Billionaire Launches Free Code College in California (arstechnica.com) 187
Xavier Niel is the billionaire founder of France's second-largest ISP. In February he bought a former campus from DeVry University, and tried building something better.
Slashdot reader bheerssen writes: 42 US is a free coding school near Facebook's headquarters in Fremont, California. The courses are boot camp like experiences that do not offer traditional degrees, but hope to provide programming skills and experience to students for free.
Ars Technica calls it "a radical education experiment" -- even the dorms are free -- and the school's COO describes their ambition to become a place "where individuals from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different kinds of financial backgrounds, can come and have access to this kind of education so that then we can have new kinds of ideas." Students between the ages of 18 and 30 are screened through an online logic test, according to the article, then tossed into a month-long "sink or swim" program that begins with C. "Students spend 12 or more hours per day, six to seven days per week. If they do well, students are invited back to a three- to five-year program with increasing levels of specialty."
Ars Technica calls it "a radical education experiment" -- even the dorms are free -- and the school's COO describes their ambition to become a place "where individuals from all different kinds of backgrounds, all different kinds of financial backgrounds, can come and have access to this kind of education so that then we can have new kinds of ideas." Students between the ages of 18 and 30 are screened through an online logic test, according to the article, then tossed into a month-long "sink or swim" program that begins with C. "Students spend 12 or more hours per day, six to seven days per week. If they do well, students are invited back to a three- to five-year program with increasing levels of specialty."
well.. (Score:1)
at least they'll be prepared for the coding sweatshops of the silicon valley
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at least they'll be prepared for the coding sweatshops of the silicon valley
for fuck sake it never ends with you people. we don't want the jobs sent overseas, we don't want you to hire overseas workers here, we don't want you to invest in any kind of education that might prepare future generations of Americans for employment in your sector, we don't want you providing training for local workers.
some of you people here are so crap at your jobs that you're shitscared you'll be replaced by akmed from punjab province at $5 a day, the next round of college grads that took and intro to c
Re:well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
for fuck sake it never ends with you people. we don't want the jobs sent overseas, we don't want you to hire overseas workers here, we don't want you to invest in any kind of education that might prepare future generations of Americans for employment in your sector, we don't want you providing training for local workers.
I completely agree with your sentiment... but this... from the summary?
"Students spend 12 or more hours per day, six to seven days per week. If they do well, students are invited back...
WTF? Is that to condition you for the jobs they plan on giving you when you 'graduate'?
And this from your post:
some of you people here are so crap at your jobs that you're shitscared you'll be replaced by akmed from punjab province at $5 a day, the next round of college grads that took and intro to computers class during their studies or weed-smoking phil from down the street who spent 3 days at a code college training course.
I am 'shitscared' of any trend that appears to be designed to reset the work-life balance scale down to industrial revolution levels. If the up and coming work force are conditioned to accepting 12 hour days, 6-7 days a week, that represents a problem, for all of us.
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for fuck sake it never ends with you people. we don't want the jobs sent overseas, we don't want you to hire overseas workers here, we don't want you to invest in any kind of education that might prepare future generations of Americans for employment in your sector, we don't want you providing training for local workers.
I completely agree with your sentiment... but this... from the summary?
"Students spend 12 or more hours per day, six to seven days per week. If they do well, students are invited back...
It's called attrition. Students are given free courses and boardrooms, and then it is sink or swim... in C. That's for a purpose. They'll be crunching not just coding, but also theory. Whoever remains, you can be assure they are worth their damn and deserve to get their education and boarding for free for the next three years.
Also, this is not unheard of. I'm not sure about other areas of the country, but here in South Florida there have been several boot camps that take people from backgrounds other than CS - educators, nurses, accountants, people who are already educated and have many years of work experience. In essence, working professionals who want to make a career change. They go for months crunching 12 hours a day Mondays through Saturdays, crunching programming as well as CS theory.
It is expensive, and they do it on their own pockets. Mind you, these are professionals taking a hit on their wallets paying for the course (as well as the loss of salary as they go through the bootcamps.) I've seen them getting jobs as developers, not code monkeys, but actually as developers.
The rigor, the attrition, it is simply necessary. This is the same for people trying to do a career change or start his/her own company. So why is this surprising?
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It's called attrition.
It's called stupid. The fact that I won't work 12 hours a day 6-7 days a week on somehting for months on end has zero correlation with how successful I will be at something.
Whoever remains, you can be assure they are worth their damn and deserve to get their education and boarding for free for the next three years.
If nothing else, you can be sure they're the sort of person who will put up with working 12 hours a day 6-7 days a week. And isn't that what they really want?
Also, this is not unheard of.
As if something being 'heard of' makes it a good idea.
The rigor, the attrition, it is simply necessary
It's really not. At certain stages of certain peoples lives it is something they can afford to do, and some of the people who c
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It's called attrition.
It's called stupid. The fact that I won't work 12 hours a day 6-7 days a week on somehting for months on end has zero correlation with how successful I will be at something.
Well, there goes reading comprehension. No one said anything about that attrition as conditioning to work. It's attrition to eliminate those who won't want it bad enough.
Seriously, you are all a bunch of #firstworldproblem bitches. If you are getting a chance to make a career change, or an education FOR FREE (boarding included) with the condition to go through that attrition, wouldn't you do it?
Actually you wouldn't. Either because you do not need it/wanted it (which is fair), or because you lack the discipline and agency for it (in which case you have no soap box from where to be bitching about it.)
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It's called attrition.
It's called stupid. The fact that I won't work 12 hours a day 6-7 days a week on somehting for months on end has zero correlation with how successful I will be at something.
Typical millennial. Want's everything handed to them with minimal effort, allowing the vast majority of their time spent on satisfying themselves and their desires.
You know what M*. vux984? This place is giving you an education, with a place to stay during your time there, entirely free of charge, and you're whining about having to work for it? They have a perfect right to make you work hard and prove you are worthy of them continuing to invest in you. If you don't like it, no one is forcing you to atte
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Typical millennial.
My kids are millennials.
Want's everything handed to them with minimal effort, allowing the vast majority of their time spent on satisfying themselves and their desires.
I spoke about balance. I think working hard is very important. But I also think taking time for yourself is important. I'm not complaining about a 40 hour work week... or even a 50 hour work week... I'm talking about 12+hr days, 6-7 days a week. And if you succeed, you get invited back for more of the same? That's not balance.
Why are implying that anything less than 84+ hour work weeks is "minimal effort".
At least until you graduate and find you spent so much time enjoying yourself that you didn't learn a damn thing and are now thousands of dollars in debt with little to no desirable skills.
I graduated from university, learned a ton, have no debt, and am fully employed
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Do you think the Olympic athletes work 9 to 5 5 days a week? And they usually pay their coaches to work the hell out of them.
-shrug-
I think the olympics are a sham, and when you get right too it, I mostly think Olympic athletes are little more than circus performers who provide a bit of entertainment to the masses. (I'll stop short of saying circus freaks, but on some level even that applies... "step right up, see the worlds fastest man!!") To be completely honest, Its not a lifestyle I'd even advocate as healthy. Spending one's life competing to be the best in the world at X, for some weird arbitrary athletic definition of X whe
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Why the strawman argument? Nobody ever suggested anything of the sort. Are you being deliberately moronic or are you failing at basic reading comprehension?
The part where after the month, those that were most successful are invited back...
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Why the strawman argument? Nobody ever suggested anything of the sort. Are you being deliberately moronic or are you failing at basic reading comprehension?
The part where after the month, those that were most successful are invited back...
And for free, boarding and all. So what's the fucking problem? A free college-level education, free boarding included, with the price being to work your hands to the bone?
If you have a problem with this, either you do not need it/want it (which is fair), or you lack the discipline and agency to make it through. #firstworldproblem.
Re: well.. (Score:4, Informative)
So what we get out of these "boot camps" is people who know the current technology, can be used for 4-5 years, then get thrown away for the next batch.
I have to say, that's efficient. Provided you don't give a shit about them, that is.
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Sounds accurate. Boot-camp to sweatshop to homelessness. Or maybe they have some way to recycle these people into prison after they are burned out?
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Sounds accurate. Boot-camp to sweatshop to homelessness. Or maybe they have some way to recycle these people into prison after they are burned out?
Well, I've seen college educated professionals from nursing, education and accounting doing a successful transition. But again, how you see the world is a reflection of you, not the world. You have no solution, you have nothing to offer, yet every possible alternative, however flawed it might be, you are quick to tear it down. Can't do shit, won't do shit, won't let others do shit. Whatever rocks your boat.
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And the award for "biggest ego" goes to.... you!
You actually have no idea what I have, because I do not share it with low-lives like you that are in it solely to put others down.
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So what we get out of these "boot camps" is people who know the current technology, can be used for 4-5 years, then get thrown away for the next batch.
I have to say, that's efficient. Provided you don't give a shit about them, that is.
You can look at it that way if it satisfy your nihilistic self. It is not like CS grads don't make their professional universe out of a stack with a 4-5 year lifespan and get stuck there forever. Whether it is a boot camp or a 4-year degree, what you get out of it (for the duration of your professional lifetime), that's on you.
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Said it better than I ever could.
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To be fair, Silicon Valley does suck. The companies there should decentralize enough so someone who does good, valuable work can enjoy a decent lifestyle.
unpaid interns wanted for 3-5 years (Score:3)
How is someone between 18 and 30 supposed to survive long enough to do this program - one that doesn't even give you an accredited piece of paper - if they're doing 12 hour days 6-7 days a week?
My bet is that after the trial period, the "survivors" will be doing 3 to 5 years of commercial coding for free as their "lessons". That's shittier than an internship.
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Actually you have it quite wrong. "Trivially replaceable" jobs, like fast food and retail, have little to worry about from foreign competition, because the economic value differential possibly gained from a replacement is very low.
High value add work like software gets scrutinized from every angle precisely because differential of the actual value produced and the amount you can get away with underpaying someone to perform it can be very large. It's precisely this differential that makes for an extra Pors
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You don't but about 90% of the population does. That includes people that run corporations. That's why we have outsourcing and H1Bs and companies that think they can get away with paying half of what they really need to for talent.
There's plenty of examples I could give of the "cheap junk for less" mentality. Some of them are even tech products.
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Well, "hard work" = "bad work" in almost all cases. Some people (like the typical CEO) can only do bad work and so compete on volume only.
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It sounds very much like the stories our Software Engineering professor would tell us. Except his stories weren't about interviewing for jobs but doing actual work on real projects.
used to charge for coding class (Score:1)
"Students between the ages of 18 and 30 ..." (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like age discrimination, to me.
There must be thousands of older people between the ages of 30 and 55 whom are equally capable of contributing - and many of them already know how to program.
~childo
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Good luck finding a 50 year old who can pull 12 hour days 6 days a week.
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it's not that a 50 year old can't work 70+ hours a week, it's that by the time you reach that age you have realized you DON'T WANT TO... nor should you have to.
Indeed. Sometimes I read comments that seem to think anyone over the age of 30 or 35 must be senile, confused, and ready to park in a recliner and nap all day. In reality, 50-year-olds may not be in top physical condition, but they are certainly capable of accomplishing mental tasks for long hours.
I'm not that old (yet), but as the years go by, I realize how crucial "free" time is. Not just for relaxation or family or whatever. Study after study shows that downtime increases productivity (up to a poin
Where is the catch? (Score:3)
The courses are boot camp like experiences that do not offer traditional degrees, but hope to provide programming skills and experience to students for free.
(emphasis mine)
Question is: How do they make their money? Because I just do not believe there's no catch!! Anyone care to elaborate?
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Alternately, they can expand, and when they have three consecutive quarters of exponential growth, go public (then, of course, sell their shares).
Re:Where is the catch? (Score:5, Informative)
It's amortized over the lifetime of the graduates' lower salaries.
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Donations. If you get a really good education and you make it big, universities will hit you up for charitable donations, big donations may even get your name on a room, department or building and you get tax and other benefits such as student internships (free labor) or unique access to a hiring pool (you can pick and groom individual students that do really well for example). Places like Harvard don't really need the student to give them money, the money is just a filter, the multi-billion dollar endowmen
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Here's what I'd expect: Grab a batch of these young people and teach them whatever current technology is hot. The people you need right now. No need for theory, no need for foundation work, just cram the current latest and greatest tech into their heads.
When the next big thing arrives, throw them away and cook the next batch of young coders. That way you also have no reason to not work them to death and burn them out, they're useless to you in 3-5 years anyway.
Ageism (Score:2)
Re: Ageism (Score:2)
encoding (Score:2)
Franceâ(TM)s
And the walk of shame continues... bling bling bling! (https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=9511599&cid=52681371)
I hate Perl, but even I know that you could solve (palliatively) this disgrace with a simple:
$post =~ s/â\(TM\)/'/g;
Or just use SoylentNewsâ(TM) [yeah, it was on purpose] version of Rehash, as they fixed this ages ago.
VocTech Programming (Score:3)
Finally, someone stateside is filling the gap between nothing and a full CS degree.
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Finally? No. More like Johnny Come Lately.
Please see ArsDigita University. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Full disclaimer: I was a member of the ADU faculty. I've also taught at some pretty high-powered schools across the US. The ADU students were frelling amazing.
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This isn't "some trash bootcamp degree". People who get past the initial training/testing phase, come back for 3 - 5 years. And that initial training is no joke. They aren't training javascript monkeys. It's serious C coding. In fact, I would bet people who actually make it through the entire program will be far better programmers than what a traditional college CS program can produce. These people aren't learning history, English, and all that other shit. They only do programming. 12 hours a day.
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Of course, by the time they finish the program they'll be burnt out and looking for a different career.
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Probably true.
It's not a radical experiment (Score:5, Informative)
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Has it ever been extended to programming and software engineering? If so that's the new idea.
Thousands of slashdotters claim you can't write code with out a full BS in CS when we know that not to be the case.
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Has it ever been extended to programming and software engineering? If so that's the new idea.
That's similar to claiming that X deserves a patent when you convert it to "X on the internet." In 40 years, if we have a Y industry, and someone creates a Y free university, I claim prior art for all values of Y.
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If it was so obvious why hasn't anyone done it with the IT and CS industries before?
Now they just resort to importing H1Bs.
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If it was so obvious why hasn't anyone done it with the IT and CS industries before?
You have a question.
Now they just resort to importing H1Bs.
You have an answer.
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Since Cooper has an engineering college, they probably have a CS department too. Many other engineering colleges do. Depending on your point of view, CS is just another branch of engineering.
The same idea applies to mathematics or business.
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That's similar to claiming that X deserves a patent when you convert it to "X on the internet."
Except for the bit where nobody is claiming it deserves a patent of course. Just because it's a new idea doesn't mean it is patentable.
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Thousands of slashdotters claim you can't write code with out a full BS in CS when we know that not to be the case.
Yeah, sure, you can learn to code in a few weeks or months. You can learn to operate a hammer and a chisel in a few minutes. That doesn't mean you're capable of actually producing anything worthwhile with either. Listen, learning the syntax of a programming along with some algorithms, data structures and design patterns is a nice start but it's only a start. The real challenge is being able to wrap your head around a particular problem domain. People with 4 year CS degrees have demonstrated they can do that
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And some people learn by doing while others learn by academic.
Some people pick up a hammer and chisel and have a knack for it. They don't need to know the full theory behind how the chisel applies its force.
Sure, some boot camp graduates can too but not nearly as many as you think.
I'm a mechanical engineer overwhelmed with programming work. Not CS work, programming. I need a VocTech level programmer to implement what I tell them. I don't need it the most efficient or the best data structure. I need a script or program to do X.
And if they use that to eventually learn the best and m
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"I need a VocTech level programmer to implement what I tell them. I don't need it the most efficient or the best data structure. I need a script or program to do X."
you need the old Visual Basic 6. Super fast from idea to working product.
Microsoft decided that they needed more CS nonsense in VB so that is why VB# is barely used anywhere. if you learn VB# you might as well learn C# and the learning curve on that is massively steeper than VB6 ever was.
A lot of us hated VB, but it absolutely had it's place
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Python has taken over as the new VB. The point is I still need people to write it.
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You are either intentionally misunderstanding or the idea is just beyond your grasp. Learning the tool is not the same as being able to effectively reason about a particular problem domain. You can teach people how to program fairly easily. Loops, conditionals, etc. aren't that complex. The problem comes when you tell somebody to apply what they've learned to a particular problem. The problems programming is used to solve are often much more complicated than programming itself. These boot camp graduates for
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I could train a high school student to do what I need done. I'll hire someone that does well at one of these and teach them what they need to know beyond that. For a fraction of what a CS student would cost and I'd end up with what I needed.
Is that really possible though (Score:2)
I need the programming equivalent of electricians and plumbers, not engineers.
Is that really possible for programming though? I am doubtful you can really separate things to that degree. Even maintenance (especially maintenance?) requires advanced skills not to screw things up as you go, and advanced skills are also needed to create something solid that performs well and does not collapse...
To use your analogy, what is sometimes an electrician came because of a power outage but found that equipment in the
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That's what makes programming hard, is that to be good you need to be the engineer AND the plumber/electrician.
No, that is what a bunch of middle aged CS degrees sitting on slashdot are saying.
It's not been my experience.
If you are not you will mess something up on the either end or for the group of people you are not in.
And yet houses get built still.
Like I said, turns out in ten years that was the one you needed after all, and your short-sightedness caused calamity (and more work for the competent so thanks for that I guess).
"Hire us CS majors or or else"
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No, that is what a bunch of middle aged CS degrees sitting on slashdot are saying.
You mean the people with more experience than you? Why yes, yes we are.
It's not been my experience.
It has been mine, and mine obviously counts for more.
And yet houses get built still.
You mean the houses that collapse in the slightest digital breeze? The houses that are being hacked constantly? The houses that catch on fire because someone opened a door? Well I guess it's all fine then, because technically "a house" existed
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You still aren't getting it. I don't need a CS major
Whine, gnash your teeth, complain. I don't need one. Sorry.
Slashdotters are entertainingly narrow minded as to what 'code' is and where it lives. I don't need someone to write 'production code'. I need someone to write code so that I don't have to and can concentrate on other stuff.
Re:It's not a radical experiment (Score:4, Insightful)
In Denmark, university education is free for all Danes. You also get a small allowance each month, just enough to rent a room or small apartment and buy (cheap) food. So that part of it is not that radical outside the US.
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In Denmark, university education is free for all Danes. You also get a small allowance each month, just enough to rent a room or small apartment and buy (cheap) food. So that part of it is not that radical outside the US.
The difference here is that the "free" education isn't being picked up by the taxpayers, so not exactly the same.
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You're also not limited to the Danish college lifestyle. You can move on to something better.
Carnegie Mellon University (Score:3)
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Is volume really the answer (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone opened a massive free school for training sculptors and enrolled 1000s of students no one would believe that they would end up with hundreds of Michelangelo's. They wouldn't get lots and lots of excellent sculptors. They'd be lucky to find a 1 or 2 really good ones out of every 1000 students. Then they'd find a few more fairly good ones and the rest would be mediocre to bad. Some would be able to create really elegant statues, some would be good at making blocks, bricks and tombstones and the vast majority would make gravel.
The only difference between this and the mass programming schools is that with sculpting most people could look at their rock based product and easily discern its quality. Not so for programming. That's why this industry is rife with gravel producing developers who try and pass their product off as statuary.
I think the public is being deluded about this.
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There is an element of p
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Its already causing problems. Its super hard to make a full team of half decent software engineers, because the signal to noise ratio is so bad. Even very successful companies are filled with teams where 1 person is doing the job while 10 people are just dicking around arguing about which 3rd party package to pick between the latest trend and the new fad.
And since no one figured out how to properly screen for good programmers yet, the only semi-acceptable teams are the ones in companies that are willing to
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The point is that you don't need a team full of software engineers. Just like building a building doesn't need a team full of mechanical engineers.
You need a few engineers to make core decisions and plumbers, electricians and programmers to actually get their hands dirty and build the design.
The reason you haven't found the right people is you're looking in completely the wrong places. A CS education is a full background in the *theory* just as an engineering one is. You need people that went to 'trade scho
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Except in programming where the minor details of what you type really matters. If you build a blueprint detailed enough that a random code monkey can follow it and have the finish program work as expected, then you could have clicked a button and had all the code auto-generated from the blueprint.
There are huge performances differences between string.contains('.csv') and string.endsWith('.csv') and they'll both seem to work exactly the same if you don't test your code properly. (And both of those have at
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And the programmers should know the minor details between those. The engineers don't. There are thousands of small things that a plumber and electrician need to know that the engineer doesn't. (And vice versa).
How about I decide what I need? I need code monkeys. I don't need a CS degree because they're 'useless' for what I need them to do. I would prefer to hire locally but if you don't want to fund this education I'll be happy getting a H1B to do it.
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Almost no one checks for memory allocation errors...
You write as if that's a bad thing. Just about the only thing you can do at this point is crash, with more or less grace. How graceful to be is a product decision, not a technical one.
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If you're working on a big database + rails CRUD project where you need a bunch of hands to make forms, sure, I'll take that.
Of course, you could drastically reduce cost by architect a system that doesn't need to just brute force code so much.
And that's the difference: if I'm building a sky scrapper, I need some architects and engineers to figure out how to make it stand 50+ stories tall, and then I need hands to build the hundreds and hundreds of identical units inside.
In software engineering, I can archit
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You do not want more than one alpha geek in your team.
People seem to think that teamwork only means that people have to have the same level of skill and then they'll work together anyway. Bullshit. People are very different and you have to take into account what position and role they will fill in their "pack". If you put two alphas in you will have them bicker and fight over the minute detail of nonsense just to prove who is the one on top and who is "right", while getting exactly jack shit done. It's ok,
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You're right, I don't want many alphas. But that's not what im talking about here. I'm just talking about how the majority of people who call themselves programmers/software engineers/whatever aren't even fit for a normal individual contributor role.
Re:Is volume really the answer (Score:4, Informative)
This isn't one of those stupid bootcamps. This is serious shit. You should read up on it. In fact, they have a video where they talk about their philosophy and expectations (which are very high). It's also a 3 - 5 year program. These people will outcode the shit out of a CS grad.
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And when the HR department sees that they have no degree from an accredited school?
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You know, it's possible for this school to develop its own reputation. There's nothing magical about a piece of paper.
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No, there isn't. Except there's a lot of HR departments out there that believe there *is* something magical about that paper.
No one ever got fired for buying IBM just as no one ever got fired for insisting on the magical piece of paper.
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If programming is so hard that the majority can't become proficient, then we as computer scientists and engineers have failed. We expect computers to be easy to use for all sorts of other tasks, and over the decades have found ways to make those tasks easier, so if it still requires the kind of intellect only found in 0.2% of the population to write software then it's as much our fault.
Fortunately it's not nearly that hard to produce a lot of useful, reasonably good code. And as ahabswhale points out, it's
Age Limits? (Score:2)
Why is it limited to ages 18-30?
#Ageism
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Oh. Sorry. I guess that doesn't fly in the US. Well, it seems we should close shop then.
I am certain the US can build their own free education system that teaches anyone anything for free.
Already experimented in France (Score:2)
"42 US" reproduces the "42" school created in November 2013 in France. I still have no opinion on that experiment, but at least US students can expect organizational details to be sorted out, since it was already done elsewhere.
You answered the first question out of my mouth (Score:3)
You answered the first question out of my mouth, when you noted that it was not accredited.
As a proud owner of Photoshop, I now have a "Certificate of Completion" from them.
When do they open, exactly, so I know when to put it on my resume?
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I'm good, I have a lot of "IT security professional" certificates from various places. Some of them even have an office.
Frankly, there isn't as much snakeoil in the rest of the IT industry as in security alone.
Make it truly free. (Score:5, Insightful)
Release all the education materials and the lesson recordings online for free for anyone and everyone not rich enough to move there or live there.
True freedom is to give it to everyone everywhere.
Well rounded individuals. (Score:2)
Contextual problem solving skills.
Big picture thinking.
Or
"sink or swim" program that begins with C. "Students spend 12 or more hours per day, six to seven days per week. If they do well, students are invited back to a three- to five-year program with increasing levels of specialty."
Teaching C for JavaScript monkeys? (Score:2)
So, this looks very interesting. If I hadn't noticed that this course was going to begin by teaching C, I would have assumed it was just another one of these crappy coder bootcamps that will be around until the Web 2.0 bubble pops. These places stuff newbies' heads full of "RESTful AngularNodeRuby on Rails in Docker container microservices" with zero backstory and expect them to turn out useful work. They existed in 1999 as well, but back then it was HTML and MCSE bootcamps.
The whole "educational deathmarch
Re:This sounds great (Score:5, Interesting)
Except for the details
Details like Facebook's headquarters are in Menlo Park, not Fremont, with the SF Bay in between?
Putting a school like this in the SF Bay Area, where there are already oddles of opportunities, isn't doing much. If he wanted to make a difference, maybe he should have opened his school in West Virginia, or the Mississippi Delta.
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More details like "not offering traditional degrees". Then what kind of degree are they offering? I know of a cult or two that run their own "education" systems that produce an education that is mostly bullshit and not useful in anyway except within their own little bubble of a world, that way the kids have no choice but stay in the cult since, well, outside nobody really has any use for them.
I hope this isn't that kind of bullshit.
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In basically all cases it is "no traditional degree" == "no degree".
The graduates (well, sort-of) will have nothing they can use to pursue a regular job, so they are tied in wage-slavery to the few companies that hire people from this institution. The "test" at the start with 72...84h work weeks is a dead giveaway as well as to what the "quality" of this education will be.
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To be honest, since there is very little tangible in some fields of IT that you can cover sensibly with a degree, I'd sometimes actually prefer people to show me some prior work to a sheet of paper. Personally, I'd value being able to point to something that made an impact in the field and say "that was me" higher than formal education that may or may not be relevant to what my business is doing. And in most areas in IT this is still very possible, unlike in, say, pharmacy or biotechnology where the entry c
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He is probably more interested in the public echo than in actually helping anybody.
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Also, I find it odd that he focuses on the C language.
Not that there is anything wrong with the C language, but the market for C developers is not currently that good because there is already an overabundance of C developers right now for the number of C projects out there.
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I think the idea is that if you're capable of learning C, the other languages will seem pretty simple. (e.g. you don't wanna hire `programmers' who get confused by pointers)
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Has that ever worked out for you as an employee or as a manager?
That notion might work in some sort of model meritocracy but that's not what we live in but a long stretch. Most companies (and even managers) want more relevant experience and won't trust that you can "just adapt".
This is probably even more true for a "bootcamp".
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Oh please, the US has always been for sale. Why don't you like capitalism, what are you, a pinko commie?