Denver's gSchool: 6 months and 60 hours per week turns you into a web developer
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And I've been trying to calculate how good of an investment these programs are. They help with job placement, which is valuable. Then again, the market is so hot for developers now that anyone who self-studies for 6 months could find a job fairly easily on his own.
As for the instruction itself, there are so many resources online (free, I might add) that it seems almost wasteful to drop 20k to learn when you could learn for free, assuming one possesses sufficient self-motivation and knows where to look.
Finally, there is the possibility of a potential huge opportunity cost one can't overlook:
the option of finding a paying jr developer job where one learns on-site. Instead of -20k you get 30k (based on 60k/year working for 1/2 year) and I assume end up roughly even in coding ability. That's $50,000 extra in your pocket, with demonstrable real-world experience rather than "school" experience.
Yes, you can find a job on your own. But not all jobs are the same. Maybe they'll find you a better job.
Yes, you can learn on your own. But I don't think there's any question that a good teacher can help you learn faster.
gSchool is new. So it's too early to find hard evidence either way about the quality of jobs you'll get, etc. But if they give you the right teacher, education can be a good investment.
Also, there are people who have learned everything online. They are out there - thousands- heck- tens of thousands of them on the web. Granted, maybe gSchool will help educate some people who can't learn themselves. To those people the 20k will be worth it.
I personally am #50 on the Rails Contributors list all-time, so I know a thing or two about Rails. ;).
> To those people the 20k will be worth it.
While there are many people who are able to learn online, there are many that are not. Also, our schedule is just a tad more intense than most autodidacts go for. And the money isn't worth it just for money: it's for cred. I once had a funded startup, and the fact that we went through a YC-like program opened many doors, simply due to social proof. Those who teach themselves have to gain this proof some other way.
I'm the lead instructor for gSchool, Jeff Casimir. I've been teaching Ruby since 2005 and started Jumpstart Lab in 2009. I have both more classroom experience (total) and more hours spent teaching these technologies than anyone in the world.
I wish there were dozens or hundreds of people learning these skills by themselves on the web, but it's just not happening fast enough. The talent shortage is the #1 problem facing most small software businesses, and there's no fix in sight. This is just our little contribution.
What they weren't was super quick to resolve errors. That can only really come from experience. They'd be able to figure out if something went wrong, but whereas I (#50 on the Rails contributors list) would know instantly what was wrong, it'd take them some time. That's to be expected from new devs, though, no way around that but time.
I have two thoughts.
First, there's more to learning how to be a software developer than downloading a bunch of information into your head. Most software projects fail for human reasons, not technical reasons. Giving feedback effectively, receiving feedback non-defensively, articulating your ideas to other people of varying backgrounds and skill, convincing teammates to follow your plan, inspiring your co-workers with your clarity of thought and action, etc. are all real, hard-to-learn skills that are critical to being a great software developer which. One would also be hard-pressed to learn on them on their own since each is, by definition, an interpersonal skill.
As someone who has interviewed and hired dozens of engineers, my experience is that "junior developers," as deep as their knowledge of data structures and algorithms might be, are lacking in exactly this dimension. It's the #1 reason people are afraid to hire them and dismiss as "too junior."
As a case study, Hipmunk (http://hipmunk.com), a Python shop, hired a summer student from Dev Bootcamp. He was a great developer, but they obviously didn't hire him for his mad Python skills since DBC teaches Ruby and Rails. He had no significant prior programming experience when he entered DBC.
I know, I know: anecdotal, etc. etc.
Second, when developers talk about self-learning, I think there's a huge selection bias. The way people are "meant" to learn computer science, software engineering, etc. selects for autodidacts. There are so many more dimensions to how people learn effectively.
This is coming from someone who taught himself C using K&R in high school.
The two things you said are categorically false for many people: they just don't possess the internal mental models necessary to learn how to program on their own, and don't know how to find answers. They might not even know what they're seeing is an answer, unless they've formed the question correctly.
When friends ask me what programming language they should learn, I tell them they should learn whatever programming language more of their friends know.
Social support, similarly motivated peers, role models, and even just the knowledge that they have access to expertise that can get them unstuck when they're tired and frustrated are huge factors in getting people to learn. They will be more fearless, more intrepid, and work their way up to a place where they have the confidence and skill to both learn on their own and on the job.
If you're curious about the skill level of some of the students graduating from programs like gSchool and Dev Bootcamp, here are some examples from the fall:
* http://0xfffc.tumblr.com/post/35751220092/6502-assembler-and...
* https://gist.github.com/aafabcfadafb4563fd3e
* http://flavorite.tumblr.com/post/35185577034/behind-the-scen...
Shameless plug
Dev Bootcamp's fall cohort graduates next week, and December 7th is our hiring day. If you're interested in attending, sign up here: http://bit.ly/hn_dbc
Yes! That's what makes this kind of thing worthwhile!
http://devbootcamp.com/ (mentioned elsewhere in this thread)
All are based in SF, except Flatiron, which is in NYC.
(I'm a cofounder at Catalyst. Ask me anything!)
Jeff in particular taught high school in inner-city DC with Teach for America. He then went on to help start-up a school and served as principle-ish, if I remember my history right. So he has quite a bit of Actual Teaching Experience.
As someone who's taught alongside him, Jeff's really good at making sure that everyone is paying attention, that he's not going too fast or too slow, and balancing questions with moving the lecture forward.
Oh, and Jumpstart believes in its teaching so much that we put our curriculum online: http://tutorials.jumpstartlab.com/ We sell teaching, not secret-sauce lessons.
Teaching, just like programming, takes a ton of practice. I spend four years in the classroom, another two coaching teachers, and have been running training classes for Jumpstart Lab since 2009. I don't think I'm a gifted teacher, I've just practiced more than most.
Frank Webber, who's joining me, spent a significant amount of time teaching a year-long course at the University of Washington as well as spending time 1-on-1 mentoring other developers in Seattle.
Steve Klabnik has spent a lot of time with me co-teaching private training sessions and spends a tremendous amount of time "teaching" online through open source work.
It's just a matter of understanding the methodologies of teaching and a bunch of practice. We've practiced more than anyone else.
I help run App Academy (appacademy.io), a hacker academy based in SF.
Feel free to reach out to us (contact@appacademy.io) if you have any questions about our program!
Here's a list of hacker academies to get you started: http://qr.ae/1pZOh
One big consideration is that there'll be a three-month window in between sessions for the instructors to recuperate, revise the curriculum, and recruit a new class. A facility for 24+3, the laptops, administrative help, marketing, design...
If we were each making 300K the first thing I'd do is drop the price. The costs dictated the tuition.
16/4 = 4 months * 2 semesters/yr = 8 months.
We are naively assuming that semesters don't include test-weeks or other vacations and that all 16 weeks are education-filled.
Pricing for a college education [1] in-state public college avg ~22k private college avg ~44k
44k/8 months = $5500/mo
22k/8 months = ~$2750/mo
20k/6 months = ~$3333/mo
Pricing seems about right for a low end year of college.
[1] http://www.collegedata.com/cs/content/content_payarticle_tmp...
[edit: formatting]
Disclaimer -- I'm a cofounder at a similar program.
To give you some perspective, I am in $70,000 in debt from my undergrad CS degree, and that took four years. If this program would have existed when I was a freshman, I would have done the math, dropped out, and done this in a heartbeat.
But I'm guessing Bart, like me, has interviewed kids coming out with CS degrees who just can't program. To be honest, it breaks my heart. If you complete a four year program and can't program FizzBuzz in a language of your choice then you have been completely bamboozled. I would not have believed this possible until I saw it myself.
Having taught at Boston College's Center for Digital Imaging and Arts (CDIA), I was not impressed with the curriculum and, most importantly, the expectations for students were disappointingly low. It was more of a "pass the time, get the certificate" than a genuine learning environment. I hope it's different here in Denver.
If I were an expert why would I apply? :\