

Xavier Niel will open a "revolutionary" computer school  - gwae
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5itiqdPuFgJIqJ-SEe84tXLAMQIEQ?docId=CNG.a4f918170fa7b372b01a63df2cf799c5.a1

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fab13n
Given Niel's [nee-ell] outstanding track record, in terms of turning upside-
down old markets paralyzed by established fat cats; given how firmly education
belongs to this category; and given how badly it needs to be reinvented, this
experiment is really intriguing.

For a bit of cultural context, higher education in France works quite
differently from the US: it's mostly tax-funded; what we call cheap education
is a couple hundreds € a year, full medical insurance included; a very
expensive school would be €4-6€ a year. The best schools are cheap (a few
select ones even offer a modest salary to their students). The worse ones,
"universités", are cheap as well. Expensive schools are in the middle, for
kids of wealthy parents who do OK at school, but aren't good enough to pass
the best schools' very selective entry competitions.

Of course, these institutions being run by academics and civil servants, they
aren't exactly reactive nor modernist; I've recently read a prominent school
official explaining that Wikipedia wasn't trustworthy because it was user-
editable, as opposed to journalists' papers... They offer a very solid
mathematical and scientific background, but usually not much in terms of
immediately employable skills. I'm not sure whether it's a good or a bad
thing: school ought to teach you what you won't learn by yourself, the rest
you'll pick up at your first employment, in exchange for a junior salary. But
I've got the impression that schools filter mathematically-gifted student more
than they train them.

Niel seems to concur, and to believe that maths/science gifts don't correlate
well with actual development skills. Even if it's not true, there certainly
are potentially skilled developers who do poorly at maths and science, and
this talent pool is totally unexploited today, so he's right to try and
valorise it.

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mddw
For non french speaking people : Xavier Niel is the founder of Free, a major
french internet and phone provider, known for kicking hornet nests (he's the
"inventor" of low cost unlimited offers, ADSL back in the days, mobile phone
very recently.)

42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer"
approach to education (whatever it means)

It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 hours of programming
a day), keeps the 1000 best.

~~~
simias
That's pretty much what epitech (Nicolas Sadirac's previous school) is about.
The only difference seems to be that epitech is far from free (it's actually
quite expensive for a "peer to peer" school, since the students do most of the
teaching).

I've been convinced for quite a long that epitech is a scam that just works
because of the enormous demand for IT graduates in the industry. Insert money,
get a diploma. Making a free version now, that could change things. Color me
skeptic but curious.

Disclaimer: I'm a former epitech student, although I dropped out in 3rd year.

~~~
arcatek
Still a 4th year Epitech student, I don't agree with your 'scam' affirmation.
I'm pretty sure that I would not have been able to follow traditional schools
due to some attention problems, but going to Epitech allowed me to meet a lot
of skillful students (including in my own promotion) and get better. Of course
it wasn't free, but it was definitely worth it (I will start my first long
term contract in may, before getting the diplom).

The concept of 42 is really the same that Epitech (but free), but I'm
wondering how they will be able to apply it on a whole new school (since it
means that the p2p model will not work for the first promotion, and that there
isn't any school network). Furthermore, I'm wondering _why_ it's free. "If you
don't pay you're the product". So I'm a bit cautious.

~~~
smonff
It will not be revolutionary at all for students. You can learn the same at
home by coding on Free Softwares, learn everything you need on Stack Exchange
and even find a paid job in the end. Don't need to pay an expensive school or
going to this "free" one.

It will be revolutionary for startups and other enterprises: in France, the
lack of developer is high, and it's painful for startups to find people
(searching for one year before you find or even more). I'm sure this is not a
free school. Students will be the next Niel's friends employee, they will be
inexpensive interns (in France, an internship that longs less than 3 months
can legally be unpaid). Enterprises wants people who knows corporates methods
and how to work in an "agile" way (I mean agility for business). But employee
don't care of business in France.

A real revolution for business, not for students. Developers don't need Niel
to make their own revolution.

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galvanist
An english language story reporting the same news about this new Parisian
developer school "42": [http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-
confirmed-xavie...](http://www.rudebaguette.com/2013/03/26/rumor-confirmed-
xavier-niel-launches-tuition-free-developer-school-baptised-42/)

~~~
Wilya
"After that the 4k selected will participate in a coding session (perhaps kind
of like a mini hack-a-thon) sometime during the summer, from which 1k
“geniuses” will be selected."

Based on what the website and press releases say, it seems like it will be
closer to a 1-month long, 15 hours per day coding session. I wouldn't call
that a "mini hack-a-thon".

They use the term "piscine" (pool), which is the term already used for a
similar training step at Epitech (founded by the same Nicolas Sadirac
mentioned in the article), another private tech-focused school based on
similar ideas of "code, only code".

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Philadelphia
Alternate headline: Xavier Opens School for Gifted Youngsters

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jbensamo
interesting - the high intensity coding approach did not start with Epitech.
It started with Epita, the school created before Epitech. The 15 hours on
boarding was called the swimming pool (you learn to swim or you drown). You
started that right at the beginning of school with no programming experience.
Number of students "giving up" (leaving the school right away) was broadcasted
via a Unix based IM system. Goal was only to keep the students who "get it".
We would have daily projects to turn in before midnight and most projects
names where taken out of the Hitchhiker's. Nicolas is an awesome guy and is
very smart as is his right hand Kwame. He was the sys admin for the school and
led all the technical curriculum. They are both big believers in learn it /
dot it yourself and that's what Nicolas already implemented at Epita as most
of the technical classes were led by students. They can be tough but they are
great technical mentors. I learned a lot there and I think it was worth the
money. I remember that on our first day we had to code 'bdsh' (a light
database in bash). I went to them to ask "what is bash?" (because at the time
I was barely nailing the login screen). Answer was "man bash". Then I asked
"what's man?" - answer was "man man". That's pretty much the approach.

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Dragonai
I just wanted to note that I am incredibly, profoundly amazed by how near-
flawlessly Chrome translated this article.

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doe88
rn@42.fr ? That's sound good!

~~~
ritonlajoie
rn is for Root Nicolas. It's a reference to Nicolas Sadirac, his email is
rn@epitech.net

