Hacker News Reader

>What's the UK equivalent to Lambda School? The French equivalent?

France has *tons* of vocational dev training, through a variety of systems. They are mostly split between :

- Public technical schools (ran by the state) that deliver degrees with ECTS credits (pan-European degree system) over 2/3 years.

- Technical training schools, mostly private, that deliver titles validated by the Ministry of Work. ie. industry certifications only valid domestically. Over 6/12 months.

French engineering schools are a completely different beast and would be considered part of the university system in the US. They issue masters degrees over 5 years valid pretty much everywhere and the title of Engineer (it's illegal in France to call yourself an engineer without it !).

france has a lot of engineering schools, which are not universities. autoconf is one famous project from a french engineering school.

likewise germany has the fachhochschule, which is also expressly for vocational education at university level.

i would not call those equivalents to lamda school, mostly because lambda school is private profit oriented startup, whereas french and german engineering schools are established government funded public schools with a history of more than 50 years.

one could argue that maybe US community colleges should be the US equivalent of those schools with a focus on vocational education.

VLC is another such project coming from a french engineering school AFAIK.

I do some TA in such schools (ENSEIRB) and every year I make students contribute to OSS, generally by writing small plug-ins to an existing software, it always works fine. Not a lot of them keep going afterwards though.

Same applies in Portugal and Spain, actually I think most European countries follow similar models.

Not in Spain.

I people that took their degrees at universidades and politecnicas.

Politécnicas are regular universities with a different name.

Quoting https://es.sawakinome.com/articles/university-education/diff... as I cannot be bothered to search it more than a few seconds.

" En breve:

Diferencia entre politécnico y universidad.

• Las universidades tienen un enfoque más amplio y enseñan materias con énfasis en impartir conocimientos básicos con muchos aspectos teóricos con un poco de trabajo de proyectos y tareas de laboratorio..

• Por otro lado, los politécnicos son más prácticos en su enfoque y toman cursos más pequeños que son específicos de la industria y no se enseñan en las universidades..

• Así que además de los títulos de ingeniería, hay una gran cantidad de otros cursos, diplomas y certificados que se ofrecen en estos politécnicos que son de menor duración y ayudan a los estudiantes a obtener empleos en industrias. "

For the english speaking crowd, https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=es&tl=en&u=https:/...

That's SEO spam and doesn't necessarily refer to Spain. From the way it's written it looks like it was written by a South American.

In Portugal ?

Yep, unless politécnicos and universidades now have turned into the same thing after Bologna.

Austria has the Fachhochschule as well! Same thing as in Germany pretty much.

I don't mean universities should teach some very abstract computer science and exclusively prepare people for research career. But I don't think that vocational learning process as if you train an apprentice to work on the latest model of a lathe is a good model for engineers either.

I just think universities should give their alumni focus on the big picture and long term, they will get enough exposure to mundane tasks like reviews at work.

That is why in Portugal you want the full learning package, CS with enough programming projets, you go into a 5 year degree in an university, certified by the Engineering order.

You want some CS concepts, with emphasis on what is fashionable the work market, you got into a three year degree in a vocational degree.

This changed a bit with Bologna, but the overall process is mostly the same, just now the Enginnering order requires the master degree (which is the old 5 years degree).

Presumably "Bologna" is referring to the bologna process? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bologna_Process

(I had only heard of the city in Italy and the type of sausage so was confused, this was the most likely sounding thing that came up on a search)

The French equivalent to Lambda school is https://www.42.fr/ which actually predates Lambda by 3 years and is operating at larger scale (29 campuses worldwide). It's also free unlike Lambda.

"A formal apprenticeship model would be great for programming, but there's a lot of obstacles to that."

Is there? The standard for the locality I live in, around the University of Michigan, is that students seem to be trying to pick up internships every summer now, including their first summer after being a freshman. It also not uncommon to see people who graduated with several internships on their resume. When I graduated ~2000 the general standard was one in your last summer.

Exactly, I had only one summer internship back when I graduated many years ago, now a days 2-3 is not unusual

Yes - but that's an informal system, not a formal one, and linked to being a university student. Accessing it without having gone through university admissions is harder.

> A formal apprenticeship model would be great for programming

It exists since 1997-1999, varying on the country. An apprenticeship takes nominally between 3 and 3½ years, concludes with a level 4 EQR and the rules and by-laws are determined by the chamber of commerce, who also holds the examinations. It is treated as a trade, similar to blue collar professions like heating installer, lathe operator etc.

Wouldn't Strive School (https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/strive-school) be one of the schools trying to implement the Lambda School model in Europe and the UK?

I don't know how famous/big they are, but I have already heard about it from more than one person, which makes me think that they are gaining traction.

thats not the point though. most that do not do university, will not on their own accord get to the level of cs understanding that graduates have.

programming is much much more that being proficient in the current tools of the day.

The taxpayers want skills education and that's what they are paying for. The ones receiving the taxpayer funds want to promote fringe ideas and revolutionary societies. So this is a typical principal-agent problem -- the universities take public funds and public guarantees and then try to redirect those for their own private agenda.

This seems very shortsighted. The fringe ideas as you call them are the modern ideas in many cases. Companies can equally benefit from these new ideas coming from recent grads.

University is a time to explore new ideas and old ideas at a level of detail that one hopes they can maintain throughout their career, but most likely once one enters a career they are focused on the needs of their employer, which is not necessarily the best for personal advancement or the advancement of software as a whole.