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Comment by sanitycheck | Hacker News Reader

I have a similar background, and my initial path into this job in the late 90s was definitely "become a developer in 6 months" using only books on HTML and Perl (and a pirate copy of Photoshop), so I can easily believe with instruction one can become a developer in 3.

There's a lot I couldn't do, of course, and there will be a lot that bootcamp devs can't do. But it's a start, a foot in the door. And it's also a kick up the ass for anyone who doesn't have the discipline to just sit at home studying for months.

I suspect both you and I made useful contributions before we hit the 10 year mark, if your young devs are just doing menial work either they're just not very good or they aren't being given anything solid to work on.

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Ok, I probably was a bit too harsh in my judgement. Those "junior" devs are helping us a lot, and I was in that position for long, too.

Just as an example, let me tell you that we currently have a (self-taught) intern which is years ahead of two developers from bootcamps which have been working with us for over a year.

Getting a job position doesn't automatically mean you are suited for that job, or that you're good at it.

And while there are good dev bootcamps, getting out of one and finding a job, doesn't make you a developer (or an "engineer" either, which in my country is a regulated title)

I could easily imagine a self taught intern being ahead of bootcamp devs, especially if the intern spent their childhood messing with Linux or something.

100% agree that getting a job doesn't mean you're good at it - but getting paid to do programming is the easiest way to keep learning. Maybe a good way to get people improving quicker could be to give them self-contained individual projects and allow them to get stuck and solve their own problems, I don't know? I do see devs spending days asking each other for help on stuff they could probably solve if they thought hard for an hour. Collaboration is good, sure, reinventing the wheel is bad, yes - but just diving in and wrestling with a problem is good practice and (eventually) fun.

I also won't call myself an Engineer for similar reasons, though an American company did give me that job title once.

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