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Education Programming IT

Can a New Type of School Churn Out Developers Faster? (dice.com) 241

Posted by samzenpus from the crank-them-out dept.
Nerval's Lobster writes: Demand for software engineering talent has become so acute, some denizens of Silicon Valley have contributed to a venture fund that promises to turn out qualified software engineers in two years rather than the typical four-year university program. Based in San Francisco, Holberton School was founded by tech-industry veterans from Apple, Docker and LinkedIn, making use of $2 million in seed funding provided by Trinity Ventures to create a hands-on alternative to training software engineers that relies on a project-oriented and peer-learning model originally developed in Europe. But for every person who argues that developers don't need a formal degree from an established institution in order to embark on a successful career, just as many people seem to insist that a lack of a degree is an impediment not only to learning the fundamentals, but locking down enough decent jobs over time to form a career. (People in the latter category like to point out that many companies insist on a four-year degree.) Still others argue that lack of a degree is less of an issue when the economy is good, but that those without one find themselves at a disadvantage when the aforementioned economy is in a downturn. Is any one group right, or, like so many things in life, is the answer somewhere in-between?
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Can a New Type of School Churn Out Developers Faster? More

Can a New Type of School Churn Out Developers Faster?

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  • You mean a vocational school? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday October 12, 2015 @04:53PM (#50713131)

    Or is that community college?

    • Ain't nothing wrong with that, we need more of them, provided we don't set up a system where they bilk students out of N years of future income for a piece of paper.

    • Community colleges are typically focused on liberal arts like universities. Most offer certification programs with significantly fewer requirements than 2 year degrees, but at least in California many are focussed on transferring students to CSU or UC systems. Vocational schools curriculums are much narrower in scope. Arguably I'd rather have an engineer exposed to multiple disciplines than one who focussed on getting in and out of school quickly. Unfortunately many computer science departments at universit

      • Community colleges in California are focused on transferring university bound students and training adults in new job skills.

        I skipped going to high school, spent four years earning an associate degree in general education at the community college, and transferred to the university where I got kicked out in my junior year after burning out from five years of college. Playing MAGIC: The Gathering and RISK into the wee hours with my roommates may have been a contributing factor.

        A decade later I went back to t

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dog-Cow ( 21281 )

        Unfortunately many computer science departments at universities are so focused on theory they forget to teach common development practices. For example most students get exposed to agile development methodologies only after they get to industry.

        How is that at all unfortunate? Computer science doesn't really have much to do with practical programming, and the curriculum certainly shouldn't be bogged down with teaching development fads. Agile is more about management and basically zero about writing code, so even if CS was about writing code, Agile would still be untaught.

        Perhaps what you are looking for is a degree in Management?

        • Unfortunately many computer science departments at universities are so focused on theory they forget to teach common development practices. For example most students get exposed to agile development methodologies only after they get to industry.

          How is that at all unfortunate? Computer science doesn't really have much to do with practical programming, and the curriculum certainly shouldn't be bogged down with teaching development fads. Agile is more about management and basically zero about writing code, so even if CS was about writing code, Agile would still be untaught.

          Perhaps what you are looking for is a degree in Management?

          Define practical programming. You mean web pages and such?

  • Great another stupid dice article... (Score:5, Informative)

    by grimmjeeper ( 2301232 ) on Monday October 12, 2015 @05:00PM (#50713209) Homepage
    Yeah, schools can't churn out qualified software engineers in 4 (and in many cases 5) years already. What makes you think you can do a good job in 2 years?

    • Re:Great another stupid dice article... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by grimmjeeper ( 2301232 ) on Monday October 12, 2015 @05:02PM (#50713219) Homepage
      Given who is starting up the school, I bet this is being driven by companies who want to pay their employees less because they only have a 2 year degree.

      • Sure (Score:4, Insightful)

        by s.petry ( 762400 ) on Monday October 12, 2015 @09:08PM (#50714741)

        But not for that reason. Profits for some, fuck everyone else. That is the current mindset with too many people holding power. Nepotism, cronyism, and quid pro quot is the overwhelming number of rich people today. Oh I know, there has always been some of that but we used to teach morality. Morality is one of those things omitted in current schools, and you'll have to give less than that to try and expedite programmers. Here is the test: Ask a person today "If you are rich, how much money is too much money?" 30 years ago most would put the number in the couple million mark. Today, most people will laugh and tell you know such thing. So we have gone very far backwards in morality as a society, in a very short amount of time.

        Could a school turn out "programmers" in 2 years? Sure, they will know enough to do some "programming" but not how to solve problems, and won't be able to communicate with people. Further, they will be ignorant to history so not know what to look out for in actions by the powerful which makes a large group of people fodder.

        I heard something similar the other day, where 100 years ago people from Universities were well versed in every subject. They studied Math, Music, Chemistry, Languages, Art, Philosophy, and History. A person with a degree was very high valued. That was supposed to be the goal of Public Education and Government funding and control in Universities. And look where we have gone. Specialized degrees like "Sports Marketing" with little to no other knowledge to fall back on.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          Remember when the plan was for programming languages to be so easy and intuitive that business people could write the software they wanted? SQL would allow anyone to manage a database. That failed, but it turns out that with a couple of years of training you can throw together quite a lot of useful software using modules made by other people.

      • Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Code monkey (Score:5, Informative)

      by khasim ( 1285 ) <brandioch.conner@gmail.com> on Monday October 12, 2015 @05:14PM (#50713349)

      But it is possible to take someone with no experience and turn him/her into a code monkey in only 2 years.

      And I think that that is the point with this. They aren't looking to educate new "engineers". They want cheap, fast labour. Code monkeys.

      If one of those people goes on to learn more, on their own, so much the better.

      If not, well the CxO's of those companies will claim that it is the fault of the workers.

      • Re:Code monkey (Score:5, Interesting)

        by plopez ( 54068 ) on Monday October 12, 2015 @06:41PM (#50713993) Journal

        "If you choose quantity over quality you get neither"

        --Demming

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by beh ( 4759 ) *

          Does that also go for your choice of quantity (2 m in Demming) as opposed to quality (His name was Deming - 1 m)? ;-)

      • Is that even really a thing anymore? The things university education used to be good at teaching to provide and advantage are now efficiently encoded into libraries. Leaving university students as people who spent four years training for something and shing up still not actually knowing knowing how to do it.

        A self-taught (with a mentor) "code monkey" could learn enough in two years to build a self-healing self-scaling globally distributed fast web platform that can handle a million connections per second.

        In
        • The interesting problems have not already been solved. May the code monkeys of the world have fun working on yet another inventory and billing system front end AbstractFactoryFactorySingletonFactory class.

        • Almost every problem has been solved already. It's the ability to creatively look at a new problem and find a relationship between it and an efficiently solved problem you do know and adapt the solution

          Unfortunately for many developers, that alone sounds suspiciously like applied math.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bengie ( 1121981 )
        The problem with any tech knowledge based education is the knowledge is outdated in 3-5 years. Code monkeys need to be constantly reeducated every few years, like upgrading a computer. If A then B. If C then D. Yep, great education. Now everything falls into the buckets of A, B, C, or D, when it may be an E.

        Cheaper in the short run, more expensive in the long run.

    • Well cut out the fluff and filler classes and you can do it in 2-3 years.

      Some of the 5 year thing is due to the way classes fall / fill up / the high number of required classes.

      We don't need PE / GYM classes as required classes where just 1 class costs as much or more then a 2 YEAR gym membership.

      • The 4-5 year thing is due to stacked prerequisites.

        At real schools, if you don't pass calculus I first semester freshman year you have already blown your chances of finishing in 4 years.

      • Re:Well cut out the fluff and filler classes and y (Score:4, Interesting)

        by grimmjeeper ( 2301232 ) on Monday October 12, 2015 @06:14PM (#50713791) Homepage

        There's a lot of reasons why some kids take 5 years rather than 4. Some double or even triple major. I know I gave some thought to doing a CompSci/CompE/EE major since the overlap between CompSci and EE cover just about all of your CompE requirements. Some choose to take a lighter load each semester so they can spend more time on each class and not burn out. Some are just slow and need to take extra time. Getting your prerequisites lined up for some classes can sometimes be tricky, especially at smaller schools with fewer sessions of the foundation classes.

        There's all kinds of reasons why people take 5 or more years to get a 4 year degree. It doesn't change the fact that they're still not prepared to do the work when they leave school and the company that hires them has to finish the last 2/3 of their education.

        • It doesn't change the fact that they're still not prepared to do the work when they leave school and the company that hires them has to finish the last 2/3 of their education.

          Well duh. Programming is an apprenticeship, and a university isn't vocational training. Everyone knows that.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by plopez ( 54068 )

        "Well cut out the fluff and filler classes"

        Really? What is "fluff and filler"? English? Calculus? Programming languages? PE? Should we only have courses like "Freshman Java", "Second Semester Freshman Java", "SQL", "No SQL", "Spring" (offered in the Fall only), "How-to Scrum" (qualifies as a PE credit), "Git Hub", "Advanced Git Hub", "C#", Etc. ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rinikusu ( 28164 )

      Depends. Apparently, in the UK, degree programs aren't as "broad" as they are here in the US. So, you take just the math and computer science courses, but not the history, anthropology, 4 semesters of foreign language, etc etc. I mean, let's think about it (from memory):
      Calc: 3 courses
      Discrete: 1
      Linear Algebra: 1
      Diff Eq: 1
      Total Math to get a base: 6 (add in a couple electives for those wishing to go further)

      Computer Science:
      Intro to Comp Sci: 1
      Intro to Programming (SICP!): 1
      Data Structures + intro to

      • You forgot to add in the classes you need to leave school as a qualified "software engineer" instead of a "computer programmer". That title implies you need to learn more than how to write code. You need to learn about system design on top of coding principle.

        But you're missing the point. Kids coming out of 4 year programs these days are not qualified to even do much entry level work. So while that list of classes is interesting, it still shoves kids out of the door knowing nothing more than they know n

      • You have to take that math in order to have any chance of passing. That or take the 'dummy' (pre-calculus/diffEq) linear algebra and stats..

      • Apparently, in the UK, degree programs aren't as "broad" as they are here in the US.

        That's because we expect you to be able to read & write before you leave high school.

    • I'd restate the need: "Can a new type of school churn out developers better?"

      The usual pick any 2 of 3 dimensions for "better" apply: Faster, Cheaper, Higher Quality.

      • Eh. I don't think that mantra applies to schooling. There's little you can do to speed up real learning. Everyone learns at their own pace. If you try to cut time off that, they learn less.

        That being said, some people could possibly attend a school that runs at a higher pace and they would learn faster than they would at a traditional university. But that would apply independent of the quality and the cost.

        The root point I'm trying to make is that 4 year programs don't turn out qualified people. What

        • 6 year med programs come to mind... they're highly selective, and the theory is that if you get in and can hang in with the program, you're ready for your residency in 6 instead of 8 years - and these "fast docs" are usually in higher demand, too. Not everybody can learn to be an MD in 6 years, but some can, and some can't manage it in 8, but might after 10 if you gave them the chance.

          I think the same applies to software developers. Out of every 10,000 people, I'd bet there's at least one (probably more)

    • What makes you think it'll be any worse?

      I think thats the point. 99% of new grads are just worthless, changing it to 2 years isn't going to change that ratio in any noticeable way.

      • Companies will get to pay them less because they don't have a full 4 year degree. So the companies will get the same mediocre talent for a lot less money.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Luthair ( 847766 )
      I think the biggest issue is that these guys need their earliest graduates to be very successful, unfortunately for that to happen they need to attract smart motivated people; these students could probably attend a proper school so they also have to be willing to gamble with their futures. Realistically I can only really imagine starting a new education system is for part-time students (e.g. want to change careers thus time makes a difference) or by recruiting students who would otherwise be unable to atte

  • No it cannot (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    It will not churn out developers faster (i.e. people who develop things from ground up, Starting with basic application and adding features). And it will not churn out Software Engineers (i.e. people who engineer the solution from top-down using abstraction). It may churn out copy-pasterino-code-monkeys who copy paste from stackoverflow, and complain if it doesn't work.

  • Can a New Type of School Churn Out Developers Faster?

    There's probably money to be made if it can.

    In fact, there's probably even more money to be made if it can't, because, you know, that was a pilot scheme ...

    Sadly, not by me in either case. No doubt those Pearson cuntbags will be in on it.

  • Churn? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jgotts ( 2785 ) <jgotts&gmail,com> on Monday October 12, 2015 @05:25PM (#50713423)

    You can't churn out developers like automobiles.

    I began programming casually in elementary school on Commodore Pets. I started programming on my own computer in fifth grade on a Commodore 64. Afterwards, I had plenty of short work stints during junior high school, high school, and my 7 years at the university, but I didn't begin programming full time for more than an 8 month period until I was 24. Even then, I was still very green.

    The best developers have been at it for 10-20 years at a minimum, and I'd even go as far as to say I prefer programmers who've been at it for 30 years.

    What I don't care about is your physical age. If you started programming at five years old, and you kept at it continuously until age 25 then you'd meet my criteria.

    Developers are created over many years, they've worked on many generations of technology, and they've proved flexible with time. Many of the good ones have been at it since childhood, but I don't think that should disqualify anyone.

    That's why developers need to get paid so much. Training over a decade to achieve basic competence at something is expensive. Many have a very expensive university education they have to repay. For me, I had to forgo my social life pretty significantly from age 15-25, and I'll never get that time back. The only way I can be repaid for that is with money.

    If you're trying to shortcut the process somehow by picking up someone who knows nothing about creating software, hope to train him or her in a few years, and expect to pay him or her poorly then you're going to produce some pretty awful software.

    • Beg to differ: I worked with a "stable" of developers who all had roughly equivalent "time in grade" - been hobbying at it since 12-15yrs of age, took a 6 year college degree in it, and then at the age of 25-30, you would think they would have some level of competence. Some did, many didn't. The poseurs tended to change jobs more often - hopefully they find a station that doesn't require real coding or designing skills sooner or later.

    • That's true: developers need a ton on real-world, hands-on experience with coding to even be remotely useful to a company. However, the time needed to gain the required experience can be greatly reduced with a good apprenticeship. And by that I don't mean a probationary period doring grunt work while struggling in your own time to master whatever wasn't covered in college, I mean working closely with a senior developer coaching. And I mean actively coaching, which takes a lot of time and therefor money.

    • I began programming casually in elementary school on Commodore Pets. I started programming on my own computer in fifth grade on a Commodore 64. Afterwards, I had plenty of short work stints during junior high school, high school, and my 7 years at the university, but I didn't begin programming full time for more than an 8 month period until I was 24. Even then, I was still very green.

      You realized you just described what they're trying to do. That 'everyone should code' initiative in elementary schools is to expose the kids to it at 5-6, just like you were.

      Those that don't bite go on to other professions. Those that show interest in it will have everything you do as part of the normal curriculum, but by highschool it won't be for everyone.

      Programming is now a trade. You just described how a trade works. Instead of everyone being on the "You all need to go to college" track you split off

    • I agree with you mostly, but you can't judge someone simply by X years experience. People learn at different rates and their programming experiences are all different. Some people pick things up quickly and will be great in just a few years and some never be great no matter how long they do it.
  • Of course from a job hunter's perspective it is better to have a four year degree than not. How much better depends on experience. In a small number of cases it could hurt you.

    There is no quality of school factor in a guy w/degree vs guy without degree comparison. In general I'd say four years of Ivy league employment experience trumps Ivy league school experience. A great deal of it depends on the employer and for higher level positions companies can and will make exceptions on degree requirements.

    Does a d

  • Don't make it an over hyped high cost school. Like others who seem to have the same idea.

    vocational school / tech schools have there place but lot's of them have become just get people in on to the loans that have no cap and take anyone.

    Also no risk for schools and the banks don't even offer low rates as they don't have the risk of people using chapter 7 or 11 to get out of them.

    • Re:Don't make it an over hyped high cost school. (Score:4, Interesting)

      by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Monday October 12, 2015 @06:23PM (#50713853)

      vocational school / tech schools have there place but lot's of them have become just get people in on to the loans that have no cap and take anyone.

      I'm friends with the principal of a local tech school. They've almost broken that stereotype. He said he can't graduate highschoolers fast enough. They're learning internet security, coding, CNC, 2015 automotive repair. I sat in on one of his tech classes, 16 year olds had a better grasp of how CAN networking works and how to debug problems in engines than a lot of PhDs. I'm trying to talk him into opening the school part time as a MakerSpace, it has better equipment than I had going though college. (Oscilloscopes, CNC machines, 3D printers, etc).

      These are the trades of the next century. It's why H1Bs are being hired into the spot, a lot of these jobs don't need someone with a masters degree. They need someone that has been training to do it since they were 14-15. It's still how Germany structures their school system [wikimedia.org].

      Not everyone needs to go to university. They have 21 century trades. It's why Simulator games are a huge hit there [gamasutra.com].

      "Even though the average purchasing power is very different between say the UK and Poland, we actually sell more copies in Poland than in bigger Western Europe countries," he notes. "We also have lots of fans in developing market countries like Brazil or Turkey, and incredible number of players in China, but it's really hard to actually sell any games in those markets."

      Meanwhile, the Farming Simulator series is a very similar story. Marc Schwegler, associate producer at Giants Software in Germany, tells me that the main audience for its annual farming series is kids, especially boys who love tractors. Oh, and farmers, of course.

      Kids that grow up playing 'stupid simulation' games will be trained to run a fleet of automated trucks or tractors. We already see military implementation with drones. Doctors are starting to do it with DaVinci. You could work anywhere with fast enough internet. There are still things that require a human, we have the technology such that the human doesn't need to be where the actual process is going on.

      IT is already doing it with support [apple.com] Apple and other companies have house moms with VOIP answering tech support questions.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bengie ( 1121981 )

      banks don't even offer low rates

      My FAFSA loans have been 2%-3% interest for the past 8+ years. I have no idea how they even make money on student loans if they match inflation.

  • I am not talking about a 2 year degree, how about running the place like a trade school, where you have to pass your tests to get certified.

    People that want engineering or computer science degrees would attend university.

  • Do traditional CS topics still matter? (Score:3)

    by IceAgeComing ( 636874 ) on Monday October 12, 2015 @05:53PM (#50713687)

    I have wondered more and more over the years whether the traditional CS curriculum is still relevant.

    So many software libraries exist that take care of the low-level details these days.

    • So many software libraries exist that take care of the low-level details these days.

      And since it's easier to understand it can be taught to a younger audience. A 6 year old doesn't need to know all the messy details behind PWM to know how to make an LED brighter or dimmer.

    • Re:Do traditional CS topics still matter? (Score:4, Interesting)

      by tompaulco ( 629533 ) on Monday October 12, 2015 @09:10PM (#50714747) Homepage Journal

      I have wondered more and more over the years whether the traditional CS curriculum is still relevant.

      So many software libraries exist that take care of the low-level details these days.

      Yes, but figuring out how to get a bunch of disparate libraries to work together amicably is more difficult (and less efficient) than writing yourself the miniscule parts of those libraries needed for your particular project.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Indeed. It's when the libraries (or combos) don't work as expected that the real skill kicks in.

        The real test is when stuff goes haywire, NOT when it works as advertised.

  • I failed my high school exit exam, then stayed six month at home doing nothing until my parent put pressure on me to find a job. I was like huh I sleep all day
    and live the night so logically I became a night guardian.

    Then a friend of mine, who was also a drop out, found a job as photocopier repair man in interim and told me they were looking for more people. I ended up repairing printers. From that I went to repair PCs so I became a technicien, then I did a little bit of sysadmin and helpdesk. It was in the

  • It takes two years just to provide the fundamental Physics, Math, English, general Engineering and electives of a properly constructed Engineering degree. You might be able to squeeze one or two software engineering courses in the first two years, but most of the Software Engineering happens in the last two years.
    Now, if you are looking for use them up and throw them away code monkeys who can take direction from a real Software Engineer and will never climb up the ladder past Code Monkey, then absolutely,
  • You know, like hiring people over the age of 35, paying more, or not require exact matches. Stuff like if you've done C++ for 10 years there's a good chance you know something about OOP and can pick up another language pretty quickly. But like I say, that crazy, way out of there shit.
  • But stop with all the focus on only OOP. the programmers that come out suffer from Dunning Kruger and usually aren't as skilled as a good C or JavaScript programmer at the same point in their career. If you didn't spend a good chunk of time on block structured and functional coding there is no point in me hiring you.

  • This whole thing is part of a conspiracy by US companies to chip away at high salaried developers. On one front is the give everyone a green card crowd. Bring in a bunch of people from 3rd world countries and drive down wages. On another front are the groups like this that want to turn out programmers with a minimum amount of formal education. This too will drive down wages by increasing the labor pool.

    What is so evil about this is that on the surface it seems like a noble thing to do. Create opportunities

  • Two thoughts:
    1) When someone has only one skillset they have less job mobility and so less negotiating power for salaries (argument in favor of a well rounded education)
    2) When someone with that one skillset gets laid off because their job got outsourced overseas for fuckall/hour they will have more trouble finding alternative work.

    America is shooting itself in the proverbial foot by making good education so expensive.

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