Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

medium.freecodecamp.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 81 posts

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#61

Post by RKoutnik »

ben_jones wrote: post #37
RKoutnik wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there. I'm certified to the hilt: IC3, CompTia A+/Net+/Security+ & Microsoft Certified Professional. All before I left high school. These certifications were absolutely useless when it came to getting me a job whenever I interviewed somewhere where they knew what they were doing. All they proved was that I was particularly good at studying and taking tests. This may be a useful skill in another career but in IT (…

What about a project based approach with testing similar to the AP exams (multiple graders, on a curve, with deviance from the mean singled out and examined)? I.E. implement a 12 factor web application using the python standard library that can handle x volume of traffic on n cores with y gb of ram where n and y are somewhat excessive? Could be interesting IMO.

That's literally a bootcamp (at least, the good ones). I taught at a bootcamp myself a while back and the entire curriculum was project-based. We wanted the students to imagine something and build it. Most of the bootcamp was about teaching new tools/techniques and providing support to our students as they built things.

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#62

Post by RKoutnik »

falcolas wrote: post #54
RKoutnik wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there. I'm certified to the hilt: IC3, CompTia A+/Net+/Security+ & Microsoft Certified Professional. All before I left high school. These certifications were absolutely useless when it came to getting me a job whenever I interviewed somewhere where they knew what they were doing. All they proved was that I was particularly good at studying and taking tests. This may be a useful skill in another career but in IT (…

How would you feel if one of the certification point consisted of: Able to read, manipulate, and emit the contents of a file. And the test point given by one proctor consisted of: Write a program which accepts this file and translates all 'c' characters to 'C' characters, and puts the modified contents of the file to stdout. Nothing too fancy, but a useful starting point (feel free to come up with a better test quest…

That certification sounds a lot like the job interviews HN constantly complains about - lots of minor Googleable trivia, no hard problem solving. I don't see how it'd be useful beyond possibly skipping the phone screen.

> Could it be gamed? Of course. But then so can a University course. As can an interview. As can a coding school.

It's a lot harder to game those things than it is a certification test.

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#63

Post by [deleted] »

always_good wrote: post #51
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a startup idea for this type of thing. We are forbidden, for nonsense reasons, to use IQ tests when hiring. This makes training your own workforce untenable for any cognitively demanding field, so we must use proxies like college education. However, one of the most important findings in psychometrics is the fact that scores on all cognitive tests are correlated. Thus there seems to be an opening for a compan…

I had to take an IQ test when I was interviewing for ThoughtWorks. Then again, they also asked me about my cultural and religious views, like my thoughts on immigration and refugees. "I don't have strong feelings about this issue either way" was not the right answer to whatever it was they were asking.

[deleted]

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#64

Post by clifanatic »

RKoutnik wrote: post #22
falcolas wrote: post #12

If you could find a way to create a broadly recognized and meaningful certification, you wouldn't need school at all. You have the JavaScript certification? You know how to code. Doesn't matter if you went to an Ivy League school or (re-)created all of the fundamentals from scratch. Make the certification standards free as in speech, charge a minimal fee to cover administration of the exams, and go to town.

Hey there. I'm certified to the hilt: IC3, CompTia A+/Net+/Security+ & Microsoft Certified Professional. All before I left high school. These certifications were absolutely useless when it came to getting me a job whenever I interviewed somewhere where they knew what they were doing. All they proved was that I was particularly good at studying and taking tests. This may be a useful skill in another career but in IT (…

> Any sort of programming certification test would be gameable.

Seems to be working for the American Bar Association.

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#65

Post by flukus »

clifanatic wrote: post #64
RKoutnik wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey there. I'm certified to the hilt: IC3, CompTia A+/Net+/Security+ & Microsoft Certified Professional. All before I left high school. These certifications were absolutely useless when it came to getting me a job whenever I interviewed somewhere where they knew what they were doing. All they proved was that I was particularly good at studying and taking tests. This may be a useful skill in another career but in IT (…

> Any sort of programming certification test would be gameable. Seems to be working for the American Bar Association.

I could be wrong, IANAL, but isn't the bar association test based on memorizing a tonne of stuff? A certification based on how much of on API someone can remember would be worth nothing.

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#66

Post by canterburry »

SonicSoul wrote: post #35
canterburry wrote: post #25

I too am a bit confused to why coding bootcamps are needed. I am sure they nicely compress lots of information into a short timeframe but even back in 1997 I was able to teach myself to code simply by sitting at Barnes and Noble reading book after book after book and then trying things out on my own. Today, this should be even easier since it's all online anyway. If it's too much work looking it up yourself, maybe yo…

the book at Barnes and Noble won't give you 10 best tools to get the job done and help you configure them. It also won't answer any of your questions when you get stuck. It will also not give you insight form other people asking questions you didn't think to ask. Of course today you can get most of that with a $30/month subscription to pluralsight or frontendmasters. so yah, 15k seems a bit nuts. I remember back in t…

Sure, books won't, but then there is StackOverflow or a million other resources..still, no bootcamp needed.

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#67

Post by drawkbox »

BoorishBears wrote: post #50
jondubois wrote: post #47

Learning programming takes a really long time and you almost always think you know more than you really do. In 2008, I thought I had mastered programming (that was about 5 years after I had started programming and learning intensively) - I was 2 years into my Software Engineering degree, I had built websites, Flash games, did AI stuff (ANNs and decision trees) and I even programmed an ATMEL AVR microcontroller to dec…

Some people have the opposite problem, never feeling like they know much at all.

“The more you know, the more you know you don't know.” - Aristotle

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#68

Post by wyldfire »

always_good wrote: post #51
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've had a startup idea for this type of thing. We are forbidden, for nonsense reasons, to use IQ tests when hiring. This makes training your own workforce untenable for any cognitively demanding field, so we must use proxies like college education. However, one of the most important findings in psychometrics is the fact that scores on all cognitive tests are correlated. Thus there seems to be an opening for a compan…

I had to take an IQ test when I was interviewing for ThoughtWorks. Then again, they also asked me about my cultural and religious views, like my thoughts on immigration and refugees. "I don't have strong feelings about this issue either way" was not the right answer to whatever it was they were asking.

Not sure if you're joking. "Immigration and refugees" don't sound like religion to me but if they did ask about religion they shouldn't have.

See 42 U.S.C. § 2000e–2 [1].

[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e%E2%80%932

Re: You might not need that $15K coding bootcamp

#69

Post by xiaoma »

canterburry wrote: post #25

I too am a bit confused to why coding bootcamps are needed. I am sure they nicely compress lots of information into a short timeframe but even back in 1997 I was able to teach myself to code simply by sitting at Barnes and Noble reading book after book after book and then trying things out on my own. Today, this should be even easier since it's all online anyway. If it's too much work looking it up yourself, maybe yo…

I disagree. It's harder today now that everything is online. Most people in wealthier countries, especially younger people, struggle greatly to focus deeply for long periods of time and several of their most addictive distractions are available in the same web browser they use to visit docs, source control, technical chatrooms and Q&A sites.

Back when you did it, it was just you, the books and your dev environment.

Post reply on HN