
Dear Bootcamps: Raise Your Admissions Bars or Get Out of the Way - tyurok
https://medium.com/@andytiffany/dear-bootcamps-raise-your-admissions-bars-or-get-out-of-the-way-4d04d466b18a
======
schoen
This essay doesn't consider institutions or classes that would help someone
with absolutely zero programming experience try to prepare for the bootcamp
admissions process that the author advocates.

While it makes sense to me that the bootcamps should be more cautious about
their admissions standards, it still raises the question of what people who
have written 0 computer programs are supposed to do when thinking about
pursuing a bootcamp. And I guess there are many potential answers to that, but
it's a problem quite closely related to this essay's argument.

I remember that at Berkeley there was CS 61A for people who had some prior
programming experience (not necessarily directly related to the course
content) and CS 3 for people who didn't. Bearing in mind that some people who
would be interested could not currently pass the author's proposed screening
question (implementing a JavaScript function to return the longest word in a
string), it seems someone then ought to create the CS 3 equivalent to prepare
those would-be applicants to do so. (And maybe that's ultimately an existing
free online class of some kind.)

~~~
Finnucane
Bootcamps for bootcamps, I suppose.

~~~
mr_turtle
They already exist.

~~~
Finnucane
It's bootcamps all the way down.

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d_runs_far
I remember back 20-ish years ago when there were all sorts of one year
"Multimedia Specialist" programs popping up. Same problem, extremely low bar
(ie. have cash? you're in!) and the graduates end up with a bunch of basic
skills but no frame of reference on how to apply them to actual problem
solving.

Not sure what ever became of those colleges, but they sure pumped out the
students.

