Slashdot Mirror
The Site That Teaches You To Code Well Enough To Get a Job
HughPickens.com writes Wanna be a programmer? Klint Finley reports that software developer Katrina Owen has created a site called Exercism.io where students can learn to craft code that's both clear and efficient and get a lot of feedback on what they're doing right and what they're doing wrong. Exercism is updated every day with programming exercises in a variety of different languages. First, you download these exercises using a special software client, and once you've completed one, you upload it back to the site, where other coders from around the world will give you feedback. Then you can take what you've learned and try the exercise again. The idea was to have students not only complete the exercises, but get feedback. Exercism.io now has over 6,000 users who have submitted code or comments, and hundreds of volunteers submit new exercises or translate existing ones into new programming languages. But even Owen admits that the site is a bit lacking in the usability department. "It's hard to tell what it is just by looking at it," she says. "It's remarkable to me that people have figured out how to use it."
If all that's keeping your salary high is that people haven't gotten minimal training off a website, maybe your salary is too high.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
LOL ... the hacker nature which can be taught is not the true hacker nature.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I like this quote:
"It's remarkable to me that people have figured out how to use it."
That is a truly self-aware software developer saying that. Sometimes I feel the same way, I'll design something that will work really well, but once I put it in front of people I realize it doesn't make a lot of sense. But still, there are people who can dive in and pick it up from the start. It's remarkable to me as well when people can figure out how to use my software.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Who is giving away their time to code review the work of thousands of neophyte programmers?
Probably exactly the same kind of people who answer questions on Stack Overflow or any of the other multitude of programming fora. Believe it or not, but some people like to help just because they enjoy it. I do it because answering random questions can be a nice break in the middle of work and it keeps me thinking about programming (especially problems that I wouldn't encounter in my normal work flow). It helps keep me sharp instead of only ever thinking about what I'm working on.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Sure, it looks like it, and there are plenty of people with jobs out there that can lash something together. I worked with somebody at a startup would was struggling to get a web page working. After a few minutes, I realized the problem. She had no idea that you could loop through an array backwards.
We don't need more "coders". We need more software engineers and computer scientists.
Actually, maybe not. Maybe we need a workforce that is organized and that would stand against employers who insist on completely devaluing our field in a search for easy money, tossing aside qualified people in search for exploitable labor. That's the problem. I think we should be defending our industry and those that have the proper skills to do it well. Just because the latest, most visible trend is to hack together a mobile application or web site for a quick buck doesn't change the need for fundamentals.
Things like data structures, algorithms, discrete mathematics, computer architecture, etc. do matter. Not having a basic understanding of computers and computation leads to an astonishing amount of bugs, security holes and wasted effort. Some people have just accepted this as the cost of business. I say it's past time that we really stood up and say, no, things should be better. But since we can't collectively bargain, we are stuck.
I know, who cares, the money is awesome. It'll be like that forever, right? What does it matter that nobody can count on having a career after ten years because they are seen as too old with an outdated skill set.
This isn't about school, although I think a proper CS education is still the best way to learn this stuff. But you can get it with diligent self study and experience as well. In the end, real programmers have the conceptual understanding to adapt and excel in the long term. That's what we need more of. Real careers, not just jobs.
The hacker nature starts when a kid is six years old and takes apart a bicycle (or whatever). This is where the dad takes the kid and makes him put it back together. And then takes the bike apart, and does it again, only this time, letting the kid "modify" the bike. Hacker Nature is often drilled out (WTF are you doing, hope your happy, have fun not riding your bike because I am not helping you fix it) of kids by parents who are too busy to encourage it. I've seen plenty of parents ruin their kids with attitudes of "no".
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
My salary probably is too high. But don't tell my boss.
It's really easy to say "Oh, that'll never be a threat to me, because I'm so skilled!" Do I think some website is going to turn out good coders? No, but I think that combined with the other 1500 "teach kids to code" initiatives it'll produce enough "good enough" to be death by 1,000 cuts.
My wife is a photographer. A really good one...degree in photojournalism, been all over the world with the Army covering stories for them, then got into weddings and portraits, has a studio, is a PPA Master Photographer and Photographic Craftsman. Digital came out and it looked "easy" and every 23 year old girl with a camera and a dream suddenly wanted to "follow her passion" and be a photographer. And entire industry sprang up to take these girls' money and teach them photography, but mainly sell them cameras and photoshop actions and cute camera bags etc etc. Well all the old school photographers looked at this and laughed. "The work they do is terrible! The people teaching them are terrible!" Very true. It's like 98% garbage from any kind of a technical standpoint. But there's a ton of them. And they're cheap. And it's "good enough." And the photo industry has been just destroyed (I mean the part that sells pictures to clients. The part that sells shit to photographers is doing great). There used to be 10 full-time studios in my town. Now there's 2 full-timers left and 30 part-timers. The average quality of work has gone way down. But it's cheap, there's lots of it, and it's good enough. And the death of photojournalism has been covered many times on Slashdot, with what magazines are left using cellphone pictures because they're "good enough."
Companies still outsource work to India and we know what the quality of code that comes out of there is like. But they do it because it's cheap. Now imagine they can get cheap, "good enough" code without having to deal with the language, culture and timezone problems?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
I'm an experienced programmer (for almost 30 years). I first read about the site about four months ago. I like Ruby a lot, but haven't used it as much as I'd like, so I thought that exercism.io would be a fun place to get some feedback. I submitted my first program that very first day. Today, four months later, my submission has two views and zero comments. Wow, that's going to help a lot. I guess there has to be some minimal mass of developers to actually look at the code and make comments. But for now, the site is far, FAR, from being anything close to helpful to teach you to code.