
The high cost of a free coding bootcamp - JakeWesorick
https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/11/21131848/lambda-school-coding-bootcamp-isa-tuition-cost-free
======
alephnan
> Once, a student asked about the difference between JavaScript array methods,
> like push versus concat or forEach versus map, the team lead said they were
> interchangeable. (They are not.)

Technically, push and concat can be augmented to achieve the same thing. Same
with forEach and map. Might not be the best fitted screwdriver but it’ll still
kinda work.

~~~
ajhurliman
Except that push mutates the array in question and concat returns a deep copy.
And forEach returns undefined, while map returns an array. If someone claimed
they were the same in an interview I doubt they would get hired.

~~~
alephnan
Technically, yes there is a difference in semantics and convenience.
pragmatically it depends on the programming style and language features /
expressiveness.

Developers were able to map from one list to another list using for loops
before functional-style map-like functions. Map is just semantically more
concise about what it’s doing, rather than how.

As for mutation versus immutable copy behavior, that’s for convenience.
Developers can also clone collections themselves.

A more charitable means of evaluating the class lead’s comment is that the
core of an algorithm is not affected by these things.

One could argue multiplication is just repeated addition.

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djsumdog
30k?! You are honestly better off taking two yeas of night courses at a
community college, and it will probably cost you half of that for more
classroom time.

Bootcamp programs are really crap. Even in a traditional classroom setting,
you only get out of it what you put in. I know CompSci majors who graduated
only knowing Java and who were totally lost if they had to replace a ram chip
in a computer. I knew others who would try new languages every semester and
who probably still keep up with tech news in our industry.

Boot camps are more of a filter to find people who are going to put in that
effort anyway. You have to in order to be able to make it. But I feel they're
also part of this hustle culture bullshit; you're better off taking your time
and learning slowly (and more affordably) rather than trying to cram
everything in to 12 to 24 weeks.

~~~
Wowfunhappy
> I know CompSci majors who graduated only knowing Java and who were totally
> lost if they had to replace a ram chip in a computer.

The rest of your post notwithstanding, I don't see why a CompSci major should
need to know how to replace a stick of ram.

~~~
cosmodisk
They should know it all: where the cpu and ram is, how the motherboard look
like and etc. Nobody expects them to go out there and start fixing computers,
however if someone spends 4 years studying the subject and can't even be asked
to look inside the box,well then there's not much hope... A couple of weeks
ago I was on the sales floor and was about to change RAM on a couple of PCs(
it's not my job,just wanted to do it). The sales rep pulled the PC from
underneath the desk, took the side cover off,removed the old ram and put the
new one in.If sales can do it, I'm confident anyone in CompSci should be able
to do so as well.

~~~
dragonwriter
> They should know it all: where the cpu and ram is, how the motherboard look
> like and etc.

Why? That's not Computer Science. Computer science is the science of
computation, not the science of computers.

> Nobody expects them to go out there and start fixing computers, however if
> someone spends 4 years studying the subject and can't even be asked to look
> inside the box,well then there's not much hope...

Hope for what?

> A couple of weeks ago I was on the sales floor and was about to change RAM
> on a couple of PCs( it's not my job,just wanted to do it). The sales rep
> pulled the PC from underneath the desk, took the side cover off, removed the
> old ram and put the new one in.If sales can do it, I'm confident anyone in
> CompSci should be able to do so as well.

Why? It's about as related to CompSci as doing field-expedient surgery is to
Psychology.

~~~
edflsafoiewq
> In the seven decades he was at M.I.T., Professor Forrester retained an
> engineer’s curiosity about how things work, and occasionally voiced dismay
> that his students were not always so inclined.

> He recalled in 2011 that he once asked students in an engineering class if
> they understood how the feedback mechanism in a toilet’s water tank
> maintained the water level.

> “I asked them, ‘How many of you have ever taken the lid off a toilet tank to
> see how it works?’” he recalled. “None of them had. How do you get to M.I.T.
> without having ever looked inside a toilet tank?”

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mosdl
Of 20 people I've interviewed who completed a coding bootcamp without prior CS
education in the past year or so, I think 1 passed the phone screen (all front
end). At this point I outright reject them because of the futility.

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insomniacity
The article states that the ISA aligns Lambda with the student - but I thought
I read that they generally sell off the ISA, meaning they no longer have that
alignment....

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frequentnapper
I am not going to hire anybody from a free coding bootcamp or a coding
bootcamp for that matter. Seems like they turn out people who know how to hack
things together based on shallow knowledge.

~~~
m463
Maybe it's an opportunity for people who wouldn't otherwise get the chance.
I've met lots of young bright folks stuck in mcjobs, sort of at the mercy of
circumstance. Maybe trying a coding camp will turn on a lightbulb.

There will be some filtering required.

~~~
frequentnapper
maybe can be suitable gig hires to turn out quick cheap startup ideas.

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davidgerard
People calling out Lambda is what PG's "Haters" essay is about
[http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/fh.html)

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manfredo
The attempt to portray income share agreements as bad is very large stretch:

> These ISAs are the bedrock of Lambda’s program. They allow the school to
> market itself as an “accessible” computer science education. But critics,
> like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), have warned that ISAs carry many of the
> pitfalls of traditional private student loans, “with the added danger of
> deceptive rhetoric and marketing that obscure their true nature.”

Yeah, except for one massive pitfall that student loans have and ISAs don't:
With ISAs you only start to pay once you actually start making money whereas
student loans saddle graduates with debt regardless of their job prospects. If
the graduates of the Lambda school don't land jobs then the school doesn't get
paid. With traditional student loans, the school gets paid even if their
graduates are unemployed.

ISAs seem strictly better to me. It shifts the risk burden onto the school,
and creates monetary incentives to improve the job prospects of graduates. By
comparison, traditional loans put the risk burden on the student and because
the university is paid upfront there is not as much incentive to better the
job prospects of graduates.

~~~
untog
"strictly better" and "carry many of the pitfalls of traditional private
student loans" aren't contradictory.

ISAs can be, and are, better than student loans. But they're not a universal
good, as demonstrated in this article: if you are on the receiving end of a
crap course that doesn't help you get a job is it really good that you'll have
to pay for it (when you get a well paying job from entirely unconnected
means)?

~~~
manfredo
> if you are on the receiving end of a crap course that doesn't help you get a
> job is it really good that you'll have to pay for it (when you get a well
> paying job from entirely unconnected means)?

When the alternative is:

> if you are on the receiving end of a crap course that doesn't help you get a
> job is it really good that you'll have to pay for it ( _with interest_ ,
> even if you're still unemployed after taking the course)?

Yeah, the former is really good.

Sure, it'd be better if the courses were free. But are you going to spend two
years teaching computer science without pay? I'm not going to, and I'm going
to go out on a limb and guess that most people won't either.

~~~
untog
> When the alternative is

Your supposition is that there are two options for everyone:

a) go deep into student debt

b) go deep into ISA debt

and no others. I contend that isn't the case. You could do neither. When
you're in danger of getting into serious debt via an ISA to a company that
doesn't seem to be competently running courses that will lead to employment
it's only sensible to question whether it's worth signing up in the first
place.

~~~
manfredo
There's no "ISA debt". There's no interest racking up. You may not even pay
anything if you don't get a well paying job.

Sure, an ISA from a bad program is not good. But at least you're not paying
unless you get a well compensated job.

~~~
untog
> There's no "ISA debt"

?!?! Of course there is! What are you repaying when you get a high paying job?

~~~
manfredo
You're paying a percentage of your income, _if_ you're making above a
threshold. This is in comparison to _debt_ which has interest that makes the
debt increase over time until paid off - regardless of whether you are
employed in a well paying job or even whether you're employed at all.

Yes, under both system money is being paid back to someone. But crucially,
there's no interest with an ISA. And furthermore, no money is taken until
people get a job that pays a certain amount.

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crywank
Pull up a chair, DHH is going nuts on twitter about this rn

