Coding Bootcamps. Worth it? Your opinions welcomed...

WalknOnEggShells
Tue, 19 Apr 2016 10:08:03 +0000

simba9:

I can see that happening if someone is coming out of a traditional college CS program, which will likely emphasize theory over practical knowledge. That’s not the situation here, though. In lieu of a degree, csuniv needs to work on gaining enough practical knowledge to show potential employers that s/he can come in and start contributing right away.

I think it depends very much on what they want the candidate to contribute to. It’s the position that’s going to determine what they expect the candidate to know, not the educational background of the candidate.

If a company is looking for an object-oriented developer to work on their core libraries, they’re going to expect the candidates to have a good grasp of fundamental algorithms and how to analyze the performance of those algorithms. They’re not going to change their requirements because the candidate didn’t take courses in that subject.

simba9:

Most meat & potatoes programming jobs these days don’t involve writing complicated algorithms. If there’s a need for something complicated, it’s more likely someone will go out and find a software package or library that implements the algorithm well. Software jobs these days are mostly about understanding various software packages, libraries and tools, and then combining bits and pieces from them in order to create a working application.

Depends on what you mean by meat and potatoes. If you take that part out, I agree with your first sentence. Most programming jobs don’t involve writing complicated algorithms, but there are some that do, and @csuniv should understand that it will be more difficult for him/her to get one of those jobs without studying algorithms. That’s all I’m trying to get across.

At this point, @csuniv doesn’t know what area he/she will specialize in. If the goal is to become a game developer or to work on stock trading systems, he/she is probably going to be at a disadvantage without a degree, or at least the knowledge acquired in a degree program.

One other thing. The point has been made in this thread that small companies are more likely to hire someone who does not have a degree. I agree with that, but I think @csuniv should be aware that this is not always the case. Some of the most technical and academic interviews I’ve been on, have been at small software start ups.

Here are two links about software startup founder’s and their educational backgrounds:

http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/interests/business/articles/business-internships/web-entrepreneurs-college-degrees/

https://www.quora.com/Are-there-any-succesful-tech-startups-founders-without-a-CS-degree

Software startups are trying to sell a piece of software. They’re not typically going to cobble together a bunch of frameworks and libraries and try to sell that. They may use some frameworks and libraries, but they’re going to build a complex, customized piece of software, that I can assure you, has lots of custom-written algorithms in it.

Are there plenty of jobs out there that can be done by programmers without a CS degree or the equivalent knowledge? Of course there are. But let’s be clear about the fact that it’s not all of them, and until @csuniv knows what he/she wants to do, it would be premature to say certain parts of a CS degree are unnecessary.