42 is a programmer school, totally free of charge, with a "peer to peer" approach to education (whatever it means)
It'll take 4000 students and, after a marathon month (15 hours of programming a day), keeps the 1000 best.
I've been convinced for quite a long that epitech is a scam that just works because of the enormous demand for IT graduates in the industry. Insert money, get a diploma. Making a free version now, that could change things. Color me skeptic but curious.
Disclaimer: I'm a former epitech student, although I dropped out in 3rd year.
The concept of 42 is really the same that Epitech (but free), but I'm wondering how they will be able to apply it on a whole new school (since it means that the p2p model will not work for the first promotion, and that there isn't any school network). Furthermore, I'm wondering why it's free. "If you don't pay you're the product". So I'm a bit cautious.
It will be revolutionary for startups and other enterprises: in France, the lack of developer is high, and it's painful for startups to find people (searching for one year before you find or even more). I'm sure this is not a free school. Students will be the next Niel's friends employee, they will be inexpensive interns (in France, an internship that longs less than 3 months can legally be unpaid). Enterprises wants people who knows corporates methods and how to work in an "agile" way (I mean agility for business). But employee don't care of business in France.
A real revolution for business, not for students. Developers don't need Niel to make their own revolution.
I understood that it would be based around doing a bunch of projects with peers and learning how to find information on the internet vs. learn it from a course/book.
So, how is this different from being a self-taught programmer? Does the peer interaction help that much? Are there any instructors to guide in any way?
Personally I'm a self-taught programmer (starting at age 10). I had slight pushes from my dad, and some peer influence from high school friends who were also self-taught programmers. Then I went to college and added a bunch of theoretical knowledge and more breadth (topics I didn't think to study) and depth (topics that I didn't care enough about to dive into on my own). Most of my practical ability to work is self-taught or on-the-job experience, but the schooling does help provide a better foundation for it.
So this sounds like it's meant to be a kick-starter to get people to be self-taught who didn't already teach themselves. Or is it more about getting some kind of "degree" so they are hire-able? (Whether a degree is legally necessary or just practically necessary.)
If it's just like Epitech, it means that the teachers will be the students. 2nd-year teaching to 1st-year, etc. It's not as bad as it sounds, since it's possible to pick the 'best candidates'.
Also, I really think that peer interaction helps a lot. You definitely learn something when you have to work with people which does not have the same mindset than yours. You also have to deal with a lot of things such as "do not work with your friends", or "if you fail, the whole group fails", or "always have a leader in a team" etc.
He's certainly not a philanthropist, and he's probably smarter than most of us, so he might have ulterior motives that we don't see yet, but it won't be a straightforward "cheap degree for good money" scam.
I know some of the people involved, wish them all the best. Niel, of course, has a maverick reputation, it's a pleasure to follow what he does.
I think this move is very smart: both a great way to give back to society and to find more talent.