
Billionaire founder of Free launches free coding college - chewymouse
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/08/can-42-us-a-free-coding-school-run-by-a-french-billionaire-actually-work/
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gregschlom
I visited 42 in Paris a while ago and chatted with some students. It's
impressive. Technically, the program is really good. They start with some
pretty low level stuff (they learn C and reimplement bits of the std lib) and
go from there.

But the most impressive thing was the potential of the school as a "social
elevator" (ascenseur social) as we say in French - meaning a way for people
from lower class backgrounds to land middle / upper class jobs. One such story
that stuck with me was a guy who used to work construction jobs. Then he
landed a job as a sales guy at the French equivalent of Best Buy. There he
heard of 42 and signed up for it on the demo computers in the store (he had no
computer or internet access of its own). When I met him, he was halfway
through 42's program, and he's probably working a pretty nice job now. Truly
an inspiring story.

~~~
yodsanklai
> There he heard of 42

There are many French universities with CS programs that are virtually free
(and work as social elevators too).

Maybe that's one of 42's strengths. Via their media exposure, they can attract
students who wouldn't have thought about studying otherwise.

~~~
ThePawnBreak
Universities, especially French ones, are far worse for teaching programmming,
for several reasons:

\- they are highly theoretical and biased against people who are not good at
math; I studied CS, and I had to take more electrical engineering and math
courses in my first two years than programming-related classes. This is very
demotivating for someone who goes to university to learn programming, rather
than physics or advanced mathematics

\- they take too long and are full of useless classes (useless for getting a
job, not in general)

\- although the courses are free, it is very expensive to support yourself for
the 3-4 years it takes to finish university, and you also need to buy books
and other materials

\- the most difficult courses are usually not programming related, but
science; so you could invest 4 years of your life and end up without a diploma
because you couldn't pass Advanced Physics or Calculus 3, despite being a good
programmer.

~~~
yodsanklai
> they are highly theoretical and biased against people who are not good at
> math

Maybe it has changed but it's certainly not the case currently.

> I studied CS, and I had to take more electrical engineering and math courses
> in my first two years than programming-related classes.

Nowadays, most of the classes are CS related. There are still some (basic)
maths because they are relevant to so many branches of CS.

> are full of useless classes

Well, that may be true. There will always be useless classes because there are
many different career paths.

But I think you shouldn't underestimate the value of more foundational
classes.

To give you an example, when I was an undergraduate 20 years ago, I was taught
OCaml (many people complained it was a useless academic language), as well as
tons of maths. Recently, I decided to learn myself some machine learning and
Spark. It was a breeze as I already knew most of the maths and the functional
programming model. It would have been much more difficult otherwise.

~~~
kevindong
Each university is different. So, your experience will vary from the other
person's experience.

At my (American) university, we do take more non-CS-related courses than CS-
courses in our first two years.

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mrb
3 of the 4 cofounders of 42 have previously worked at Epita, a private French
computer science school that I attended and graduated from in 2003.
Specifically, Nicolas Sadirac was the key director-level person in charge of
pretty much everything: designing the extensive computer labs and networks
used by all students and staff for _everything_ (NetBSD and SunOS
workstations, OSF/1 servers, NNTP newsgroups, a custom internal instant
messaging system "Netsoul", etc... aah memories), selecting which classes to
teach, hiring professors, and as a true hacker himself I believe he was even
writing/designing (at least initially) the various programming tests,
including those used during the famous "piscine". As to Kwame, he was working
closely directly under Nicolas. I remember him as being also very talented,
jovial, and very loud :) Florian, I don't remember him personally. I am less
sure what connection Xavier and Nicolas have, but they seem to have known each
other for a long time. Xavier appears to have not attended our taught at
Epita? I could be wrong.

Epita was very successful thanks to its insanely intense focus on
fundamentals: algorithms, programming, OS/compiler/DB design, low level stuff
(reimplementing the standard C library, a 3D engine, a UNIX shell, etc). I
absolutely loved all of this. However its investors and other directors wanted
to change the school to have more general/non-programming courses in order to
be recognized by the CTI (commissions des titres d'ingénieur, basically to
give Epita's diploma more credence in the eyes of mainstream employers). But
Nicolas disagreed and believed keeping the focus on fundamentals was key.

So in 1999 he left and started his own school called Epitech. For a while
Epita and Epitech shared buildings and even some professors.

Eventuality Epitech became as successful as Epita (even more in my opinion).
It gained a great reputation and graduates are courted by many employers.

I have been following the progress of 42 over the last few years, and I am
really excited for them. They have the right team to succeed, that's for sure.

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tek4
The school 42 its NOT A BOOTCAMP. I think people are not reading the article
because i see a lot of people comparing it to bootcamps. It lasts a lot more
than bootcamps, 3 years and students never learn rails javascript or any web
developement stuff. [EDIT] You learn the base, lowllevel stuff and you code a
lot. Afterwards you are able to pick any language or framework in a week.
Students learn to teach themselves.

~~~
fk_mks
There is already some web development projects (currently html/css/php and
javascript), and RoR subjects are being crafted by students. We start with low
level, and after some basics (unix shell, stdlib, printf, corewar, raytracing
3d-engine and web), there's some sysadmin stuff, pentesting, kernel
programming, functionnal programming, unity, machine learning, etc.

~~~
truth_sentinell
Holy shit that sounds a world more exciting than my newton's law classes and
my literature as well in Computer Science. I think I just lost 6 years of my
life.

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yodsanklai
I've always been suspicious about those schools. Computer science is far more
than just "coding". While I'm sure many cool projects can be done with
patience and motivation, there is also a lot of fundamental knowledge that is
hard to acquire just by doing unsupervised coding projects.

~~~
onion2k
_I 've always been suspicious about those schools. Computer science is far
more than just "coding"._

The difference between a CS degree and a coding bootcamp is _very_ similar to
the difference between being a computer scientist and a developer. In my 20
years of development so far I've never implemented a doubly linked list or
designed a search algorithm.

~~~
sangnoir
> In my 20 years of development so far I've never implemented a doubly linked
> list or designed a search algorithm.

You probably target a non-constrained platform, even so, as both a web
developer(!) and a CS graduate, I've had plenty of scenarios where using the
right data structure and/or algorithm give better perf and/or cleaner code.
Sometimes I just use the very handy hash table and call it a day, but having
the tools at my disposals is useful.

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d--b
Would love to see comments from someone studying there or someone who has done
it in France. Also, I understand the costs of running this school are low, but
still how are they funding this?

~~~
rahimnathwani
"How can 42 be free?

42 is free thanks to the financial support of Xavier Niel, a French
entrepreneur and the founder of the telecommunications company ‘Free’ in
France."

~~~
CaptSpify
But is there a monetization model? Or is it just going to be free forever?

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jokoon
I was admitted for more tests for the one in paris, but living in paris is
outright impossible for me money wise.

The idea is great, but when you're poor, the price of the school is not the
only problem. In france education is already free, and the problem is still
the cost of living.

Obviously it is a great alternative because the selection process in other
universities is tedious (you need to be good in high school etc), meanwhile
with 42 you just do some fancy tests, so it's more open.

But I'm curious about how poor students can really finance staying at 42.
Students here are already working more hours outside so they can study.

Obviously, making such school in the US is going to make it more interesting
than 42 in france.

~~~
bench_soup
>Obviously it is a great alternative because the selection process in other
universities is tedious

That's not true, in France going to the university is open to anybody that
obtained the "Bac" (not necessarly a general or scientific one, doesn't
matter, you can get in mathematics there with a mechanics degree) and if you
don't have it there are some formations to get an equivalence, opening the
doors for you. (of course it will be extremely difficult to catch up in
compsci for someone without a scientific bac but he can try) And the
university is almost free (less than 500e a year if you don't get any social
help)

It is true however that you need good grades to get to the top engineering
schools.

As you said the bigger issue anyway is the cost of living.

~~~
weddpros
I think 42 is right: people can become good software engineers, even if they
suck at university studies. CS studies were elitist, with math prerequisites:
now they're more open.

"of course it will be extremely difficult to catch up in compsci for someone
without a scientific bac but he can try": universities are subjectively making
this hard. 42 fixes it.

(I'm a french CS engineer, and I'm part of a system I despise)

~~~
yodsanklai
> universities are subjectively making this hard. 42 fixes it.

I don't buy that at all. Programming is programming. If you can do it at "42"
(without supervision), I'm pretty sure you can do it in a university too. An
important part of university teaching is also based on programming projects,
and class attendance is usually not mandatory. I assume there are more classes
that don't involve coding than at 42 (some maths, some more theoretical CS
stuff) but not enough to fail an otherwise motivated student.

Besides, if some student is unable to take a few classes they doesn't like,
I'd be worried about their ability to adapt to a professional context.

Actually, I taught CS in a French university, and usually, the only students
that fail totally lack interest in the discipline. I can remember one or two
students that liked programming as a hobby and quit or fail, but it's pretty
rare.

~~~
weddpros
CS courses are not be the culprit to the failures I have in mind...

I had to study Chemistry for 2 years (no CS DEUG at that time), failed to pass
because of thermodynamics, was finally rescued in-extremis because the jury's
head was also my CS teacher (CS was an option). I entered a CS engineer school
and things went very smoothly after that.

I almost failed to study CS! because of thermodynamics. It could have been
because of bio-chemistry, or maths. None of which were needed to study CS.

42 fixes this. Their pre-requisites are relevant to what you'll need to study.

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bogomipz
Was anybody else surprised to see beginners are taught C and spend time
reimplementing parts of the standard library. C is pretty low level for
introduction to coding no?

~~~
Avshalom
It's what I was taught back 06 in CS101, though they switched to Java sometime
in the next year or two.

~~~
wolfpwner
When I started university in 2010, we still learned C and C++ for first year.

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prawn
I think we'll see more of these types of opportunities, both private and
public. And we'll get to the point that motivation is a big, remaining issue -
starting a program like this (or any online course) and seeing it through.

~~~
weddpros
if only we could get the point that motivation is the solution, not the
problem ;-)

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zouhair
One of the things I miss from France, my Freebox (which is actually 2 boxes),
that thing's a beast.

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caub
it's great, except the Macs

~~~
amorphid
I tried learning Ruby on Rails on Windows 7. It mostly worked, until it
didn't. When I asked others around for help, and it became clear I'd done some
newb thing to generate an un-google-able error, I was on my own. No one I knew
developed on Windows. After being stuck enough times with maybe-Windows-
specific errors, I decided I need a Mac.

~~~
truth_sentinell
I don't understand how it could be a problem to do RoR in windows?

~~~
amorphid
Some gems reference Posix specific things. And your Gemfile.lock may include
the platform upon which Bundler was run, be it Windows or Posix, and that can
be a problem when trying to install gems on a different platform. And some
nice utilities, such as Ruby version managers, don't work on Windows.

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dizzy3gg
Stupid Questions :(

