated spaces is extensive. Until you've bothered to do even basic research into a topic, I suggest you don't whine about it. It just makes you look ignorant and unpleasant.

Re: DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

#53

Post by bethly »

nhangen wrote: post #37
theevocater wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You said it yourself: "it didn't stop me from pursuing my own education". We do know that it is stopping women/minorities from pursuing engineering programs/jobs by way of their male dominated nature.

No, actually we don't. Can you prove that, or is it just hypothesis?

Sapna Cheryan, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Saenam Kim, Classrooms matter: The design of virtual classrooms influences gender disparities in computer science classes, Computers & Education, Volume 57, Issue 2, September 2011, Pages 1825-1835, ISSN 0360-1315, 10.1016/j.compedu.2011.02.004. Available at: http://ilabs.uw.edu/sites/default/files/Cheryan_Meltzoff_Kim...

Also: Wendy Cukier, Denise Shortt, and Irene Devine. 2002. Gender and nformation technology: implications of definitions. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 4 (December 2002), 142-148. DOI=10.1145/820127.820188 http://www.jise.org/Volume13/Pdf/007.pdf

Do you have any citations, or are you just pulling your sexism out of your ass?

Re: DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

#54

Post by roguecoder »

flatline3 wrote: post #51
dladowitz wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a Dev Bootcamp grad from the summer program. I also just got hired on at Tapjoy. Can I write production-quality code? Probably not just yet. What I do know is that Tapjoy isn't the only company hiring grads. In the last 4 weeks since graduating about 20 people have been hired as Jr Ruby Developers at multiple companies. Every single one of them had to go through technical interviews to get the positions. Many com…

$84k average salary is surprisingly high for non-production-ready engineers who are still in training, especially when compared to the rest of the industry. I wouldn't have expected there to be so much money in a field that is so approachable. Is there a dearth of quality rails engineers, or is it related to web engineers in general? To tell you the truth, this makes me wonder whether there's significant opportunity…

You assume that people with traditional software engineering backgrounds need no training to move into web development, which is not what I've observed. In fact, I have personally seen several who either weren't willing or weren't able to acquire the new skills required at all.

How many C++ programmers grok CSS? How many Java programmers understand prototypes? How many enterprise developers are used to shipping code at least weekly? No CS degree I've seen has covered analytics, or even effective logging at scale. As much as CS-oriented coders look down their nose at web devs there are skills involved. If engineers can adapt there are huge payoffs sitting on the table, but they have to actually do so. There aren't very many who have, not nearly enough to meet demand, and so prices rise and companies swap from teaching web development on the job to teaching CS on the job.

Re: DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

#55

Post by SilasX »

nhangen wrote: post #24

Looked neat, and then I saw this: "You qualify for a $500 scholarship if you're female or from an ethnic minority group underrepresented in the software engineering field (African American, Chicano/Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander, etc.). The tech world is notoriously unrepresentative of the larger population. We believe that the sooner that changes, the better off we all are." How is that not discrimination…

How is that not the "worst argument in the world"?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4441734

tl;dr: The worst argument in the world is "X is Y, therefore, X must be a typical case of Y". Here, "The DBC policy is discrimination, therefore you should associate with it all the bad things you usually associate with discrimination, irrespective of whether they apply here."

Stripped of its misdirection, your question/argument is, "Isn't that bad for the same reason that 'we don't hire blacks' is bad?" No, it's not. There is a sense in which this kind of discrimination is bad, but there's also a sense in which its good (i.e. disrupting the self-reinforcing cycle of certain demographics dominating the programming field and making those outside of it feel out of place).

There are great arguments about which effect is stronger and/or worse, but they aren't helped by saying "That is discrimination."

Disclaimer: I was in the Spring (first) cohort of DBC, though don't have as glowing a review of the program as everyone else seems to.

Re: DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

#56

Post by flatline3 »

roguecoder wrote: post #54
flatline3 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$84k average salary is surprisingly high for non-production-ready engineers who are still in training, especially when compared to the rest of the industry. I wouldn't have expected there to be so much money in a field that is so approachable. Is there a dearth of quality rails engineers, or is it related to web engineers in general? To tell you the truth, this makes me wonder whether there's significant opportunity…

You assume that people with traditional software engineering backgrounds need no training to move into web development, which is not what I've observed. In fact, I have personally seen several who either weren't willing or weren't able to acquire the new skills required at all. How many C++ programmers grok CSS? How many Java programmers understand prototypes? How many enterprise developers are used to shipping code…

The skills you list involve very simple knowledge acquisition. Once you have core CS competency, you can pick those things up very easily, and do a better job by far than the person that lacks the core CS competency.

To use your examples:

* I'd never worked with web CSS, but I built a CSS styling system for iOS, and used the CSS spec for inspiration.

* I've never worked with web analytics, but I ran a team that built a real-time (non-web) custom analytics/logging/querying system for a huge consumer-facing corporation.

* My team had never written any sizable JavaScript, HTML, or CSS, nor had any familiarity with prototype languages, but we were able to bang out a comprehensive HTML/JS XMPP client using BOSH in a couple weeks. We had an external HTML and web design expert on-hand to actually make it look pretty.

I think the real reason the engineers don't adapt is that we'd have to go work in environments that are filled with less skilled people using frustratingly knee-capped technologies. I might be able to stomach HTML/JS/CSS despite their myriad of flaws, but I'm not sure I could do it if I also had to use Rails and Ruby working for one of the existing players.

Re: DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

#57

Post by ionwake »

dpritchett wrote: post #26
at-fates-hands wrote: post #25

How do employers weight this kind of experience when considering a graduate of this program? I'm sure there's a lot of companies in around SF who already know DevBootCamp, but what about employers outside of California?

I'm sure the right employers love it. These are literally the least pricy Rubyists available in the U.S. that can be proven to actually know how to code. Good fit for a fast growing Ruby shop that is not too picky about depth of technical skills.

I am a bit of a newb to this site - I just wanted to thank you for a JS explanation you gave me 104 days ago. cheers! = )

dpritchett 104 days ago | link | parent

Re: DevBootCamp: Learn Ruby on Rails in 9 Weeks

#58

Post by [deleted] »

bromang wrote: post #50
theevocater wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll focus on women for a moment: http://www.commerce.gov/blog/2011/08/03/women-stem-opportuni... http://www.esa.doc.gov/Reports/women-stem-gender-gap-innovat... http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/women-engineers_n_1... The proof is in the pudding: There are less women in STEM fields and in STEM programs in college. Even making the grandiose assumption that women have the exact same opportunities as men (see ab…

the obvious explanation is that women aren't as good at STEM subjects.

[deleted]
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