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Comment by tinyvm | Hacker News Reader

This trend of "Everyone can make a career in code" is getting out of control.

Becoming a software developer is an insanely difficult and ungrateful journey.

This type of "School" make me incredibly uncomfortable has they really promote an unrealistic image of the "Software Developer Career" where everything is super easy , and within 6 months ( seriously ? ) you'll be ready and making 120K$/Year.

Software is a very particular type of industry where turn over is insanely high and most of the stuff a developer has to do has often nothing to do with the technology he learnt at school but instead is about mixing all his CS knowledge ( Software/System Architecture , OSI Model , POSIX etc... ) to come up with the best possible solution to solve an issue.

Today it seems like Coding School are now becoming the norm , and "Software Developer" is now widely considered as just "Coding" or being a "Coder".

This is sad and frightening at the same time.

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...but instead is about mixing all his CS knowledge ( Software/System Architecture , OSI Model , POSIX etc... ) to come up with the best possible solution to solve an issue.

The majority of software development is essentially blue collar work now. You don't need a CS degree to make a mobile app or a JS-driven web page. At least 50% of developers haven't used a POSIX library in their entire career. They probably don't know what POSIX is. Software development is mostly glueing together other people's code in ways that don't trip you up later. We'll always need some of the low-level clever coders to build the foundation libraries we use, but that doesn't mean every developer has to be one of those people, or even capable of being one of those people.

And the thing is ... I think this is great. Making software is fun, comfortable desk work that loads of people should have the opportunity to do. Given the demand for new applications we need to make the barriers to working as a developer as low as possible.

I've been saying the same thing about a lot of development being blue collar work for years now, and I have mixed feelings about it. I think it's great that there's at least another skilled labor job out there that's well paying (for now) and accessible to people, but the way it's manifesting itself is also reenforcing the same sort of gatekeeping, double standards, and shibboleths that have kept people from moving up the ladder for a long time.

In particular, for those of us who came up through development 10+ years ago but didn't get formal CS training, we're often being shuffled into these blue collar jobs even though we've put the time and effort into developing all of the CS skills that we'd need for the more sophisticated jobs. I went to a trade school for a non-CS degree, then spent over a decade writing everything from kernel code and device drivers to novel software exploits to designing and implementing video codecs, compiler toolchains, type systems, and large scale distributed systems. With the rising tide of bootcamps, all of that still matters, and there are still some good opportunities out there, but the pool of opportunities for interesting and fulfilling work is shrinking rapidly as the volume of jobs doing devops, mobile and web frontends, or menial node.js crud applications has been growing exponentially.

The majority of software development is essentially blue collar work now.

And like lots of blue-collar work companies are scrambling to offshore it to the cheapest locations and don’t care about quality because it’s all disposable.

I could not in good faith recommend this to anyone now, become a plumber or a nurse, that’s not going offshore anytime soon.

People have been saying that for 20 years, and yet most programmers I know (even outside of the Bay Area) are making well into the six figures.

So are plumbers in Kensington (an expensive Borough in London). Wealthy businesses and customers pay their staff a lot regardless of the job.

Lambda School is about 1500 hours long, not including our required pre-course work - about 75% of the length, hour for hour, of the core track of a CS degree + homework. It is absolutely possible to be able to learn to solve software problems well, understanding requisite computer science fundamentals, in that time frame. Are you building on the Linux kernel at that point? No. Are you using software to solve important problems that companies will pay good money to have solved? Absolutely.

It’s still very difficult, certainly. Almost every Lambda School student will tell you it’s the most difficult thing they’ve ever done. And they’re not done learning at that point, just able to contribute to the point that they can be paid to continue learning.

Do I believe the pool of people capable of doing that is bigger than and different than the pool of people currently graduating from universities with a four year degree? Absolutely.

> promote an unrealistic image of the "Software Developer Career" ... and within 6 months ( seriously ? ) you'll be ready and making 120K$/Year.

Huh? What's "unrealistic" about it? Lambda and App Academy regularly graduate students making that kind of money.

> most of the stuff a developer has to do has often nothing to do with the technology he learnt at school

Given you agree that much of what you learn during a CS degree gets supplanted by real-world knowledge once you get a job, I don't see what your problem is with bootcamps like this one.

(Makers Academy grad here; 4 years into tech and gainfully employed at http://pivotal.io thank you very much)

Software development is hard, but why does it have to be taught at a university, where you learn core concepts but are not learning skills and experiences that companies are looking for? I think to address your concerns, if Lambda can have continuing education where you can take more abstract and CS classes, students can converge to have the same knowledge as a CS student and be more skilled to integrate that knowledge.

I know plenty of people who've gone through bootcamps who are now productive engineers at top startups and big tech. Even though I have a degree in computer science, I'm not at all scared nor "frightened" by these schools popping up. They help those who are self-motivated anyway. Props to Lambda School!

you could've just quoted gran torino 'get off my lawn' instead of typing all that

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