

IBM’s School Could Fix Education and Tech’s Diversity Gap - pen2l
http://www.wired.com/2015/08/p-tech/

======
rdtsc
This not bad. I see a lot of "Oh they should have gone to a 4 year college".
Well for many applicants here it might not be a choice between 4 a year
college and this. It might be a choice between no college and this.

And no matter what the startup world tells you IBM is still a respected name
in the real IT world (banks, finance, large retail stores, etc).

And I am saying even though I don't like the likes of University of Phoenix
and friends. However IBM is an established technology not in the primary
business of sucking down fat student loans from the government.

------
hiou
It's almost like defunding and closing all the vocational schools and programs
in the 80s and 90s wasn't as good of an idea as it seemed...

------
Kalium
This approach troubles me deeply. A graduate of IBM's program who doesn't get
picked up by IBM is probably SOL. As opposed to a graduate of a traditional
four-year BS in CS program.

~~~
KirinDave
People are already hiring out of "bootcamp"-style programming education
programs that have far less repute. Why is IBM doing it going to be worse than
what's already the best way to transition your career?

~~~
Kalium
I have similar concerns about bootcamps. None of the ones I know about seem to
be equipping their students for careers instead of jobs.

Which is to say it may not be worse, but I also don't see where it's better.

~~~
Mangalor
Most programming is about experience these days ("make this webapp and connect
it to a DB"). If someone can demonstrate the basics in a bootcamp, don't see
how they couldn't learn on the job and after work by stackoverflowing what
they haven't learned yet.

~~~
Kalium
The difference between having a job in programming and having a career in
programming is your grasp of the fundamentals of computing. This is because
the ability of a person to learn new technologies and techniques is largely a
function of their grasp of fundamentals. Fundamentals that bootcamps uniformly
skip over in the interests of getting to experience faster.

In the abstract, it is of course fully, completely, and totally possible for a
person to learn this independently or on the job. In practice, that is
sufficiently rare as to not be worth discussing. Jobs where relational
calculus is taught in the office are, I suspect, similarly rare.

Bootcamp skills are only useful so long as the person never needs to learn a
different paradigm, learn significantly different technologies that require
thinking differently, move into a different type of programming, or desires
significant technical career advancement. Those things require a mix of
fundamental knowledge and experience.

Does that make sense?

~~~
ashworth
I feel like you're taking an elitist position... I've heard this applied to
professionals at every level of education. A quick find-and-replace applied to
your comment follows.

\---

The difference between having a job in programming and having a career in
programming is your grasp of the fundamentals of computing. This is because
the ability of a person to learn new technologies and techniques is largely a
function of their grasp of fundamentals.

Fundamentals that _Undergraduate Computer Science Programs_ uniformly skip
over in the interests of getting to experience faster.

In the abstract, it is of course fully, completely, and totally possible for a
person to learn this independently or on the job. In practice, that is
sufficiently rare as to not be worth discussing. Jobs where _Recent
Developments in Deep Learning at Stanford_ are taught in the office are, I
suspect, similarly rare.

 _Undergraduate Computer Science_ skills are only useful so long as the person
never needs to learn a different paradigm, learn significantly different
technologies that require thinking differently, move into a different type of
programming, or desires significant technical career advancement. Those things
require a mix of fundamental knowledge and experience.

Does that make sense?

~~~
Kalium
I've been accused of elitism before on this subject.

Let me tell you about a person who did so. This person wanted to help the team
design database schemas. This person did not have a background with strong
computer science fundamentals and did not understand relational calculus. The
person struggled to contribute, ultimately becoming a drag on the schema
design process. When offered educational materials on the subject of
relational calculus that would have addressed this lack of knowledge, using
them was quickly given up as too difficult. This person was thus sharply
limited, and extremely frustrated, by their lack of _Undergraduate Computer
Science_ fundamentals.

Your find-and-replace is only meaningful if you treat "Undergraduate Computer
Science" as a string literal with no semantic meaning.

Elitist is not the same as wrong. Medical education is pretty elitist too.
That doesn't mean I want to designate everyone who owns a knife as a surgeon.
Should I find-and-replace your comment to the tune of s/elitist/populist/, on
the assumption that elitism == bad and populism == good?

And before you say that we're just programmers and thus not dealing with life-
critical things like doctors are, I refer you to the case of Therac-25.

------
walshemj
Q has IBM changed and be going to hire these kids. I went to interview at IBM
a while back and they very quickly lost interest when they found I did not
have a BSC.

