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The Apprentice Programmer

tobi.lutke.com

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Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#81

Post by jboynyc »

It may be worth recalling that Americans have been interested in the apprenticeship system for a very long time. For instance, Booker T. Washington's strategy for racial uplift at the Tuskegee Institute was based on the apprenticeship/vocational training model -- that's more than 100 years ago!

His critic, the famous sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois, had the following reaction after a trip to Germany in the 1930s:

   The Siemens AG factory, in Berlin-Siemensstadt,
   particularly excited him, with a training-and-
   apprenticeship system that he believed could 
   provide the model for American Negro industrial 
   education.[1]
(Yes, that's the same Siemens that Tobias refers to in his post.)

More recently scholars like Katherine Newman and others have looked at such programs as a model policy not for racial uplift but to boost the US's shrinking middle class.[2][3]

With college debt now at $1 trillion and rising, it definitely is not a bad idea to explore alternatives to the way education works in the US.

   [1]: http://chronicle.com/article/WEB-Du-Bois-in-Nazi/1896/
   [2]: http://books.google.com/books?id=1jfAhghdH7MC
   [3]: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-2272-9_10

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#82

Post by bromang »

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…

the ability to do all those things without having to work at the same time is a real luxury. it is certainly a nice thing to do, but someone (you or the state) has to pay for it, so the costs and benefits of different types of education/training still have to be considered.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#83

Post by bvdbijl »

UK-AL wrote: post #69
shanelja wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I couldn't agree more, like I said, I was in a position where I was already capable on the day I walked in the door (I sat down on day one and head my first website live by day 6) - I dread to think how it would have turned out if I hadn't have been. For a start, the college taught the most irrelevant of things - how to use Microsoft word, how to set up a router, what an email was - I mean, in what world should you s…

Sounds like an awful apprenticeship, since you are unaware of what you don't know. Did they use source control?

In a few posts up he says they didn't have a backup system :)

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#84

Post by bromang »

keithpeter wrote: post #42
doktrin wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Self education may appeal to many of us here, but it applies to less than it appeals to. That's missing the major point of the piece, IMHO. The OP isn't describing "self education", and (coming from a US perspective) is not even a typical drop out. What's being described here is a vocational pattern of learning, where on-the-job experience is backed up with classroom instruction. That's not exactly what "drop out"…

Yup. In the UK we are trying to reconstruct the 'dual system' and we have things that are called apprenticeships but not quite as well organised as the ones they have in Germany. The OP is not a drop-out. He has followed an established path!

the UK system is an extremely poor version of the German system. To implement an apprenticeship model, the state HAS to take direct control over the hiring of almost all entry level employees. otherwise the incentives and work culture is simply not in place for a large number of meaningful training opportunities to exist.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#85

Post by UK-AL »

bvdbijl wrote: post #83
UK-AL wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like an awful apprenticeship, since you are unaware of what you don't know. Did they use source control?

In a few posts up he says they didn't have a backup system :)

I would not call source control "backup". More like a standard requirement for collaboration.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#86

Post by huntedsnark »

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…

That's not the tone I got from the article at all. Your comment seems incredibly defensive and largely blinded by your own experience, how is your view any more valid than his? You must have never encountered any of the numerous CS graduates that can't code their way out of a paper bag.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#87

Post by rachelbythebay »

genwin wrote: post #74
rachelbythebay wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking only for myself, it comes from a combination of selection bias and general mistreatment at the hands of others. When you see someone who has three degrees in various flavors of computer science (BS, MS, PhD) who doesn't know about what happens when you use "==" with two floats, it builds. When your boss tells you that he won't pay you any more because you don't have a degree, it builds. When you find out he'…

> When your boss tells you that he won't pay you any more because you don't have a degree, it builds. It's just a convenient excuse. If it wasn't a degree it'd be something else. The boss was negotiating, so negotiation skills are what's needed in this situation, rather than a degree.

You're quite right. I was too young and inexperienced to know it at the time. It took several years to realize just how much they were taking advantage of me.

Still, he said it, and it incremented that internal counter of "reasons to resent", even if it was unfounded.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#88

Post by jimmaswell »

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…

>(And, I'd wager that they're better for my career in the long term, but that's not really relevant to this discussion.)

How so?

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#89

Post by xal »

LVB wrote: post #71
aviraldg wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It didn't sound like "anti-college anti-credentialling" at all. All the OP was trying to say was that the traditional method of teaching ie. "all theory" didn't work for him, while a mixed hands-on/practical/theoretical approach did. Your comment, while true, is fairly irrelevant in context of this article.

So what did the OP really mean by this: Not that degrees matter anymore. They do not. Experience does.

I'm the OP. I meant that the experience that you have matters, the degree doesn't.

Pursuing a degree gives you valuable experience - it would be a disaster if it didn't. There are other ways to get experience as well and some of those are better suited for certain individuals like myself. Our industry, when it works well, is meritocratic. If you are great at what you do the way you collected that experience is irrelevant.

I couldn't tell you who at Shopify has CS degrees and who doesn't. It simply never comes up. What comes up a lot is how good and how helpful people are and there seems to be little correlation with the degree.

Re: The Apprentice Programmer

#90

Post by phatbyte »

I'm the process of getting a H-1B visa denied because of my lack of degree on IT. I order to get working H-1B visa without a degree one would need to have near 12 years (which I have, but not 12 straight years obviously with a few months lacking here and there) of working verified experience. My company however, seems to find me valuable enough to want me to work for them even if remotely. The US gov does not....go figure....
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