Just learn to code
-
West Virginians Now Say Code School Promising Jobs Was a Fraud - Slashdot
"Two years after dozens of West Virginians left their jobs to take classes from Mined Minds, a nonprofit that promised to teach them to write computer code, former students have filed a lawsuit claiming the entire operation was a fraud," according to a report: The program promised a better life...
How does one code “would you like fries with that?”
-
"Many students dropped out. Those who stayed say they were given vague assignments with little instruction and told to "Google it" when they had questions"
I'd call that a solid first lesson in programming.
From my experience, people:
- Don't know how to think
- Don't understand that programming (problem-solving) is about being able to solve problems.
- Don't realize how hard it is until they try it without handholding.
So forcing people to start doing that is, I'd say, a pretty good intro to the whole field.
(Of course, there's limi... actually, no. There's no limits to the approach. That's how I learned to program. And I didn't even have google for the first 4 years of the process. And I was 10 years old. They shouldn't probably have taken money for it, but other than that, nothing wrong with the approach.)
-
@sh_code: there are a few IT schools in France that are based on this principle (among others), notably this one:
42 does not have lectures or practical work supervised by teachers. Students carry out projects proposed by the pedagogic team, and are free to organise their own time.
The schools are open 24/7. Students help each other and use the Internet for their projects.
Students have no time limits in which to complete their projects. They validate the projects by correcting each other's work. Validation of a project increases the level of the students, allowing them to unlock new and more difficult challenges.
During their time at the school, students have to undertake internships. To qualify for an internship a student must have validated a certain number of projects and passed five exams.
Whether this is a great idea or a
has been the subject of heated debate for years in the French programming community, especially given the brazen personality of the founders of the school.
-
@Zerosquare said in Just learn to code:
@sh_code: there are a few IT schools in France that are based on this principle (among others), notably this one:
42 does not have lectures or practical work supervised by teachers. Students carry out projects proposed by the pedagogic team, and are free to organise their own time.
The schools are open 24/7. Students help each other and use the Internet for their projects.
Students have no time limits in which to complete their projects. They validate the projects by correcting each other's work. Validation of a project increases the level of the students, allowing them to unlock new and more difficult challenges.
During their time at the school, students have to undertake internships. To qualify for an internship a student must have validated a certain number of projects and passed five exams.
Whether this is a great idea or a
has been the subject of heated debate for years in the French programming community, especially given the brazen personality of the founders of the school.I would say that the "no time limits" part is a serious anti-lesson. The real world doesn't work like that.
-
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Just learn to code:
@Zerosquare said in Just learn to code:
@sh_code: there are a few IT schools in France that are based on this principle (among others), notably this one:
42 does not have lectures or practical work supervised by teachers. Students carry out projects proposed by the pedagogic team, and are free to organise their own time.
The schools are open 24/7. Students help each other and use the Internet for their projects.
Students have no time limits in which to complete their projects. They validate the projects by correcting each other's work. Validation of a project increases the level of the students, allowing them to unlock new and more difficult challenges.
During their time at the school, students have to undertake internships. To qualify for an internship a student must have validated a certain number of projects and passed five exams.
Whether this is a great idea or a
has been the subject of heated debate for years in the French programming community, especially given the brazen personality of the founders of the school.I would say that the "no time limits" part is a serious anti-lesson. The real world doesn't work like that.
Yeah, in the real world, there are lots of arbitrary deadlines, so much so that you have no idea when the deadline is a serious one.
-
@Carnage "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by." - Douglas Adams
-
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/12/us/mined-minds-west-virginia-coding.html
Sure doesn't sound very well-thought-out... My brother went to Prime Digital Academy and, while it's severely accelerated, the teachers are extremely competent, and they really do have a lot of industry contacts that they leverage to get the students jobs. He got a job straight out of school, and has been happy there for a year now.
-
@Steve_The_Cynic said in Just learn to code:
I would say that the "no time limits" part is a serious anti-lesson. The real world doesn't work like that.
The article seems misinformed on that point. I've read several articles interviewing students, and they all mention time limits.
-
@Zerosquare said in Just learn to code:
The article seems misinformed
I'm shocked! Shocked, I say, to find misinformation in the NYT.
-
@sh_code said in Just learn to code:
Those who stayed say they were given vague assignments with little instruction and told to "Google it" when they had questions"
"Google it" isn't teaching. Of course a lot of programming ends up like that, but it's not good to turn out more stackoverflow copy-pasta.
Vague assignments are crap in this context. If active teaching is involved then the process of solving the problem ought to start to with 'how' not 'what' - otherwise you're wasting the time of the student.
I'd call that a solid first lesson in programming.
No. It's what a lot of real-life is like, but it has no place when it comes to teaching programming.
And I was 10 years old
The way you learn when you're ten is radically different from the approach when you are older. Like you, I started learning programming when I was young (~ 8/9) - at that point I'd absorb details through my skin without conscious effort - it's not like that now
-
@japonicus said in Just learn to code:
The way you learn when you're ten is radically different from the approach when you are older. Like you, I started learning programming when I was young (~ 8/9) - at that point I'd absorb details through my skin without conscious effort - it's not like that now
Eh...yes and no. I can pick up a lot of concepts much more easily now than I ever could have back then. OTOH, I generally need more motivation now because it does require effort.
-
@boomzilla Yeah, as far as technical concepts go I think I'm better at learning new ones now than when I first started learning. But it could also be that I've seen more stuff so there's more stuff that I can relate to whatever it is that I'm learning.
Real world languages, on the other hand, are definitely easier in your single digit years.
-
There are two effects going on here: First, yes, young people have better linguistic learning and inductive logic abilities (the ability to infer rules from observed phenomena). Second, transferability of skills: I play guitar well, so I can play mandolin and ukulele passingly because it's basically the same skill. The former decreases with age and the latter increases. I'm not sure which effect is stronger; it most likely varies between individuals.
-
@error said in Just learn to code:
I'm not sure which effect is stronger; it most likely varies between individuals.
It varies over time too.
42 (school) - Wikipedia
