Slashdot Mirror
"Learn To Code, Get a Job" According To CNN
An anonymous reader writes "CNN is running an opinion article that talks about Michael Bloomberg's taking part in CodeAdacemy's CodeYear program, which aims to teach average people to learn enough to work as a Software Developer by year end. I'm trying to not be elitist in judging this article and those involved, but I'm curious as to what /. thinks of this questionable plan."
How does Code Academy make it any easier to learn to code, Than say documentation or a book? This is hardly a big deal, and they're making silly promises.
Don't we want all of our code lean?
Get your PostgreSQL here: http://www.commandprompt.com/
NYC Mayor Bloomberg Vows To Learn To Code In 2012
You can get a job as a software developer in the same sense as a lot of people could go through HTML For Dummies and get jobs as Web Developers. That's great when companies are hungry for anyone even minimally qualified, but it's not going to do much for keeping your job when they start having to actually work with and maintain your work product.
Just like everyone can learn to dunk, everyone can learn to develop!
Perhaps we should be learning to spell first?
That about says it.
One of my pet hates is working with programmers who are doing it only because they need a job. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be here if I didn't get paid, but programmers without passion for what they do write lousy and uninspired software. People with passion are unlikely to end up in such a scheme, so I don't really see a big benefit.
Lots of people learn to code on their own from books, online articles and magazines (I did). Surely even a little guidance could kickstart the process the process for a reasonable and motivated candidate.
Nullius in verba
There is something about a good programmer. I can only tell you that it seems that they would program whether they got paid for it or not. If you don't have that desire, you never really become a good programmer. People who think, "hmmm... programming, that pays well" are barking up the wrong tree. They may survive in a forgiving atmosphere. If everyone is really lucky, the move quickly into management where they can't do as much harm.
I've worked with plenty of people who had 5+ years of "experience" who perform at the competency level of a 1st year coder. Especially in very large companies I've found that the day-to-day tasks are usually designed to shield the employees from any apparent consequences of their own incompetence or any risk of becoming competent. Typically, 90% of the job is just being attractive and good-smelling enough that your co-workers can be nice to you without trying hard.
One year is plenty of time to learn to write crappy code.
It will make for some good comedy when we start getting CV's coming through from all this. Unfortunately, the signal : noise ratio is just going to make it harder for properly qualified candidates to get noticed.
Solving real-world software problems requires a lot more than understanding the syntax of a language or two. Those who complete this course and then try to get jobs will learn that lesson the hard way.
Average users have a hard enough time even using software competently after a year's time. Let alone creating it.
Just think about many people still don't know how to find something simple like the control panel in XP after all these years...
trying to fix or maintain code written by some half-ass amateur that got a certification or read a few books and "taught himself to code" in one month. The only thing better is when it's someone from management that does it because "coding is easy".
Someone making promises that are fake but will reinforce uneducated PHB's
"Why should we pay you more? anyone can become a expert coder by studying at home part time for a year."
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I remember first semester freshman year. The weed-out EE course was full of bright-faced eager kids convinced they were gonna get a good paying job when they graduated.
2 weeks later the class size was cut in half when they found out how much work was involved.
Anyone can learn to write a "Hello World" program but that doesn't make them a software professional.
...everyone knows that if you will just take a few weeks to learn to program, you can start making 60k or more a year within a month or two.
Ok, granted, this story wasn't quite THAT bad, and the idea that everyone should take a few weeks to learn what programming IS, the concepts, is probably a good idea. However, the idea that you can learn to be a programmer in one year is foolish. I've never had any formal training, self taught in Perl, javascript, some PHP, and been doing it as a minor part of my job for 15 years, and I'm not a programmer. Having at least moderate skills, to understand what a shell script or batch file is, what HTML code is and does, will help you in your job, but you aren't going to start creating more real programmers with one year, even if that is all they do is learn 24/7 for that year.
What there is a shortage of is people with MORE than one year of training as a programmer. People who can write good code, instead of the bloated crap that I write to just get the job done. But that isn't what this article is about, it is about promising something that won't happen, that learning a little coding will guarantee you a job. It won't help a forklift driver, someone used to working on an assembly line that is now part of a closed factory, or half the people looking for work now. It will do them personally good to understand a little, but it won't be the cure for our unemployment.
Unemployment is high right now, not because companies can't find good people, but because companies are afraid to take on the responsibility (and liability) of expanding and hiring until they absolutely have to, due to a messed up political and financial environment.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
Sorry, but I've been at it for about that long (learning Java) and I'm nowhere near qualified to do it professionally. Sure, I know the syntax and I have a good understanding of OOP but there's a LOT more for me to learn before I can write software people will actually find useful.
I love programming and I love learning about it. The discouraging part is that there is almost ZERO entry-level work in programming. All the ads I see demand "3-5 years experience", but that's another story.
We already have too many coders at my current employer, what we need are software developers that know how to architect a maintainable system.
I smell a pile of low cost poor quality cowboys coming onto the market and underbidding the competent contractors. Works for me as my job tends to be cleaning up after someone who vastly exaggerated their abilities and got in too deep on a project they dont understand.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
main ()
{
printf )"Hello World! I am now a Software Developer!\n");
}
Congratulations, here is your certificate of completion.
Silence is a state of mime.
I've been in this business for 30 years. Most code I've seen does indeed look like it was designed and written like a "lean-to".... and I have great faith that it will continue to do so as long as I live, and long after I'm gone too.
A major argument of the opinion piece is that having at least a rudimentary understanding of how computers and software actually work is increasingly important, and that learning some programming is a good way to accomplish that. I doubt anyone here would argue with that.
The second half of the article, while not explicitly saying it, does suggest that if a person spends a little time learning to code they'll magically get an awesome ("high-paying", in the words of the author) job. This is a major oversimplification, at least. The author provides no convincing evidence that this is true, except for a quote from his CEO friend.
Peter Norvig's "Teach Yourself To Programming In Ten Years" http://norvig.com/21-days.html
Pretty much sums it up. There have also been many posters so far that have mentioned you can't just "make" someone a programmer. They have to want it, to enjoy it and to already "be" a programmer in mind and spirit. Same goes for the new British thing of forcing gradeschool kids to learn programming. Having it available as an option would be great, but forcing them into it won't give you more programmers, much less good ones. Meanwhile, all the kids that were going to become programmers will still do it whether you encourage them or not. Simple as that.
Surely the "Lean" up above is a typo, but there is a serious problem of late with Slashdotters and their spelling and grammar abilities. People who learned English as a second or third language get a pass, but for all you up and coming kids who are native speakers, what the fuck?
(my two hamfisted cents. I'm going back to Skyrim)
do() || do_not();
/Be/ elitist. Go ahead, it's justifiable.
I like music
If you want to see dot.com Bust 2.0, this will contribute to it. Do you remember the dot.com era? Most of those people with no technical or coding background who tried to learn how to code in 1 year (or less) and obtained some flea-bag certificate were the first ones to be let go. And yes, there were a lot of them. Without having the fundamentals of data structures, coding style, documentation skills, and good logic and problem solving skills, those new "coders" will have a very short career, if any. Most companies learned their lesson from dot.com 1.0.
"Happily lived Mankind in the peaceful Valley of Ignorance." -- Hendrik Willem Van Loon
.....air conditioner repairman in a few interactive web sessions per week for a year? chef at a 5 star greasy spoon? TV sitcom writer ? What professionals (esp unions) would be insulted by such a trivializing of their careers? Computers are the most complex machines every devised. How good could such a 'professional' be? (claimer: I am pro developer)
Pavlov wouldn't be so famous if he'd used a can opener instead of a bell.
It is a ridiculous assumption to believe that the intellectual capacity of an "average" person is sufficient to write software let alone quality software. It is even more ridiculous to believe that you can rewire the "average" human mind inside of a year to be able to think in the logic and manner necessary to express and solve problems through source code. Normal people's brains just don't work that way and is just as unnatural and foreign if not more so than placing a modern day smart phone in the hands of your 90 year old grandma. It is something that takes years of basement dwelling to cultivate.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
We all started somewhere and frankly, if this drives some people to better contribute to themselves and the world or even just find the niche in life they've always wanted to be in, we'll have seen an excellent consequence.
A year of independent course work is unlikely to be enough to teach the automata theory/set theory/discrete mathematics/et cetera (ad infinitum) that is vital to developing a core understand of what one is interacting with in professional coding much less the various other "softer" disciplines required to know how to write code of a high level of quality. That said, even with many years of university, employment, and success behind me I am continuously learning, expanding, and refining myself. The risk, of course, is that low quality coders could result.
To counter-balance again, I generally like working on the harder and more interesting problems and this means that team members who are intimidated by those and as a result are happier with their job when doing the work that I do mostly because it needs to get done can be a godsend to my own happiness at work. Developing a mentoring relationship with such individuals has additionally been really gratifying.
In all honesty, it can't be much worse than the crap our India "consultants" crank out...
Learn on me! When you're not strong!!! I'll be your coder!!! I'll help you data mine!
"But I'm leanin', leanin' to the Right. "
from the song "Politician" on the album by Cream Wheels of Fire
Lyrics here
Listen to it here
Passion? Is that another word for I like to be a cowboy programmer but I don't want to deal with the "lousy and uninspiring" grunt work to maintain it?
Bought some books, taught myself to touch type, took some advanced computer courses at college and about a year later I got a job as a software developer. Worked 80 hour weeks to keep the job and about three years later finally got really good at it. Sure I was smart, but success is 90% effort, people. I still find that systems are think, fail, retry, rethink, fail again, try again, good enough, refactor, keep trying ... success.
This site is becoming increasingly worthless with each passing day.
I don't know where you people who staff the place were educated, but you are
some pathetic examples of "how not to do it".
And your HTML coding SUCKS, too.
In 2007 when I completed my Master's degree in Computer Science (I returned to get that degree after having been in the field for 20 years), I had a chat with one of my professors. He told me how not long prior to that time the computer science department saw a HUGE influx of students in the intro courses...and very few of them stayed. He said that through discussions with the students, they determined that the influx of students was caused by everyone suddenly wanting to write computer games. The sudden exodus was caused by everyone learning that it actually takes a lot of effort to learn what you need to know to write a decent game.
People just don't really respect (which is different from understanding) what it takes to develop decent software.
Many years ago, a company I had engaged in freelance work with for years asked me for a quote on a new product. They did not like my price (which was well below what it was going to cost me). One of the senior management team made sure I got the message that he had a sixth grader that could do the work instead of me. I politely responded that if their six grader could do the work with little to no pay, then they would be total fools not to take advantage of that. I didn't get the job, and four months later guess who called me back because their project had fallen apart? Oh, and guess who was no longer with the company?
Anyway, software is a crazy field. Forgive me for bastardizing the scriptures, but it is a field where "many are called, but few are chosen"...
You guys are nuts. 99% of programming is simple repetitive drudgery. It doesn't take a genius to to make an inventory system, an interactive web page, or any of the projects 99% of you work on. Be honest. You're gluing a few libraries and system calls together to do something that is probably not all that useful anyway.
Meanwhile all girls who love animals are now vets.
Bloomberg is trying to find an excuse for running for a third term. Any excuse no matter how silly or absurd is better than having people focused on the fact that under his leadership as Mayor the city doesn't actually have a program to train students to become programmers or find work in other professions that can then be guaranteed to given them a good shot at a decent job and thereby boost the city's economy.
Any thinking person might wonder, however, how Bloomberg has the time to learn enough coding skills to help him appreciate what its going to take to actually develop city-wide plans to actually make it easier for coders to find jobs? If this can help in that, its surely worth his time. If nothing materializes in terms of a real jobs program, then this is little more than a publicity stunt. He got himself into this. It will be interesting to see him get himself out.
...with as much predictability as winning the lotto.
Subject says it all
Lean coding techniques just in time to program the Raspberry Pi. I like it.
days to learn C - that's how I did it. NOT!!!
Look everybody, I bold'd some text with my skills!
But to be fair, some of the code I've seen from India make me
think this was their approach...
At least the title and summary are. Two misspellings that could have easily been copy & pasted correctly.
As the summary says, he's "trying to not be elitist". Well, I'd be willing to bet some of these newbie coders with a year of education can at least spell, when they're hoping to get an audience of hundreds of thousands. It's a good thing he submitted it AC.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I took all the math for a B.S. in Computer Science. I don't consider myself a mathematician.
The funny thing is that I used to work with a mathematician who thought he was a programmer. It was quite frustrating.
It takes years for someone to develop the essential skills to work on software development.
The fact is you can call yourself whatever you want, but I doubt anyone will hire you as a software developer after a year.
"...I did not expect American adults to take the two or three weeks required to get their heads around programming, much less the months of effort they'd need to become proficient. But I wanted people to at least become aware..."
So, we just wanted to increase the awareness of what coding is? Oh, that seems like a warm fuzzy...
But let's see, TWO or THREE weeks? Really? That's interesting. A couple of months to become proficient? Even more. Sounds like a fast track to employment! This will be a great change of pace from that 2 week "learn to draw" course I took via mail a while back. They told me when I mailed my sample in that it was beautiful.
"All Codecademy needs to do to make bank is connect those of us who complete its courses and are looking for work with the companies paying good money to find us."
"It took a few centuries after the invention of text for regular people to learn how to read and write. The printing press, which democratized print by reducing the cost of manuscripts, certainly helped."
Democratization is AWESOME. Who doesn't like it? I mean it worked for the steel worker, auto factory worker, call centers and all, right?
What do those doctors and lawyers know? Especially the lawyers, they seem to be involved in everything, right? Can't do anything without consulting them first. And all the fancy titles, who needs those?
"Firms' other strategy, of course, is to import Chinese and Indian programmers, through a costly and often only temporary visa. (That's because, unlike those countries, we don't teach programming to students in the United States.)"
No, in the typical American fashion, we stand up websites that half-ass teaches people in couple of weeks. Then pretend to certify them so that HR can half-ass do their job. And lower the overall employment cost so that managers can do a half-assed cost / benefit analysis.
I can't limbo anymore because this fucker set the bar too low.
-----
Sit and watch your profession trying to be devalued.
It's a slap in the face: to your profession, to the hard work you've put in building a career, to anyone who cares about the industry, who cares about technology, to anyone who has a basic grasp of economics, to anyone who thinks intelligence, creativity are things you cant rubber-stamp.
You want to do society and the industry a favor, Rushkoff?
Teach.
No, really teach.
Go to a high school and teach a basic programming course.
If you can't do that, donate.
Either that or do us a favor and shut up.
This just HAS to become an infomercial! Who needs to buy distressed real estate for no money down when you can just become a coder in a few short weeks!
Three Squirrels
I know for a fact that many fortune 500 companies are literally pulling them off the street in India to work for $60-70k US here in the US. I honestly see it all the time. I couldn't have ever imagined that this profession would be what it is today, or I would have gone into something more reputable. Much of corporate world wants cheap, get it done coding, and don't give a rats ass if you know what you are doing. America needs to wise up and realize this. Create some institutions like IIT and market them like they are world elite places to learn, so that the big corps will hire them up like they are a precious commodity. It doesn't take much, believe me.
The above is NOT flamebait, o moderators. I meant it. I've been listening to, and reading, "blah, blah, stupid users never learn anything" since the 90's, and I think these criticisms are disingenuous as hell. Along comes an easy, fun set of lessons on the rudiments of programming, and people are deriding it for: too much media attention, too simple, too popular, et cetera. If your stance is, "I like being a computer geek because it allows me to look down on others," then that's your sad bag, but at least be honest about it. Only good can come from average people coming to realize that this stuff isn't some magic inborn to the 7th son of a rocket scientist; it just takes curiosity and persistence. I am calling bullshit on your defensive insecurity, and I have the Slashdot karma to burn doing it, tyvm.
A major argument of the opinion piece is that having at least a rudimentary understanding of how computers and software actually work is increasingly important, and that learning some programming is a good way to accomplish that. I doubt anyone here would argue with that.
I will argue with that. Learning to "code" is not likely to aid non-programmers in understanding how to participate in the process of creating good software. What is increasingly important with respect to computers and software is how to analyze, organize and communicate business logic and requirements.
As a developer, I want clients to be able to clearly describe the problem they are trying to solve or the goal they are trying to achieve. I do not want them suggesting how I meet their requirements.
I passed the classes and actually learned the concepts. The main thing I learned was that I was NOWHERE near even being qualified to work as a coder.
If in the meantime a half million bad ideas get killed off by Krappy Koders badly executing them, how is that a "Bad Thing"?
Anything that hastens the day when we have real standards is a good thing.
If I had billions of dollars, I'd have a seriously hard time learning to code. I'd be too busy spending my billions of dollars on things that aren't tedious.
FWIW: I'm a comp sci major.
At least thedailywtf.com will have an inexhaustible supply of new material once all of these people get exciting jobs in the fast-paced software industry.
Programming is a great discipline. It's not my main gig anymore, but I still write widgets and utilities to help with the various other crap I do. Good for CodeAcademy (or whatever the hell it's called). Javascript is as good a place to start as any.
sig has been sent away for a few small repairs...
Saying that someone should learn to code because we live in a digital age and use all sorts of information technology everyday is like saying we should all learn to compose and perform music because we all listen to it. Don't get me wrong. I gladly encourage anyone who finds coding interesting to pursue it. But not everyone finds it interesting or even intuitable. And there are definitely some people who should never, ever write code for a living (I've encountered some of their handiwork).
I modded this insightful because 1) even a semi-realistic awareness of one's skill levels seems to be rare (and valuable; scott, I suspect you're actually better then you give yourself credit for because of that), and 2) Scott's observation about lack of entry-level programming work is crucial. The later is a serious long-term problem; when I look around, I see skilled old people (self included), or young outsourced & off-shored contractors. I don't have an answer for it; maybe software "ecosystems" have moved past the point of entry-level programming, at least commercially.
(closing thought: Scott, I'll throw out the idea of trying to hire on as a business analyst and start w/requirements documentation for projects. That might be an optimal stepping stone for moving into a development team.)
Its funny that anyone could learn to program in a year... If that were the case, Universities would loose millions of dollars to self help, learn to program, books.
When these so called "Programmers" can write the Java Compiler that I had to write in my final semester, then I might believe it.
-Bachelors Degree in Computer Science, University of Texas, Austin.
I'm currently planning on becoming a brain surgeon in about 9 months from scratch with their innovative internet courseware.
LOL!!! I literally woke up my neighbors laughing at the statemented that you can have SwDev in a year...
2002: "We should hire third worlders to do this stuff."
2012: "We should get the unemployed to do this stuff."
It's all good, go for it. Some of them will be able to do it, and do it well, and communicate about it with others, and not go stark raving mad. Most won't. The ones who do will be a boon to our field. The rest will learn that we are actually worth more than our current considerable compensation. Average people knowing more about programming, by trying to do it, means more people who grok that what we do is far out of the ordinary.
Admittedly, there will be another five year period when lots of pretty hairstyles with empty suits under them will think we can be replaced easily -- this time by homeless people or something -- and those empty suits will crash and burn. Just learn to recognize them and get out of the fallout zone.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
(Sarcasm on) Oh great, yet more people coding that will probably do crazy shit. Like writing functions that are thousands of lines long, giving crappy name to variables and functions. Oh and refusing to use templates when they should in C++, not understanding pointers. Hell, they'll probably even do some playing around code trying to figure something out and put all that mess in the final app. Yeah, should be great. (Sarcasm off)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Great way to teach, learn, play with algebra and calculus, etc... throw a little history in there for good measure. Maybe give them pointers where they can continue their interests.
I am confident that there are many people I could tutor up to being able to program reasonably given a year. Doing this in a large classroom sounds really difficult, but I won't discount the possibility that someone managed to come up with enough of a condensed curriculum that they can do this for a fair number of people, at least enough that they can fill a number of low-to-mid-level programming jobs. They might not understand a lot of the theory, but the one thing we know about the future is that there will be a need for a lot of programmers at various skill levels.
For every problem, there is at least one solution that is simple, neat, and wrong.
Programming is like driving a car, everyone thinks they are really good at it but everyone else sucks.
STFU about slashdot bias.
i think it is fantastic when people create situations for folks to get involved. often that is all that is needed to launch someone into a life long career. it could lead to a developer position, qa, it, customer support, who knows -- and what segment of the industry the person lands in -- and it is truly something to watch someone that has a real natural ability pick start from humble beginnings and do some great work. can it be done in 12 months. yep. i've trained two people in less than 12 months. one person was working in shipping/receiving and the other a pc tech and i trained them while working in a major unix os company, in the kernel/networking organization of all places. all it takes is persistence, the ability and desire to learn and an opportunity. thats it. and thats how i got them their interviews -- by focusing on those simple traits. one is a manager now and the other retired early. mentoring can be a very rewarding experience.
Coding is like construction it's almost all shit and rarely done to perfection for two main reasons . Cost and time. I'm sure most would like to do an awesome job but there are bills to pay and the guy that does the almost good job for a little less money usually gets the job.
I agree, that's actually my point, which you're taking the piss out of.
There is an awful lot of room for "not the best coder in the world" out there, javascript, access, whatever. And the more "not the best" we have doing useful stuff the more gets done, the less stupid stuff we good ones must do, and the more important interfaces offer basic coding friendly APIs for us to exploit.
In fact, I'm certainly "not the best" myself. I'm actually a mathematician by training. I love Haskell, C++, and Perl, but basically I learn whatever I need for whatever I'm doing, and then move on. I've never actually won at codegolf, but I've contributed useful insights even there.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Our resident subject matter experts once again have once again proven that Slashdot is infested with arrogant intellectuals.
Look at the actual job ads, they all want at least 5 years experience in each of a dozen different skills. And every employer has a different list. Many of the skills are not even computer related. I see lots of jobs looking a degree, and loads of experience, for $14 an hour and less. And why not? You can hire all the offshore developers you want for $4 a hour - just go to rentacoder, odesk, elance, etc. Go to dice, or indeed, message boards, ask about the real world of software development.
Yes there are good salaries, but it's hardly the stupidly simple story that this article implies.
Most people grow to hate programming because most teachers teach it badly. Perfect example: all engineers at my alma mater (Stevens) needed to go through a programming course with the idea that everyone would become a better engineer with a little bit of programmer in their system. That probably would be the case IF they didn't C++, arguably the most unfriendly language for beginners to learn. It's fine for Computer Engineering students like myself to take that because we will actually need those concepts later on. Does a Chemical Engineer who's bound for doing pure chemistry research really need to know what pointers are and how to use them? (This alone confused most of the people in the class.) Does anyone that isn't doing this for a living need to do this if they just want to write an Android app?
If CodeAcademy can teach people the basics in ways that are actually interesting and worthwhile (Project Euler doesn't count...a lot of people hate math too), more people *will* learn how to code. Tons and tons of people of varying intelligence come up with great ideas every minute of the day but fail to execute because they not only don't know how to code, but are afraid of learning because "it looks hard." Google tried working around this with App Inventor, but that never really took off. This initiative probably won't make people Google-quality coders in a year, but it will spark the innovative light our country has been direly looking for lately.
(You can definitely start making serious money as a programmer or IT guy with a year or two of education and a good connection. People admire doctors and lawyers for what they make, but I know guys who make just as much as they do or more with no degrees and WAY less stress...as contractors anyway. IT in general still pays really nice money, especially if you know where to look.)
If anything, I'm hoping this will make those with the IT pursestrings up those budgets a little easier...
Ok so, they are going to teach bash scripting, version control, web server configuration, javascripting, CSS, HTML, XML, some backend scripting language, SQL, and database administration??? Because this is what it takes to be a developer these days.
One language a developer does not make. Like Yoda must I speak.
... if you just want to get a taste of what programming is like. If you want to become a *good* software developer - with your pick of job opportunities - be prepared to eat, live, and breath software development for the next ten years.
But oh, if we pass the stimulus we will stay under 8% unemployment. Or if we pass this insane high speed rail to southern california that will fix everything.
Learning to code? If you are interested in that. It would be smarter to get into health care services, or tax related things. Law is always safe too. Coding? There are so many people doing it, and it's a cut throat business.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
http://norvig.com/21-days.html
Why on earth would it take a year to learn to code? This isn't like becoming a surgeon or politician. It might take a couple of months to really type well but come on. I train someone in a matter of weeks to do as well as a Stanford or Berkeley CS Grad. Bottom line people skills are what really matter in programming. There is one very import skill however. You really need to be able to answer a ridiculous question in a phone screen. That is a true test of a great programmer and any Google employee can tell you that.
Good idea, I'm going to make a become a politician in 1 year course. You will be taught to be given a budget, spend triple that amount, prevent companies from opening businesses, and make sure your campaign contributors get all the tax money.
You all need to learn how not to be elitist and just turn a ridiculous statement back on the person making it.
I don't think I could invent any type of work that is more perfect for
offshoring/inshoring than IT.
1) Unlike manufacturing, you don't have to mess with physical inventory. This is
huge. Shipping costs, and other supply chain costs, can be very substantial.
With IT, everything is done over the internet. Perfect for offshoring.
2) Unlike manufacturing, you don't have to worry about special plants, or
special equipment, special environmental regulations, or worker safety issues.
Just use ordinary computers, and ordinary office space. Dealing with foreign
regulations for building permits, and the like can be a nightmare. With IT, you
don't have to bother with any that. Just rent space in an existing building.
Even if you build your own building, you don't have to bother with all the
special issues that go with manufacturing.
3) Unlike health care, or other fields, you don't have to bother with sort of
special education, or licensing requirements. For example, we can import nurses
from Mexico, they would not be qualified. Health care licensing is regulated by
the state. Nothing like that to worry about with IT, legally, practically
anybody can do practically anything.
4) No unions to fuss with. Replace all the IT workers you want with visa
workers, then send the entire department offshore. No need to worry about union
pushback.
5) No standardization in IT. You can always tell the government there is a
shortage of qualified workers, since there is absolutely no definition of what
is "qualified." You have a virtual carte blanche to make up any kind of
statistics about salaries, or qualification. For example, you could look for
workers with an arbitrary list of experience requirements, and when you don't
find them, use that as an excuse to hire offshore workers with no experience,
and just a liberal arts degree.
6) US IT workers are not represented by any professional organization, and
therefore have no voice in congress. Dump on IT workers all you want, what's to
stop you?
7) Due to massive corporate propaganda, it is widely believed there is a
shortage of qualified US IT workers, so nobody will blame you for going
offshore. There was significant public outcry in the 1980s when manufacturing
was moved offshore. Michael Moore even created a movie, and Billy Joel wrote a
song. Nobody cares about spoiled IT workers.
8) You can point to contributions made by actual immigrants, and then prentend
that H1Bs are actual immigrants. Great PR.
9) You can place the race card. You can say that anybody critical of replacing
US workers with offshore is a racist, bigoted, and xenophobic; and thereby,
immediately quash any dissention.
10) US IT workers are too spineless, selfish, arrogant, and disorganized, to put
up any sort of meaningful resistance to your offshoring plans. Take your time,
when you start importing visa workers, only the workers who are directly
affected will care. The guy in the next cubical won't care until his head is on
the chopping block. US IT workers have a special trick of sticking their noses
in the air, and their heads in the sand. US IT workers will say: "they could
never do without me. I'm much too valuable. Only the poorly qualified lose their
jobs." Dumping on US IT workers is like shooting fish in a barrel.
11) Significant saving. US IT workers can be quite expensive.
12) Indentured servant status is even more important for IT workers, than other
workers. Everybody's information system setup is different, so it takes a while
for IT workers to learn their jobs. US workers can quit just after they get up
to speed. Which means you are training people for their next job. Worse yet,
they can take what they have learned (on your dime) to your competitors. With
visa workers, they have to stay with you for six years, then you can send them
to your offshore operations.
12) Most IT workers don't work directly with
All you people bashing this course aren't realizing this is an amazing way to introduce programming to a metric fuckload of people who may find programming interesting enough to continue their education. Gee, whiz.... isn't that how we all started, too? The fact that it's heavily advertised is GOOD for the industry, which can use the fresh faces.
Unless you're not as good as you say you are, this is ZERO threat to your massive ego... ahem.... talents. Bemoaning this is as stupid as claiming free community CPR classes will lead to talent-less doctors.
6) Treating your users as co-developers is your least-hassle route to rapid code improvement and effective debugging. 8) Given a large enough beta-tester and co-developer base, almost every problem will be characterised quickly and the fix obvious to someone.
Good code comes from insight, creativity and other specific talents. Learning a language and learning how to program (two very different things) only help if the basis consisting of the aforementioned qualities is there.
Average people will just write atrocious code, that may or may not work and will be a maintenance nightmare. Typically, it is best to throw such code away, sack the person responsible and start over. At the same time, people are being lied to here by being told that they can become reasonable coders and are being lured in with the promise of job opportunities. I find that despicable.
If this sounds elitist, well, it is just realistic. You cannot qualify average people to be reasonable doctors, mathematicians, engineers, poets, ... either. All of these require specific talents. If you don't have them you should definitely not go there, because you will do more harm than good.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Seriously, we went down this road already. Y2K, 1999. My lord the number of mediocre developers. And the H1B limits were substantially higher then too. It just compounded the problem.
Ok, well....I am going to speak whats on my mind here, because I can't say it to some peoples faces.
Being the manipulative and deceptive bastard that I am. ;-)
1) Coding for everyone, perhaps he means php? Ok, when LAMP comes to my, I think of shooting people. ;-)
It isn't that php is the worst of all time languages, with its messy all over the place bloat code. I mean, Java was bloaty, but I love Java because all of the conventions for declarative syntax, which exhibit and enforce decades old engineering approaches that make good software.
It is easy to debug, has facilities for objects etc....but can still use functional methods of programming.
Php? Absolute nightmare to debug, on any platform. Declarative syntax style is, _anything_ and _everywhere_ is just O.K. It is so super easy to do declarative logic because _everyone_ can code. Nope. The only thing I see php good for is building content managers, does an OK job.
2) Don't get me wrong, I think php is great for little projects, as it allows you to do some things up front you couldn't do otherwise fast and simply.
But it _never_ stops there. All of a sudden you got php all over the place with people thinking it is some sort of language they can build reliable applications with it.
Php creates a huge and disastrous hardware requirement as a general purpose application platform. I have seen small changes literally, just blow up websites overnight not because the code is right or wrong, its just because php has really nasty memory requirements for executing stuff you can declare anytime. A website that could support 1,000 people literally can support like 50.
Who knows, depends on the php implementation on the given platform.
3) PhP is like all over on the UW-Madison campus, and everywhere I go it is nothing but a giant mess. People complain all the time about bugs, or classes that bring the whole website down because 30 people executed a php script all at the same time.
Invariably it is because amateurs are coding stuff, that don't want to learn threading, don't know how to think or use any kind of parallel assisted language like Java, because it takes too long and it is too hard or worse, they only want to pay $10 bucks an hour.
So I am not for everyone coding.
I am going to shutup now, before I get the urge to talk about Javascript and its crap. ;-)
-Hack
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
"Any Monkey Can Write Software"
Now for those of us that are aware that someone has already proven that Shakespeare can be written by monkey bots, perhaps this isn't as amazing. This is just the typical attitude that management takes when they are faced with something they don't understand. The reaction is prideful ignorance.
think about how much better it would be to learn to be a billionaire and then have all that money in less than a year. It is looking more and more like anyone can do it if bloomberg can.
they might learn to think a bit more logically. And that would not be a bad thing.
maybe that is the 'unique' thing ? i have never heard a popularized attempt to teach coding to masses.
Read radical news here
All of these people who think that they can take a few classes here and there, read a book, and then get a job are completely hopeless. They think that creating software is something that is taught in some sort of class. Guess what, it isn't. It's more of a way of life. You don't become a coder, programmer, software engineer, or whatever it is you want to call it. You either are, or you aren't. Those who are normally discover their talent by poking around and finding others with the same drive to learn how things are made. It isn't really about the code, it's about finding out how things work, and how to do those things for yourself. There are so many posers in this field, it isn't even funny. The sad part is that most of these posers have letters after their names and useless pieces of papers given by Universities that like to pretend that they are the gatekeepers of knowledge.
Sig: I stole this sig.
"CodeAdacemy's" != Code ACADEMY
APK
P.S.=> Article submission says this verbatim:
An anonymous reader writes
"CNN is running an opinion article that talks about Michael Bloomberg's taking part in CodeAdacemy's CodeYear program"
CONFUSCIOUS SAY "One must learn to write English before one can learn to code", lol...
... apk
Did I miss something? Since when is ability to code not inversely related to ability to spell?
The stories and info posted here are artistic works of fiction and falsehood.
Only fools would take it as fact.
We let taxi drivers buy half million dollar houses. We're all gonna get our power from solar and wind farms. Everybody's gonna be driving electric cars in a couple of years. Why shouldn't laymen be able to write computer code?
Frank W. Miller
This CodeAcademy deal is an attempt at implementing the Monkeys-Typewriters-Shakespeare Theory but in programming.
My observation -- top grads can send out hundreds, sometimes thousands of resumes, detailling their projects, their experience, and their marks -- and not even receive responses from many of these firms who claim a 'shortage' of programmers and engineers. During the past decade or two, the engineering schools were chock-full of Americans studying computer science and engineering -- only to join a job market that was pretty much taken over by firms that only hired foreigners. Its nice to talk about the Googles and the Facebooks hiring, but they actually only consider fewer than 1% of resumes submitted (and Facebook has an auto-rejection script so its fairly overt that they're not even bothering to consider people unless they have certain magical keywords or networks in their FB profiles!).
Many very good EE, CS, physics, IT graduates, US citizens, over the past decade, have seen their lives ruined because of this nonsense. I graduated in 2002, and most of my graduating class in CS/EE, from a top quartile university, is still underemployed or unemployed -- rarely even receiving interviews. If tech firms want good coders, all they need to do is to start hiring smart people, and then turn them loose.
I, for one, welcome the competition.
However, I will point out that while it may take only 3 months to put out a programmer, it takes several years to produce one worth hiring. To put it another way, it only take 3 months of chemistry to put out a Chemist, but it takes several years of working with chemistry to put out a Chemist worth hiring. Or an 'introduction to English' class to put out someone who speaks English. What you are looking for is someone who can handle the task fluently, which is an all-together different category.
We all remember the confusion that the fly-by-night IT companies caused during the dotcom boom, in which people with no understanding of computers took 3 week courses, and believed that was all they needed to get a good job in IT. These actions had the nasty side-effect of sabotaging wages for other IT people, as an inferior product was mixed in with a superior product, forcing wages downwards. Since programming is a fair amount more difficult than building a computer / maintaining a network, I do not think a 'gold rush' will result from people trying to get into programming jobs. Why? Because the bar is that much higher, and it's fairly obvious to your future boss (who is a programmer) that you know nothing about programming after two questions. From a conspiracy standpoint, jobs for programmers have been flowing back into the United States, after business's recent attempt to outsource fell on its face; as programmers once again are in demand, the wages for them are expected to rise; hence, someone may be making a belated attempt to (put charitably) increase supply of programmers to the market (and possibly scam people in the process by blowing smoke up their asses about attaining a six or seven-figure job with minimal training), or more realistically, to attempt to mingle inferior products (programmers knowing only one language, with 3 months experience) with superior products (programmers knowing at least 3 languages, with several years experience), to lower the cost of superior products (drive programmer wages down into the ocean, right as businesses need to hire local programmers).
I am John Hurt.
This is just another method of claiming that those who are not great successes and in their predicament due to personal failings. After all, the only thing that stands between the guy who can’t find a decent job, and a great job is the willingness to spend some time learning to code on the internet.
Promoting this mindset does nothing but fuel those who claim that one’s position in life is entirely the result of choices. They then go on to claim that their privileged position is entirely a result of their own choices and actions’. This allows them to escape to calls to a moral duty to help provide the opportunities that they java enjoyed to others.
Now they can feel good about asking for the schools, which they have enjoyed the product of, to now be underfunded. After all, they can claim, you no longer need those expensive schools, you can learn to code on the internet.
I'm a martial arts instructor. Inevitably, a time comes when certain types of people ask me to teach them some "quick self defense." What I tell them is that I can pretty much show them all the basics they need to know in a long day; but that without knowing when to use these things, how to use them, what degree of the various implementations to apply, learning to see things coming sooner, hopefully before they create mayhem upon your person... it does very little good.
I see programming as somewhat like that. I can show how to write a conditional loop, maybe teach what a class is, talk about different kinds of variables... but without considerable experience wrapped around those things, not to mention at least some math, some tech savvy, some idea about what hardware actually consists of, and a goodly bit of time, you're not going to be a "programmer" any more than a day under my tender care will turn you into Bruce Lee.
Which is not to say you can't go out and get those things over the long term (by which I do not mean one year, btw). But most people are looking for the easy fix, and they, consequently, are going nowhere.
Just an IMHO from a bit of a cynic.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
out there today. Just look at the job ads. you see an ad for a C++ programmer. You scream for joy. Little do you know, before you click on that link, that you are about to have the hammer dropped on you by words like VB.net, ASP.net, python, perl, MS SQL, Websphere(what the heck is that?), BEALogic(wtf??), Rational Rose(WHAT THE?), MFC(yeah even something MS doesn't even support anymore), assembly/registry manipulation, Posix threads, awk, http/html, javascript. All REQUIRED for ONE job.....and YES there are PLENTY of job ads out there just like that.
who in the right mind would apply for that job? even if you are seasoned how much are they gonna pay for that? and how many people born since 1990, most of them about to get out of college have ever heard of BeaLogic and RationalRose? I was born in 1976 and i had to go look up websphere, bealogic and rational rose up on google to find out for myself.
It's not a calling, it's a profession and you can learn it just like you can learn any other profession. Yes, you have to be intelligent enough to handle the concepts, but that's it and they aren't that hard.
Most good coders that I know are among the best at spelling and grammar. Probably because they have to know ... languages.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
This assumes, of course, that the person can probably count above 10 with their shoes on. An assumption, by the way, which I've found is not always justified in some of the coders (and even some design engineers) I ran across during a career that spanned five decades in the business (OK, so just barely five).
Michael Bloomberg is ready to learn coding? He's probably got as much free time as anyone...
ASSEMBLY
'MOV me up' XOR my wife please...
Let's accept that they can turn out professional developers in a year. If that's true, then they'll turn out developers until the wages become unappealing. They probably couldn't run it all the way down to minimum wage. A year is quite an investment, so the wage will be more than that. What jobs are there where people train for a year and get hired?
Now, please don't take this as an insult to plumbers. You'd expect that a lot of people could become plumbers with the proper training. A quick Googling revealed that you apprentice for 4 to 5 years. APPRENTICE. The concept of plumbing is something that anyone can grasp--pipes, they gotta fit together, valves, blah, blah. We've all seen it in our house a million times. The devil's in the details though. If I had to replace a copper pipe with a torch and all that, it'd probably take me 10X as long as a pro. I'd be lucky not to have it leak the first time.
Now that's plumbing. It's common. Anyone can tell you what it's there for. It makes sense. TCP/IP stack? RFC? Writing a TCP/IP stack based what you read in the RFC? It's so far removed from the every day world. I didn't do anything like that until I had been programming for 20 years, and it was challenging work that took months. OK that's a bit of an unusual task; but reading technical specs and coding up an in-house solution is something a developer should know how to do. Heck, how long before these people would even be able to read the API documentation and write a simple JPEG processer using libjpeg without any hand-holding? How do I parse the command line? What's a library? I have to link it? What's a linker? Shit. Not even funny. Totally not connected to the ordinary world.
For those of us with no money and no job who WANT to learn to code, what the fuck do you elitists recommend? There are precious few places that let you start from scratch and are useable without having to shell out for a college course. Kahn Academy and Code Academy are the only two things I've found that are remotely understandable. If people like me who want to code are such assholes, then why do I see threads every other week with slashdotters desperately trying to interest their kids/family/friends in programming?
I cannot begin to express my disgust at this oversimplification of a career that can take DECADES to master. The idea that you can "teach anyone to program" in a year is so fucking INSULTING it's not even real.
Can you teach a doctor to operate in a year?
A lawyer to handle a case in a year?
An engineer to design a building in a year?
Then why in God's name does this FUCKTARD think you can treat programming in the same way.
What a way to expose his complete and utter ignorance.
Tell you what buddy, how about we let people take over YOUR job. After all, it's just spitting out random words that make no sense. Anyone can spout nonsense. Apparently YOU get paid for it.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I READ the article, where do you think I got the quote from?
Douglas Rushkoff must be the first of the million monkeys it takes to produce Shakespeare by randomly banging on a keyboard. As he's the first to utterly fail to produce even ONE coherent word, I think it's an apt analogy.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
The point is to be able to write short little commands for everyday use. Commands you might only use once, and even when used once already save hours.
People must understand how computers work in order to use them. Since the state of the art in GUIs is still horrible, this means they need to be able to program at least in whatever shell skripting language they have.
This is something that needs to be taught like maths or history. It's something which everybody should have heard of. Then you will find people who are good at it around you. Those people will be able to actually use computers to gain productivity, and help others improve their productivity.
I take some offence on the word "software developer". It indicates that there is a special class of people who are allowed to program, while the rest only uses it without being allowed to write a loop. This is a false idea. The task of the software developer is to make little pieces of "Lego" the users can incorporate into their own programs. Those programs might also be single line shell commands.
I'm looking at all this with some dismay. Of course, learning a little javascript or [better, since it was designed for non-specialists] BASIC won't make people a real-world top-class coder, software engineer etc. Therefore, if people are realistic about expectations, this activity is fine, a little over-hyped perhaps, but fine.
Secondly motivation and progression. Some people just want to learn a little code, for example, to process the csv file for their charity group or simply have fun messing around, learning for simple needs or out of curiosity. Others, especially people who are motivated but haven't access to paid-for tuition can use this [as they used to use teach-yourself etc] as a starting point for a more serious assault on computer science. Learning isn't just about jobs, instant skills or being the 'best' immediately.
It won't teach them to listen hard to users or any humility, but that's another separate matter for a huge flame-filled thread.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
With so much manufacturing work going overseas or replaced with low maintenance machines we have a lot of people who can't do jack shit for the current job market. This is trying to take our assembly line workforce and convert them to programmers. The problem is programming isn't a learn and repeat process, it's a creative one. Just about anyone can do assembly line work, you get trained and just do the same task over and over until you rotate into a different spot. Programming requires the person at the keyboard to think about the process that function/module/task needs to perform and articulate it, something that requires a different thought process and much less common.
We either need to find some other rudimentary tasks for those incapable of creative tasks to perform or our jobless rate is probably stuck in limbo. Sadly this means we are likely screwed until the other countries we have outsourced all this manufacturing work to reach our economic level and stop being so cheap. Will we be able to adapt before the pendulum swings too far and brings down the stack of cards.
Then again I could be wrong and making a bad assumption about how much people can adapt.
I don't know everything.
knowing how to DEBUG.
all you so called good coders -- post your code!
You can fake it, but to be a confident programmer with viable solutions, that can bear the scrutiny of fellow developers? It's like being in a cage full of trogdors, fear of the unknown is a terrible thing, and you'll be swimming in it.
While that might not be reasonable, I do see jobs where the addition of programming know-how (or even more awareness) would be helpful and can make the difference between available work or not.
Eg, system/application integration. Sometimes a bit of glue programming is needed above and beyond doing installations and support. (Perl, anyone?)
The business-type people (or anyone who talks in sound-bites) scramble to put a label on this activity. Tacking on "analyst" is getting old now, so maybe the new buzz word is "coder" which might have a different context than what the audience here is jumping all over.
I'm not a CS major (though I am a science major).
I spent more than 6 months mastering emacs (15 years ago), then I learned to code. It's been very profitable.
All minds are the same. They just need to be molded.
We're all the same except for differences in opportunities.
If we use rote memorization we can create millions of new programmers, who will be adequate and spend lots of hours in the office (I mean "work hard").
Genius is a myth and does not exist. It's just pure practice and the right training.
Give me your average mouth-breather and through the magic of education I can transform him into a top-performing coder overnight.
We are all equal! If you disagree, you are a Communist.
Futurist Traditionalism
And you call yourselves nerds...
Look, you seriously don't need to know a lot to get started. Some people are talented enough to learn as they go.
And just because you learn something doesn't mean you're going to enter one of the most competitive development marketplaces in the world to do it professionally. Those that do probably would have anyway.
I would like to see programming in highschools. Seriously teach it to everyone, like Spanish. You learn things that are absolutely critical in life when you learn how to program, and a lot of supposedly normal well adjusted people are lacking some of these basic analytical and coping skills. Programming teaches problem solving, patience, linear thinking, humility, and an eye for detail. People that are artistically inclined will find that programming skills make them better artists. People who are not artically inclined will find that programming skills make them better people. Those are the things you take with you, even if you can't remember how to output hello world in base64 a year later.
Maybe I'm being narrow minded and biased, but I'm not seeing the downside.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Most persons taking a job without a passion will do uninspiring product and will be a chore to work with. No scratch that, it will be a job to work with them. You are not a special snowflake as programmer. It is just that we had the luck of having a lot of pationate people, much more than other profession IMHO, and we were spoiled by it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
Good that the rates for people who can clean up the mess are higher.
That's just what we need. More inexperienced people writing bad software.
No surprise that IT has such a bad reputation. Look at the people we allow to run our servers, write our software and design our systems. Many of them are brilliant, few of them are good craftsmen. That is because we admire hacks and shortcuts so much that we allow them on production systems. No where else in any industry does that happen. Every geeky subculture, be it engineers, scientists or doctors (oh yes, doctors are very geeky - talk to some!) has its admiration for hacks - but the adult crafts see them as steps towards an elegant solution, not as the solution itself.
We don't need lower barriers for programmers, we need higher ones. Much higher ones. We don't have a lack of coders, we have a lack of good code.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It's when parent poster says they taste good we gotta worry!
Isn't M. Boomberg the guy that thought that the city of NY did handle "quite well" the time management software debacle ?
I think what he really want's is to get a large set of desk fodder that being quite useless but hard to distinguish from real programmer (if you are a pointy headed boss) so that : ...)
a: the prices get dragged down but not too much, so that
b: you can use outsourced desk fodder in "elbonia"
c: your projects never work anything close to on time, but while they drag on and on and on you can solicit nice fat campain subventions, and since the companies are in a nice foreign country is makes it just a little bit harder to trak
d: profit !
nb: there is no "natural" reasons why people in "outsourcing" countries should not be able to be good computer scientist, but:
1) due to the income skew between "ordinary people" and "e-jobs" young people get pushed into jobs that they find quite boring, but makes their parents proud because they get 3 time their fathers salary (which is still nothing, but
so the majority doing things that they do not like do it badly
2) the good ones find that there is little interesting work to be done locally so they move out of the country and therefore of the outsourcing pool
3) the universities have trouble attracting good teacher and researcher, so the level of knowledge and in particular real scientific knowledge is low (many 3rd world universities think that an MSCE is a university curriculum, even if you have no morals and no interests in "how things are built", and are hopping to work for microsoft clients you still need to understand what and why you are doing something, not just where to click
4) there is no incentive to deliver real quality (as opposed to what ever paperwork/trail you need to do to get FOOBAR certified), the longer the project the more overtime you get paid for, and since you are "cheap" it is cheaper to go on with you rather than change provider)
So the solution is obvious:
For the NYer here, please to the rest of the world a favor, Vote the f**g a**e out of office, and for all of you:
just remember, re-elect nobody (not if they are the incumbent, nor if they had their chances before, if you are not sure of your choice, use the following algorithm
remove anybody who was elected before (even if you liked him or her, if that person really tried it will be grateful for the holidays)
remove the ones you would really hate
use a dice to select if there is more than one left
if there is none left try to writein yourself
Nothing is "simple". When Jane Goodall first did her research with chimpanzees in the field it was because women were so so despised in the then male dominated field of biology, that no lab would have her and her only access to real research was in the field (a place where very few leading researchers spent any time.) What was particularly interesting is, that at the time the definition of human being included the use of tools. She discovered that chimps were fishing for termites with specially prepared sticks that the apes would carefully fashion for the task. When word got back to the main body of researchers, they had to change the definition of what it meant to be human and spoke of the primitive use of tools. Jane laughed and said "Primitive? You try fishing for termites with a stick." In fact the skill requires such finesse and care, that it takes a human being almost as long as a chimpanzee to perfect the skill. That is, it takes weeks, even months of training.
Plumbing, isn't just sweating pipes. Its following code. Its knowing about the relationship between flow, pressure, and hydraulic shock. Its being clear how to plumb a system so your fresh water source never gets mixed with your grey or black water even if for some reason flow reverses. There are thousands of important issues to be aware of to perform plumbing well, even more to do it brilliantly.
At one time I worked with plumbing for semiconductor furnaces. These were very critical lines carrying N2, SiH4, ArH4, PH3, gases that are toxic in part per billion. We had to use helium leak check equipment to ensure the security of our plumbing. Advanced fittings, exotic metals, high vac and pneumatic systems, all of it is just plumbing.
Basic or simply scripting are coding. Dynamic HTML sits on the borderline between coding and simple content. I don't know what they plan on teaching in a year, but it depends on the person playing. Give a bright kid a little rope and he might just get all boy scout on you. More often then not though, expect some poor sod to hang himself.
"Learning code is not about numbers and mathematics. It's more like architecture, where you are presented with a puzzle problem such as "How do we get all these cars from this highway to that one without having to build a bridge across this river or putting an overpass next to the hospital?"
Wow, I mean I understand that some, especially web based coding might require less math, but this makes as much sense as saying "Building a bridge is not about engineering or mathematics! It's more like construction work, where you pile lots of cement and build some columns over a water body."
Not to mention, ironically, the problem they presented as an example, for a "puzzle problem, nothing like mathematics", has everything to do with math, and could actually be a typical OR problem, to be solved with rather sophisticated optimization algorithms. After tens of math classes I still wouldn't understand all kinds of methods to approach this problem, but yeah don't take my word for it. Maybe universities should consider creating a degree "BSc. Puzzleology" where people are taught to solve these kind of "puzzles" without math.
Maybe there are some geniuses out there who could do it, but learning to be a COMPETENT and valuable programmer takes more than a year. More than two years. There's a reason why it pays a lot - because it is HARD and requires SKILL and KNOWLEDGE. Maybe some factory could turn out a number of stumbling oafs in a year, who would make things worse by not knowing sound programming practices, but this is a BAD thing. We have enough problems with people, particularly those from China and India, faking credentials in order to get programming jobs (but I must say there are also a lot of talented programmers from those countries). We don't need more people dumped on the market with lots of dubious credentials and little skill.
People need to have fundamentals which make them valuable thinkers, such as basic skills in communications (English, or whatever the language is of the country in which they reside), mathematics, physics, reason, logic. Then they can attempt engineering (I suggest we need more mechanical engineers in the world), metallurgy (sorely underrated), biology, etc.
Not everyone needs a doctorate! I'd rather have a handful of competent BS or BA people than an incompetent doctor! I know that's not the style these days, but it's how I'd run things.
Sometimes I think I belong in the 19th century America, with individual discovery and exploitation of the principles getting one ahead (in spite of Edison). Alas, steampunk style does not guarantee success...
I think I kind of agree with your position yet not quite. I think it's just a little harsh and doesn't leave room for the gray(grey?) area. I'm don't consider myself a software engineer or whatever term as I only recently really got into learning programming and software dev a year ago. But I do understand that there are types of people. I for one am the type to want to know how things work and don't feel comfortable using something that I don't understand. So for instance this drove me to take apart cars and do all work on my cars. I pretty much know everything about cars but am no engineer by any means. I've been using computer since childhood (I'm 29) and just fiddle with things. I played around with programming when I was younger like in jr high and high school but then got into 3d animation and have been on that adventure for a while. In college I was a comp sci major for like 2 years then switched to be an animation student. After working as an artist and spending so much time working on that I finally decided to try my hand at getting into programming again as it is something I really want to learn about. There is something interesting here though. Suddenly I am able to learn this shit way faster and easier than ever before previously. All the concepts of programming are just clicking. I had a hard time back in the day learning. So, I guess for me the gray area is timing. I somehow achieved the necessary mindset to be able to learn programming concepts and I don't know why. Maybe you have some input?
Balderdash!
Does anyone remember when "cowboys and Indians" was a kids' game and not a tautology?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
The world does not need more code, it needs better code.
The more code we have, the more humanity needs to maintain. This is a problem.
I'm not saying this won't work, but I question our ability to inspire and train competent software developers. Software development is a big process that involves a wide array of skills, many more around human interaction, logic and communications than memorizing syntax and APIs. The way I see "programmers" taught continues to focus on syntax and one or two API ecosystems, and ignores the fact that programming languages and API ecosystems change fluidly and frequently. Graduates arrive ready to work in a world that was 5 years ago.
When a developer comes to me, I don't give a crap about the alphabet soup on their resumé. I care about whether they are good at working with people, and good at adopting new technologies.
And you wonder why things screw up? Why there is no security in websites? Why you can't get a company to do things right and mail your order on time?
What a hoot! Why not hire the homeless and mentally ill as well as programmers?
I have been programming for 8+ years and even when I finally got into the business world I am STILL learning a fair bit
When you graduate and enter the real world, that's when the learning begins.
I can never remember my login but here goes.
I think that these type of 'learn to code' / 'teach yourself' sites can work to actually get people thinking in the right way.
Yes some people sneer at javascript but it is a computer language (for want of a better expression that people will pick apart) and that can be used in an instant (notepad + browser) way to show how simple programs work. At this point you can introduce the basic ideas of programming and build more complicated ideas.
I learned to program when I was 12 (I am 33 now and develop software for a living) using BBC basic - then I learned about using sub routines and building procedural code, then memory manipulation. It was great and I stopped in my teens then at uni I learned C - which I made huge leaps in compared to my peers (all in an Electrical Engineering course - so they were not too slow) because I had a good grounding.
Take Javascript further and learn about asynchronous, event driven programming. Believe it or not but you can do something like 'OO' concepts in Javascript even without a framework. Thinking of frameworks, you can introduce the idea of using and writing 'libraries' of code and you are starting to think like a proper developer.
I am not saying everyone should learn javascript and it really is the business - it can be any (half decent) language but it is all in how you teach the early concepts and what you manage to instill into (hopefully keen and eager) minds. Learning programming is quite literally conceptual to start with. get the concepts right and understood and you can translate that basic understanding to so many other languages and systems.
Just my idealized two cents
From what I've seen, manager boot camp takes 0 days, and you can declare success no matter what happens. Kind of like politics. Oh, wait, exactly like politics.
"If you're not passionate about your operating system, you're married to the wrong one."
will hire them!! After all, it's just a lot of misspelled words with way too much punctuation. How hard can it be?
Almost 1 billion Indians believe this too and work for 1/3 less.
You have to care about it and not everyone does. That is what makes the difference between a good coder, mechanic or most any other job that's harder than typing letters or stack shelves.
Most people could draw well too but most people don't want to invest the time into learning it. Same with coding. CA is probably going to be a good start point but it's just that a start point. You won't be a good coder by the end.
They're trying to get India to re-outsource their currently outsourced jobs to even cheaper coders.
Following that logic: Learn To Write, Find a Job as Journalist
These guys are so smart! But they should teach us something more in demand. How about learn enough to become a doctor in a year. Wow it only takes a year. I could be rolling in the doe in no time. Sign me up.
"GIVE ME DONUTS!!!" -> http://images.wikia.com/monster/images/4/40/Cyclops_plasticine.jpg (lmao)
Writing programs is pretty easy... relatively easy to the near impossible task of debugging programs.
I'm an artist that uses code to create my work (openFrameworks, processing, vvvv, quartzComp, libcinder, etc.). I code 15-18 hours a day. I am ALWAYS thinking about code.
My bugs bend my mind into a pretzel. I couldn't imagine someone who hardly cares about this putting in any real effort.
What kind of programs do people who do it only for a job write?
Stop complaining. Coders aren't special.
So the average joe/jane thinks they can be a rockstar developer in addition to their day job. How many other people out there have tried to do their day jobs and think they can also be an expert mechanic, or a seasoned investor, or any other job that takes years of full time experience to master? Some people will never learn the concept of the division of labor; let evolution deal with them as it deems fit.
OK, some code is excellent, but the majority? Well, most of it is just like plumbing. Dead simple routine jobs to get the task accomplished. I really wish coders would finally wake up and smell the coffee - we know that what you do is mostly simple, most of us can do it too now. You're not special, you're just another form of manual labor.
Where can I sign up? To become a brain surgeon. Within a year or so.
I'm very tech savy. I'd have no problem in screwing a frame on someone's head, to cut away skin, to very carefully drill a hole in a scull and to insert an electrode in the right place. Hell I'd to the systematic checks in order to assure that I'm not damaging anything in the process. Imagine how much time I could save a real brain surgeon!
That didn't sound too convincing, did it? Just as convincing as people trying to code in one year. Sure, you'd be able to write a small program on your private system. But you can forget doing anything half meaningful. Unless you have real talent in which case you still need a formal CS education.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
Teaching them how to react PROPERLY when their fight or flight response kicks in.
You know, like when your adrenaline levels hit 125 heart beats per minute, and your body goes into its first stage of panic. Things go real weird with the mind at that point. People freeze up or go psycho. Their ability to make rational decisions and think out their subsequent reactions plummets dramatically. Which means everything you just taught them goes right out of the window when a predator jumps in their face. Let's not even talk about when a crisis drives you to 150bpm or higher.
You can't teach people how to adapt to this inside of a day, and without being able to adapt to that 125 bpm level 1 panic mode, anything you teach them is fairly useless.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
Is how to speak a Slavic language or Hindu.
The second skill to learn is how to get a passport.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
tomhudson = Lard body & eats 2 wheelbarrows of donuts @ 1 sitting!
My best teacher of all time, was my programming teacher, he could tailor his teaching style to match your learning styel, we do not all learn the same, yet he had most of his classes with high grades because everybody got it, and it was thanks to him. I was in an intensive 1.5 year course, highly intense....day in day out...but the .5 of it was 6 months stage...on the job training, so technically I knew how to program by year end. It is very doable if you have a proper curriculum, and have set goals that are realistic. Keeping on top of what needs to be done is the most important. If you set a timeline, you must respect it, else you fall into the procrastination
and this is where a week project turns into a month long one.
A section should have been added about documenting your code. If the article had that it would have been better.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
And why not? I make most of my money with failed projects and crappy code.
I think in the future everybody will have some degree of programming expertise as software become as ubiquitous as mathematics. There are many, many jobs that require or at least would benefit from some degree of programming skill. I believe that in the future teachers will be explaining to students how everybody ("even strippers") needs to know how to program, just as is the case with mathematics today.
Hey, have you seen the code produced by the average consultant? Most people can write code that good with only one month of training!
All the articles coming out about start-ups, being your own boss, writing your own iOS app and making money....sure smells like 1999 - 2000 to this Slashdot old-timer.
The last thing the world needs are more "day job" uninspired programmers.
America the new sweat shop of coders.
Lifetime job security fixing or replacing badly-written code, here we come!
If you want ppl to learn to code, we need to create and promote a language the causal user can learn and understand. This ridiculous java and other OOP bullshit has to go.
This has been a problem every since businesses stopped being willing to train! I hate to say it, but business has brought this on themselves by thinking they can find someone who's a prefect fix off the street without providing actual training (versus learn-as-you-go which is the norm everywhere I've worked). Companies seem much more willing to invest in other things besides their employees. The workforce as a whole suffers.
Sure, you can get generic training at school (and accrue a mountain of debt) but whatever they teach you isn't going to be the exact skill-set that a given employer wants. I'd like to see some sort of program where a company provides, for instance, two years of training (perhaps 4 hours of formal training and 4 hours of mentoring (like working with an experienced programmer)) in return for a contract to work for another two to four years after the training. All programmers should take a turn training because nothing makes you lean a subject like having to teach it.
Competition Good, Monopoly Bad.
I for one love this idea and the direction bloomberg's taking. Simple things like copy/paste, using excel, googling are important skill sets that we IT-folk take for granted and write off as simple. However, there are too many people [around me] that don't know how to do these simple things. This is an opportunity for a huge collective productivity boost. That's how I interpret bloomberg's actions.
I am seeing a lot of arrogance in the replies to these posts. Maybe it is because the original article mentioned the idea of getting a job after completing these lessons. Maybe its because some people feel threatened. Maybe its because some people can't conceive of the possibility that another person might be able to be as good or better than they are because they didn't share the same experience. CodeAcademy is a great idea. It is a relatively ease and free way of learning the BASICS of programming and software engineering. It easy to see how someone could complete a course or two and dive further into the art of software development. They might take a course at their local college, MIT OCW, Khan Academy, etc., get involved in an open source project, or just have a greater understanding of complexities of what make our digital society work and more respect for the "real" programmers. Get over yourself.
This might depend on the language. Some languages have a more fixed set of grammar and spelling rules than others. As programmer I love to learn patterns, which I can apply to a well defined group of problems. My native language is German. And it is an extremely ugly language when compared with a computer language. Exceptions of exceptions in exceptions in every imaginable grammar and spelling rule. For each exception there might exist a historical reason, but in many cases they don't follow a apparent logic. Many of the mnemonic tricks given by teachers to at least give the appearance of some logic behind those exceptions, are utterly worthless. They all could be compared with algorithms, which works only in 85% of all cases. As a programmer I would not want to rely on crap like that. So in contrary to your experience, most coders I know are much better in computer languages than in German.
Guess what, it isn't. It's more of a way of life. You don't become a coder, programmer, software engineer, or whatever it is you want to call it. You either are, or you aren't.
That's utter hogwash. You're no more a born programmer than you are a born doctor, actuary or lawyer . All require a certain level of intelligence plus lots of hard work to become good, but they're not like being a concert pianist or professional sportsman which only a very few can ever achieve.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
I'm sorry, but it's perfectly possible to learn enough to write fine code in a year, even in a self-directed manner (since you are free to study current material it may actually be beneficial to do so) -- the limiting factors are experience, aptitude, and desire -- not a degree.
I've seen far too many people come in the door with a nice degree and an entitlement attitude, just to watch them sit in a corner and flounder about. What makes it worse is that they are often unaware of their ineptitude, and having that degree in common with other successful engineers, they tend to make poor assumptions about their place in the scheme of things.
Now many of those who work hard and spend the $$ to get a fancy piece of paper often have those important attributes I cited, but we should avoid mistaking cause and effect.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
"Average person", as you're using it, is a meaningless concept. Average intelligence? Average creativity? Average aptitude? Average aesthetic ability? Average what? Does this mythical average person only ever possess average quantities of each? And who decides what average is?
Obviously, the people trying don't find themselves so mediocre that they don't want to try.
I'm not trying to troll you here, but there is nothing realistic about your perspective. Take a look at a Gaussian distribution -- that is the reality. The "average" outnumber the "special" people by orders of magnitude and will, without exception, have to do occupy the jobs you state they should never do.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
I suspect those ads are placed just to pacify the Dept of Labor. After getting no replies, the employer can then say, "See? We can't find qualified candidates! We need that H1B!". The real job probably requires only 1 or 2 of those skillsets.
As someone who spent the first half of the oughts "between positions", with decades of experience, the number of CS grads and experienced people out here is so large it's a buyers' market; these kiddies with neither experience nor degree* will, if they're incredibly lucky, get something paying not much more than flipping burgers.
mark
* Let's not even *start* to talk about how not one of them will ever get passed through an HR dept, who, since they don't no diddly, substitute certificates and degrees to even let hiring managers interview, much less hire.
Survival basics if the economy collapses and a major inflation event
makes money nearly worthless.
Be ready to evacuate away from any concrete jungles when it all falls apart,
and good luck !!!
google "32 trillion offshore needs IRS attention"
I can't speak to the effectiveness of a one-year coding boot camp.
What I CAN speak to is the effectiveness (or lack thereof) of the academic training people are getting. My group has had open positions for almost a year, because we can't find anyone with decent IP networking, scripting/automation, and QA skills. We're getting applicants... lots of them.... with master-of-science degrees in computer science who can't write code to traverse a directory tree or automate an SSH login. And these degrees aren't from "Smilin' Fred's Used Truck Parts and University"; these are major accredited universities like Stanford and UCLA. It doesn't matter whether the applicants come from the US, Europe or Asia; none of them are qualified. Those folks should be mighty upset at their schools, because by the time they emerge from college with a Master's degree they're carrying six figures of student loan debt, and all that money has not prepared them to be hired.
We pay well, we're consistently in the top 5% of places-to-work rankings, we pile benefits on employees until they submerge, we don't do 60+ hour workweeks, and we still can't find a qualified candidate.
I'm all for the one-year boot camp, because six-plus years of academia sure aren't working for squat.
Everybody gets what the majority deserves.
"learn enough to work as a Software Developer by year end."
There's a difference in being a Programmer and being a Software Developer. A programmer writes code. A software developer not only writes code, but understands were things fit together in the bigger picture.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
Has the average person's IQ been taken into consideration in light of the intelligence required to be a good programmer? I can't see someone with 100 IQ writing great code. Sorry.
Since syntax checking. :-)
My belated opinion on the original article- coding is a hell of a lot easier today than when I started. Almost all the common patterns and algorithms are in the framework libraries, no matter which framework you're programming in. I wouldn't hire somebody with this experience as a senior developer- but as a first year initial hire, no problem.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
CodeAcademy is just that... Computer Based Training modules revamped into a webby centric platfrom....
I hated them when I started out, but management deemed them totally cool and the greatest low cost way to teach old programmers new tricks.
The old programmers hated it because it was mind numbingly slow and ineffective at retention of new concepts.
The young programmers hated it because it was mind numbingly slow and ineffective because these were concepts we learned before the CBT was designed.
CBTs are reactive programming to address yesterdays problems.
Your model is flawed: You get a Gaussian distribution for each specific talent requirement profile. Some may be in the, say, top 5% for poet, others for engineer and still others for mathematician. If you are not in the top 5% for "coder", you have no business trying to work as one, as you will do more harm than good (fuzzyness applies). Same for the other examples. However even if you would not be a good coder, you may still be a good candidate for poet, doctor or mathematician.
Hence "average" always refers to a specific talent profile, not a specific person. Sorry if that was unclear.
I expect there are people that are really talented at nothing, but the typical "average" person (as in "randomly selected") should at least have better scores with regard to some talent profiles.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
can happen, if you look at the far end of the bell curve. Very unlikely, there is just too much to integrate to be anything other than just above a general luddite computer user, who really doesn't want to know more. A single programming language is about like getting thru first grade.... move on to another, you'll find that your understanding of the first goes WAY up.
Coding takes learning HOW to think in certain ways as much as it does thinking creatively.
Being able to see the peices and how they fit in the whole. This takes experience, and experience of this type takes years, and plenty of refinement.
I've been programming professionally for over 15yrs, and a professional DBA for over 5yrs (with 15+yrs of heavy experience, in very large databases), and i learn how to do things better, really on a daily basis.
A true programmer isn't relegated to a single programming language. A true programmer is identified by his ability to think a problem through, by truely using the "Divide and Conquer" methodology (language inspecific) we all learned in 100 lvl CS courses . (if you took one)
The question I have is given the equivalent # of 'supposed' years of experience, how can you tell a good programmer from a ..... not so good one. I've seen and work with both, but how do you do that in the hire process?
I make the supposition, that by determining what 'potential' canidates do at home for side 'fun' related to comptuers is more telling than a lot of work 'history'.
is this person a technologist? or a job seeker? a) is much more likely to deliver, b) yawn.
There is always elitism, but you miss the point. Most people can't think their way out of a wet paper bag.
Wason selection task
Correlation does not imply causation
In the second case, you get wankers who take this maxim far too seriously, when they should be reasoning "where there's smoke, there's fire". The vast majority of valid reasoning falls below the harsh standard of implication. Programming escapes many people, because you have to have one foot in each camp. pfail = 1e-6 is no good for a file system. In debugging, the common case is to succumb to the rare event.
I've worked with really good students who can't consistently manage to get modular clock arithmetic right on a micro-controller. In the vast majority of cases, normal algebra applies, except when it doesn't.
u16 begin = clock();
while (clock() - begin < 100);
u16 begin = clock();
while (clock() < 100 + begin);
In a normal programming task (e.g. far away from the file system), this kind of small distinction isn't critical every hour of the day. But when it does become critical, you need the kind of person with an instinct for realizing "but wait, this might be the tricky bit, slow down a think a bit here".
This requires an innate capacity for self-monitoring the process of conviction. Many people have it, more people don't. The second group will never become value-added programmers whether they are trained and paid a wage or not.
Yes, but if one spends your first twenty years growing up in a New Age cult of evolution deniers, one is awfully late to the party when it comes time to buckle down with intelligence and hard work.
When you're picking teams at the staff picnic to run the obstacle course, do you pick the kid who practically lived on a skateboard growing up, or the bookworm with coke bottle glasses? A secure sense of balance navigating logic-dominated systems takes just as much work to develop as a bunch of skateboard tricks.
We had a kid in my residence who had never wrestled with his siblings growing up. He got the hang of it pretty quickly when the rough-housing started, but someone always got beaked in the nose whenever he was involved. The rest of us knew how to play hard without getting hurt or hurting anyone else.
You're not born any of these things, but the differentiation is well under way by elementary school. That beaker is a doctor now.
I'm a Software Developer. I started programming when I was 11, so I guess I have 18 years experience (10 Professionally). Programming certainly uses the brain differently than the average non-programmer is every going to comprehend. I have worked with many fresh-out-of-College programmers, and most of them (not all of them), who hadn't started when they were younger, were way behind where I was freshman year of high-school. Many of my "I'm going to be a programmer" friends who started in College failed, miserably. I remember a good friend of mine, brilliant in Math, was just constantly frustrated like a one-armed man trying to learn to juggle. Somebody wake me up when I can take a 1 year Rocket Science course. Or, a 1 year MD program.
Let met teach everyone a fundamental carbon economy rule : If it uses more carbon it is promoted.
Many people sitting behind their pc's trying to be codes will uses a shitload of energy
Also every other job has been made easy to replace, but coders are still in short supply..
"learn to code, get a job" is functionally identical to "Learn a new language, get a job." We call our programming languages languages because that's what they are. it's a new way to communicate.
People who only know how to communicate in one language never really understand how easy it is to figure out how to solve translation problems. Learning a new language is incredibly easy and it's probably one of the most valuable tools that you can get as a human being. Why? Because communication is key to human advancement.
It's true that learning how to code will make you a more valuable worker. But it's not the only way and it's not a fire and forget solution. If you don't learn how to code, and you don't learn another language, you're holding yourself back in ways you'll never be able to understand.
If you can read this, I forgot to post anonymously.
I decided to try the Codeacademy Code Year. Why? I lack the funds for college and I lack the motivation to choose a single career to follow. Sure, there are better teaching tools, but I am testing the waters with this. The other tools I tried were generally less suited for my style of learning (lots of simple steps until I catch on and take off with expanded concepts). I did HTML and JS in high school and I was among the best in the class. I want to relearn what I did so well in that class and see if I have the mindset for programming before I launch into more serious learning. Stepping stones to understanding and implementation.
I agree that the tools Codeacademy provides are simple and not suited well to improvisation and efficiency. However, those who get the ideas and want to do more will be what the tech industry wants.
Took 4 courses of java in the national university. Ask for a job and they say: "Ah You can take your courses and smoke them up. I want a certification in Java 6.2" *phone rings* excuse me... My IT crew just told me that JAVA 6.2.1 has been released and if you don't have an certification for JAVA 6.2.1 you are wasting my time.
So they hang up all the courses online they want, they wast us money and time for nothing as employers want certifications of 5000 USD and always current.
Not everyone can code. I learned that when I tried to teach my wife to code. She has advanced degrees in economics from a top university and has a high level job, .....she got the idea, but was repelled by the minute logical details required to write a good program.
Similarly I have tried to teach disadvantaged kids to code - about 1 in 10 gets it and has the mental discipline to follow through. The others don't have the ability or the interest to bother.
Good luck Mayor Bloomberg.
Developing complex software is difficult - and all the simple problems have now been coded and are available.
The experience of tinkering with other systems such as cars let you see the logic behind the way things work. After you started breaking into these types of systems, your mind started to enter a lower latent inhibition state. You started seeing things for what they are, not what they are perceived as. Young programmers normally build things with legos and start taking apart things around the house to see how they work. This marks the difference between a schoolyard engineer and a real engineer. You aren't the exception, you are the standard, you just may have came a little late to the game.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Yea, late to the game definitely. I mean, I have other experience behind me but I wish I learned what I am learning now a lot earlier.
Balderdash!
I don't think you could even apply these categories and classifications yourself, let alone tell someone else how to. You may call someone a "5% coder" and I may say they are more like 50%. All of this is subjective, you can't deal with people this way.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Hey! Let's get to know each other. What's your name? Type it with quotes around it like this "Ryan" and then press enter on your keyboard.
That's exactly the kind of greeting that I warn children and other newbies not to respond to unless the site is thoroughly vetted.
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
I figured some years ago how to get really good at almost anything. Here's my secret: do it all day, every day, for the rest of your life.
Guess they're a bit clueless at CNN. Has anyone seen a Software Engineering job posting that didn't require a degree? I haven't and some require a Masters. Have even seen Electronic Tech jobs requiring a degree. Want a software job? Go to college, get good grades and then maybe, just maybe, you can get into a good software job. But I should tell you that the other Software Engineers I knew who had degrees were still having difficulties finding work. People like myself with decades of experience and no degree are pretty much out of luck.
I have not read _all_ 500 replies so far, but I'm surprised no one has pointed out the lesson that after about 10,000 hours of careful work, you get really good at something. You have to like it a lot, and have some reasonable ability in that direction. I know several people who are very smart (in some ways) but utterly clueless when it comes to computers.
t