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Comment by tmanderson | Hacker News Reader

I shed tears for the companies that hire the "graduates" of this "start to finish plan."

I don't care how good of an instructor you are, you cannot make a programmer remotely efficient in HTML5 (primarily the countless APIs involved), CSS3, AND JavaScript in only 12 weeks.

I don't know how that job placement is going to work -- but unless these learners start as interns, I don't know how beneficial this would be for them.

There's "jumping into the deep end" and then there's "jumping into the Atlantic." I get a sense of the latter with this program.

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I strongly disagree - 900 hours is plenty of time for the right candidate. Granted, you couldn't put my mom or dad in this course and turn them into a front end dev in 12 weeks, but for the right candidate - absolutely. The program runs from 10am - 9pm, six days a week. That's a lot of commitment, and whoever applies is going to want it. So 12 weeks, absolutely.

It's my opinion that front end devs are born front end devs and don't realize it until they learn to program. The position requires a certain attitude and effective decision-making process that not all programmers possess, and it seems like the Catalyst organizers are screening applicants. A good developer can master any API just by reading the documentation - I guarantee they'll teach them that.

Hey there -- I'm Shawn, a cofounder at Catalyst.

I have to admit that I was also skeptical when I heard about this model, but empirically, it works. (We're not the first program of this type -- there are several others.) Learning goes really fast when you have a lot of smart, dedicated people in a room, and employers see value in graduates.

Meanwhile, consider the alternatives available to our potential students. My buddy JP is probably going to be one of our first students. He had the most popular Harry Potter fansite in the 90s, and has run websites for most places he's worked in the last several years. He's gone through codecademy, but his last job was as a delivery guy. Do you really think this is going to make his future worse?

I completely agree that with the right candidate this could be great -- however, that can be applied to almost any area of knowledge.

I've been fed up lately with all the wrong people learning to program for the sake of learning to program. While I do agree with the fact that it's a very important skill, I also think that physics, mathematics, and so many other ones are too. If I came across a program like this for "serious mathematics" or "astrophysics" that was promising job placement after 12 weeks, I'd call the same.

You should learn something if you genuinely want to learn it, not because you think you'll make money, or if it's really means to an end. I feel that these "learn to program in a matter of weeks" type programs just encourage this behavior in too many people (and also attract them).

12 weeks is hardly enough for foundational programming knowledge -- and cramming more hours into a day may have more negative effects than positive. Above everything else, everyone learns differently and turning education into a sub-par web programmer farm will certainly impede on others' quality of learning.

If this instead went the route of hiring a one-on-one tutor (with an indefinite period of service) I think I'd have higher hopes. I have no doubts that you'll have some bright guys come through your program, but I can guarantee there's going to be a whole lot more of 'em with the wrong mentality -- which will be to their detriment, and possibly yours.

As for your friend JP, no, I do not think this will make his future worse.

Thanks for the thoughtful response. I'm Tony, a co-founder at Catalyst.

There are a couple of interesting points to address here. One is that having an intense program could have a negative effect. In my experience teaching programming in immersion schools like this one, the students who stayed these kinds of hours knew they were going to work that hard from the beginning and just got more out of the program. I myself learned to code through an immersion school and felt more like I was missing out when went home at 7-8 than anything. We are looking for the type of person who wants this kind of all-encompassing program for 12 weeks.

I also think one-on-one tutors are great ideas, but for me personally being around a room full of other motivated people that are in my same position is so much more motivating.

I'd love to hear about what you think the 'wrong mentality' is. Feel free to ping me offline and let's chat.

>>>I've been fed up lately with all the wrong people learning to program for the sake of learning to program.

Do you mean that from the perspective of having such people clogging resume inboxes with insufficient skills and experience?

Hey Shawn. I've been looking into Dev Bootcamp so to hear about Catalyst is exciting for me. I'm surprised there are several other programs of this type though. Which ones are they?

http://www.quora.com/Computer-Programming/What-are-the-best-...

Can you share the empirical evidence that it works? There is a lot of talk about these programs but not many resources on the outcomes that I know of.

Not sure if this counts as empirical evidence but I was a Dev Bootcamp graduate. Working full time now. I recognize the deficiencies in my knowledge and experience before anyone else does, and there are many, but I am stil learning and loving what I do.

I'm also a Dev Bootcamp graduate and I work at Hipmunk now as a software engineer. Something like 93% of my class (summer) got hired so I'd say there's _some_ empirical evidence. What kind of engineers we'll be in a year's time will be even better evidence and from my own personal experience, I think the results will be positive.

I help run App Academy (appacademy.io), a similar program also based in SF. For what it's worth, we graduated our first class about 3 weeks ago, and our students have already received offers from companies such as Twilio and Thoughtbot.

Congrats on the launch Catalyst!

Not to mention 12 weeks with 900 hours worth of instruction and projects.

900 / (12 * 7) = 10.7 hours per day including weekends, or 15 hours a day without. These classes better be absolutely riveting to keep a student's attention.

Whoops, that's an error (now fixed). Our hours are 10-9, six days a week.

> I shed tears for the companies that hire the "graduates" of this "start to finish plan."

Companies can hire them as interns and pay them as such for a trial period. In the US, companies can also fire at will if the experiment doesn't work out. Moreover, finding front-end programmers is generally hard, so for many companies this is probably a worthwhile experiment.

>>>I shed tears for the companies that hire the "graduates" of this "start to finish plan."

I'd like to take that (I'm in NYC, tho) and would have no intention of being employed after it. I'd create my own stuff for me.

Me too, but I'd rather go through a program on the LAMP stack instead.

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