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Comment by baby | Hacker News Reader

Are french developers really better than US ones though? We have EPITA, EPITECH, and the recent 42. But besides that I feel like the CS formation of our universities is very poor... I know a lot of people who've done/are doing CS in university, and their level is pretty low I would say. But maybe I tend to overestimate the US coders' level...

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For what it's worth, I studied CS in Lyon, in a good engineers school. While courses were clearly not the best, I met a lot of very clever fellows, some of them were hired at mozilla or Google. Some others joined start ups or started their own.

I think that we've got a lot of talents in France, but they are sometimes underestimated or simply ignored. They are basically too often off the grid. But really, they are here, in France.

(hint: have a look at mozilla employees here in Paris)

I took his point to mean that there's a different supply/demand ratio for good developers in France because the denominator is smaller.

This is probably especially true versus NYC or SF.

I remember when I was in 'prepa', I was interested in going to a pure programming 'grande ecole', but unfortunately, only ENSIMAG and IIE would qualify (the ones you mentioned have expensive admission fees - by French standards). There are lots of 'grandes ecoles' offering programming, but mixed with Electronics and/or Mechanical Engineering. At the end I went to another 'grande ecole' that was doing maths and statistics, with a few programming courses.

Also in France we don't have programming classes in high school (at least not when I was there in the nineties), which I think is/was a waste.

Really depends on the universities. EPITA, EPITECH, SupInfo and the likes are way overestimated and overpriced compared to some good universities.

I know a lot of people coming from both sides of the fence and there is a huge difference of level. I challenge you to find just one university in France that gives you a formation equivalent to those of epitech et al.

Well, I come from a CS master's of the university of Nantes and I don't feel _at all_ like I have a lower level than if I went to one of those schools. It's clearly the other way around.

CS master of Nantes is a really high level diploma comparing to some other universities , I will get mine from the same university this year (hopefully)

I would hope so since Epitech/Epita is bac+3 whereas a CS master is bac+5. Although I doubt many universities would still reach those schools level even after a master.

SUPINFO / EPITECH / EPITA are bac + 5, you make no sense

Oh right, I've never met any people doing a Master of CS though so I don't know the level. I was talking about bachelors.

From what I heard from an ex student about Supinfo, it is many orders worse than EPIT*. It was almost a scam (circa 2007).

I learned most of my CS skills out of school. School gave me more a framework to think (I studied in both France and US).

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