Wow! Didn't expect to see this here for a while. We've just finished redeveloping the entire Dev Bootcamp website. Still a few kinks to iron out, especially for smaller screen sizes. We'll be making it responsive.
I'd be curious why RoR (not that I disagree with that decision)? Did you find a competitive advantage over say PHP or Python? Is it easier to teach? More job opportunities? Picked out of a hat?
Hi there! I'm a teacher at Dev Bootcamp. I'll quote my answer to this question on Quora (http://b.qr.ae/QkkZtu), "Are there any programming bootcamps like Dev Bootcamp or Bloc.io that are Python/Django focused?"
The tl;dr is "No, not really. It's the right mix between what we know and a good beginner language."
The language and technologies you learn are not the most important bit when it comes to becoming a programmer. When friends ask me whether they should learn Ruby or Python I respond by asking "Which language do more of your friends know?"
Motivation, frustration tolerance, social support, and access to expertise are all more important than the raw language when you're trying to become a programmer. Python, Ruby, C#, Clojure, Objective-C, etc. are just means to that end.
Consider this: if you speak Ruby, understand the fundamentals of software engineering, and maintain a beginner's mind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin) then it will take weeks -- if not days -- to reach the same level of competence in Python.
Dev Bootcamp focuses on Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript, for example, but two students from our most recent class received job offers from Hipmunk, a Python shop. Some students from the spring work at companies where most of the code they write is Java or PHP.
IMO a good programming bootcamp aims to teach you to program as if it were teaching you English poetry. Knowing a particular language, whether it's Python or anything else, is like knowing how to write in English.
To be sure, you have to know how to write English before you can write English poetry, but that's the smallest part of being a poet.
Disclaimer: I'm heading out to DBC to join the Fall Cohort!
The revamp looks fantastic. The home page and the video give a great explanation as to why devbootcamp can be of such benefit. No time wasters needed. People who are willing to put in the hours and get the work done. The FAQ gives a good insight into what it's all about. A coherent well put together targeted approach to learning web development.
I'm sure DBC will be as engaging as the new website is.
9 weeks isn't enough time for anyone to be learning how to write production-quality code, much less take a job as anything more than an engineering intern.
The fact that TapJoy is hiring people straight out of DevBootCamp makes me seriously question the quality of their engineering organization, rather than causing me to think highly of DevBootCamp (which may be an excellent program).
I have been teaching myself how to code for 1.5 years and also did bloc.io, so I will have about 1,000 of programming under my belt before starting Dev Bootcamp in October. Almost every other student has been coding a lot before getting started. If you start from nothing, I agree that you will not make too much progress in 9 weeks, but this is not the case for most Dev Bootcamp students.
I studied on my own for a year before attending the Summer session of Dev Bootcamp. I found that the available resources for learning Rails are not really that great for beginner. They are more geared toward people who already know how to make sites through other frameworks/languages.
I actually built two Rails apps on my own before attending Dev Bootcamp, but the quality of my code was horrible. I was able to fill in my gaps at knowledge about Rails and Object Oriented design and testing, and can now write nice clean code, versus guessing and putting bandaids on bad code.
Dev Bootcamp is 100% accessible to individuals with no prior experience whatsoever. We think anyone can learn to code, although we don't think anyone can learn what we cover in 9-10 weeks. We select for people with motivation, passion, drive, etc. first and foremost above prior programming experience.
We've found some students with prior experience actually have trouble because it's difficult for them to maintain a beginner's mindset.
I'm a Dev Bootcamp grad from the summer program. I also just got hired on at Tapjoy. Can I write production-quality code?
Probably not just yet. What I do know is that Tapjoy isn't the only company hiring grads. In the last 4 weeks since graduating about 20 people have been hired as Jr Ruby Developers at multiple companies. Every single one of them had to go through technical interviews to get the positions. Many companies have decided the grads have enough real knowledge to be valuable. Average salary has been somewhere around $84,000.
$84k average salary is surprisingly high for non-production-ready engineers who are still in training, especially when compared to the rest of the industry.
I wouldn't have expected there to be so much money in a field that is so approachable. Is there a dearth of quality rails engineers, or is it related to web engineers in general?
To tell you the truth, this makes me wonder whether there's significant opportunity in the web space for senior engineers with traditional software engineering backgrounds. If people are so desperate that they're willing to hire brand-new engineers at an $84k average and spend months/years training them, how much will they pay for people that require no training at all?
You assume that people with traditional software engineering backgrounds need no training to move into web development, which is not what I've observed. In fact, I have personally seen several who either weren't willing or weren't able to acquire the new skills required at all.
How many C++ programmers grok CSS? How many Java programmers understand prototypes? How many enterprise developers are used to shipping code at least weekly? No CS degree I've seen has covered analytics, or even effective logging at scale. As much as CS-oriented coders look down their nose at web devs there are skills involved. If engineers can adapt there are huge payoffs sitting on the table, but they have to actually do so. There aren't very many who have, not nearly enough to meet demand, and so prices rise and companies swap from teaching web development on the job to teaching CS on the job.
The skills you list involve very simple knowledge acquisition. Once you have core CS competency, you can pick those things up very easily, and do a better job by far than the person that lacks the core CS competency.
To use your examples:
* I'd never worked with web CSS, but I built a CSS styling system for iOS, and used the CSS spec for inspiration.
* I've never worked with web analytics, but I ran a team that built a real-time (non-web) custom analytics/logging/querying system for a huge consumer-facing corporation.
* My team had never written any sizable JavaScript, HTML, or CSS, nor had any familiarity with prototype languages, but we were able to bang out a comprehensive HTML/JS XMPP client using BOSH in a couple weeks. We had an external HTML and web design expert on-hand to actually make it look pretty.
I think the real reason the engineers don't adapt is that we'd have to go work in environments that are filled with less skilled people using frustratingly knee-capped technologies. I might be able to stomach HTML/JS/CSS despite their myriad of flaws, but I'm not sure I could do it if I also had to use Rails and Ruby working for one of the existing players.
Being an intern implies a temporary/part-time position or a student position, however the dictionary term is: "A student or a recent graduate undergoing supervised practical training."
I think that's absolutely what our new engineers from dev bootcamp consider themselves. I've heard that the teachers tell the students that when they graduate from DBC they are "World-class beginners". So in a way, I actually agree with what you just wrote. Not only that, but the attitude of treating yourself like a beginner is so healthy in bay area tech companies.
Another thing to keep in mind is the education is very competitive, more competitive than Harvard. These aren't just anyone, they're the top few percentage of people ready to drop 10 weeks, most move into a new city, and totally change their life in order to devote it to technology.
Luckily we have many projects with work to be done all over the stack. Obviously we're not sticking them into the hairiest of problems right off the bat. We'll start them off easy and let them progress. With their drive and their attitude, I'm confident it'll be impossible to tell who came from dbc and who came from a college in just a few months, if not weeks.
This site is absolutely beautiful. Well done. I'd love to know a little more about the tools (generators?) that were used as it appears to be a completely static site.
"You qualify for a $500 scholarship if you're female or from an ethnic minority group underrepresented in the software engineering field (African American, Chicano/Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander, etc.). The tech world is notoriously unrepresentative of the larger population. We believe that the sooner that changes, the better off we all are."
People with dwarfism are disproportionally not software developers, too, but it's not trendy to care about them, so DevBootCamp doesn't care.
Transgender people are disproportionally not software developers, but it's not trendy to care about them, so DevBootCamp doesn't care.
White males born into poverty are disproportionally not software developers, but it's not trendy to care about them, so DevBootCamp doesn't care.
Hey, DevBootCamp: What makes an affluent latina more important to you than an impoverished white male? What makes an affluent white woman more important to you than an impoverished Indian with dwarfism?
Hey, I'm not the biggest "diversity" cheerleader in the world, but I think this criticism is over the top.
There is a significant difference between an organization's stated rules and what you can make a phone call and get just for trying. If you belong to the category of not being a white or Asian man, give it a shot.
Being a sourpuss precludes working with people and figuring out what makes sense together. It isn't a good idea.
If balance is required, than I suspect it will there in its own due time. There is absolutely no reason to force it.
I remember missing out on a college scholarship because I wasn't hispanic, and while I didn't let that stop me from pursuing my education, I'm still insulted by this sort of reverse discrimination.
"it will there in its own due time" is naive at best!
Those comments dinging Dev Bootcamp as "toxic" or practicing "reverse discrimination" are revealing a dangerous ignorance. Decades of sexism, racism, and systemic oppression of certain groups are not fixed in their own due time just by natural evolution or luck, they need opposing, direct, and intentional forces such as the one attempted here. I recommend if you really care about the subject to do some deeper reading of the ideology and reasons behind laws and trends towards bringing more absent representation into an industry or organization. There will always be individual instances of "injustice" while systematic oppression is being opposed, but whether you like it or not the system is still racist, even if you as an individual are not. So even though you missed out on your scholarship there are thousands of white privileges you've received without knowing or noticing that you need to own up to as well!
Give me an example of this 'injustice' that you speak of? I try to convince everyone I know to become a programmer, white, black, man, woman, etc...and it doesn't matter. People gravitate to whatever they want to work on.
It's not like you minorities can't buy programming books from Barnes and Noble, or can't login to online courses and start learning.
If they don't have a computer, then we're talking strictly about affluence, and that's much different.
You have no idea what you are talking about: the research on aggressions, alienation and social dynamics in male-dominated spaces is extensive. Until you've bothered to do even basic research into a topic, I suggest you don't whine about it. It just makes you look ignorant and unpleasant.
The proof is in the pudding: There are less women in STEM fields and in STEM programs in college. Even making the grandiose assumption that women have the exact same opportunities as men (see above, they don't) fewer women are accepted to universities, they matriculate less, and even less stay in the field. Males on the other hand seem to do just fine. This reveals to us that there is a disparity at each step of the way that is causing women to be unable to compete or desire to.
When one person drops out, it isn't a trend. But when you have industries full of this data combined with a history of sexism and racism, you don't throw your hands up in the air and say "oh the boat will right itself".
Sapna Cheryan, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Saenam Kim, Classrooms matter: The design of virtual classrooms influences gender disparities in computer science classes, Computers & Education, Volume 57, Issue 2, September 2011, Pages 1825-1835, ISSN 0360-1315, 10.1016/j.compedu.2011.02.004.
Available at:
http://ilabs.uw.edu/sites/default/files/Cheryan_Meltzoff_Kim...
Also:
Wendy Cukier, Denise Shortt, and Irene Devine. 2002. Gender and nformation technology: implications of definitions. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 4 (December 2002), 142-148. DOI=10.1145/820127.820188
http://www.jise.org/Volume13/Pdf/007.pdf
Do you have any citations, or are you just pulling your sexism out of your ass?
Do they? Men are now significantly under-represented in college at the undergrad level and the trend is getting worse. What scholarships/retention programs are there for men compared to those for women?
tl;dr: The worst argument in the world is "X is Y, therefore, X must be a typical case of Y". Here, "The DBC policy is discrimination, therefore you should associate with it all the bad things you usually associate with discrimination, irrespective of whether they apply here."
Stripped of its misdirection, your question/argument is, "Isn't that bad for the same reason that 'we don't hire blacks' is bad?" No, it's not. There is a sense in which this kind of discrimination is bad, but there's also a sense in which its good (i.e. disrupting the self-reinforcing cycle of certain demographics dominating the programming field and making those outside of it feel out of place).
There are great arguments about which effect is stronger and/or worse, but they aren't helped by saying "That is discrimination."
Disclaimer: I was in the Spring (first) cohort of DBC, though don't have as glowing a review of the program as everyone else seems to.
How do employers weight this kind of experience when considering a graduate of this program? I'm sure there's a lot of companies in around SF who already know DevBootCamp, but what about employers outside of California?
I'm sure the right employers love it. These are literally the least pricy Rubyists available in the U.S. that can be proven to actually know how to code.
Good fit for a fast growing Ruby shop that is not too picky about depth of technical skills.
I'm really jealous of the folks who can do this. Unfortunately, I feel like young people will not be able to afford this. Which makes me wonder, what's the average age of people attending?
Despite being really jealous for how easy this makes it look to 'learn to be a hacker', I personally will stick to the Zed Shaw school of learning.
57 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 98.4 ms ] threadChris Jennings (from http://chrisjennings.com) did all the creative work.
I'm more than happy to answer any questions about Dev Bootcamp, but I think this does a good job at tackling a few of them: http://www.quora.com/Programming-Bootcamps/Other-than-locati...
The tl;dr is "No, not really. It's the right mix between what we know and a good beginner language."
The language and technologies you learn are not the most important bit when it comes to becoming a programmer. When friends ask me whether they should learn Ruby or Python I respond by asking "Which language do more of your friends know?"
Motivation, frustration tolerance, social support, and access to expertise are all more important than the raw language when you're trying to become a programmer. Python, Ruby, C#, Clojure, Objective-C, etc. are just means to that end.
Consider this: if you speak Ruby, understand the fundamentals of software engineering, and maintain a beginner's mind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshin) then it will take weeks -- if not days -- to reach the same level of competence in Python.
Dev Bootcamp focuses on Ruby, Rails, and JavaScript, for example, but two students from our most recent class received job offers from Hipmunk, a Python shop. Some students from the spring work at companies where most of the code they write is Java or PHP.
IMO a good programming bootcamp aims to teach you to program as if it were teaching you English poetry. Knowing a particular language, whether it's Python or anything else, is like knowing how to write in English.
To be sure, you have to know how to write English before you can write English poetry, but that's the smallest part of being a poet.
I'm curious about how employers have felt about the engineers they've hired from such services vs fresh / semi-experienced engineers with CS degrees.
The fact that TapJoy is hiring people straight out of DevBootCamp makes me seriously question the quality of their engineering organization, rather than causing me to think highly of DevBootCamp (which may be an excellent program).
If you do have prior experience, can you tell me why you want a $12K bootcamp instead of just learning Rails yourself?
I actually built two Rails apps on my own before attending Dev Bootcamp, but the quality of my code was horrible. I was able to fill in my gaps at knowledge about Rails and Object Oriented design and testing, and can now write nice clean code, versus guessing and putting bandaids on bad code.
Dev Bootcamp is 100% accessible to individuals with no prior experience whatsoever. We think anyone can learn to code, although we don't think anyone can learn what we cover in 9-10 weeks. We select for people with motivation, passion, drive, etc. first and foremost above prior programming experience.
We've found some students with prior experience actually have trouble because it's difficult for them to maintain a beginner's mindset.
I wouldn't have expected there to be so much money in a field that is so approachable. Is there a dearth of quality rails engineers, or is it related to web engineers in general?
To tell you the truth, this makes me wonder whether there's significant opportunity in the web space for senior engineers with traditional software engineering backgrounds. If people are so desperate that they're willing to hire brand-new engineers at an $84k average and spend months/years training them, how much will they pay for people that require no training at all?
How many C++ programmers grok CSS? How many Java programmers understand prototypes? How many enterprise developers are used to shipping code at least weekly? No CS degree I've seen has covered analytics, or even effective logging at scale. As much as CS-oriented coders look down their nose at web devs there are skills involved. If engineers can adapt there are huge payoffs sitting on the table, but they have to actually do so. There aren't very many who have, not nearly enough to meet demand, and so prices rise and companies swap from teaching web development on the job to teaching CS on the job.
To use your examples:
* I'd never worked with web CSS, but I built a CSS styling system for iOS, and used the CSS spec for inspiration.
* I've never worked with web analytics, but I ran a team that built a real-time (non-web) custom analytics/logging/querying system for a huge consumer-facing corporation.
* My team had never written any sizable JavaScript, HTML, or CSS, nor had any familiarity with prototype languages, but we were able to bang out a comprehensive HTML/JS XMPP client using BOSH in a couple weeks. We had an external HTML and web design expert on-hand to actually make it look pretty.
I think the real reason the engineers don't adapt is that we'd have to go work in environments that are filled with less skilled people using frustratingly knee-capped technologies. I might be able to stomach HTML/JS/CSS despite their myriad of flaws, but I'm not sure I could do it if I also had to use Rails and Ruby working for one of the existing players.
Being an intern implies a temporary/part-time position or a student position, however the dictionary term is: "A student or a recent graduate undergoing supervised practical training."
I think that's absolutely what our new engineers from dev bootcamp consider themselves. I've heard that the teachers tell the students that when they graduate from DBC they are "World-class beginners". So in a way, I actually agree with what you just wrote. Not only that, but the attitude of treating yourself like a beginner is so healthy in bay area tech companies.
Another thing to keep in mind is the education is very competitive, more competitive than Harvard. These aren't just anyone, they're the top few percentage of people ready to drop 10 weeks, most move into a new city, and totally change their life in order to devote it to technology.
Luckily we have many projects with work to be done all over the stack. Obviously we're not sticking them into the hairiest of problems right off the bat. We'll start them off easy and let them progress. With their drive and their attitude, I'm confident it'll be impossible to tell who came from dbc and who came from a college in just a few months, if not weeks.
* http://pages.github.com/
* https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll
* https://www.cloudflare.com
"You qualify for a $500 scholarship if you're female or from an ethnic minority group underrepresented in the software engineering field (African American, Chicano/Latino, Native American, Pacific Islander, etc.). The tech world is notoriously unrepresentative of the larger population. We believe that the sooner that changes, the better off we all are."
How is that not discrimination?
People with dwarfism are disproportionally not software developers, too, but it's not trendy to care about them, so DevBootCamp doesn't care.
Transgender people are disproportionally not software developers, but it's not trendy to care about them, so DevBootCamp doesn't care.
White males born into poverty are disproportionally not software developers, but it's not trendy to care about them, so DevBootCamp doesn't care.
Hey, DevBootCamp: What makes an affluent latina more important to you than an impoverished white male? What makes an affluent white woman more important to you than an impoverished Indian with dwarfism?
Your organization is toxic. Go away.
There is a significant difference between an organization's stated rules and what you can make a phone call and get just for trying. If you belong to the category of not being a white or Asian man, give it a shot.
Being a sourpuss precludes working with people and figuring out what makes sense together. It isn't a good idea.
http://www.etsy.com/blog/news/2012/etsy-hacker-grants-suppor... is why etsy is sponsoring this kind of grant at a different but similar Hacker School.
If you can think of better ways to encourage more balance in our industry I am sincerely open to suggestions.
I remember missing out on a college scholarship because I wasn't hispanic, and while I didn't let that stop me from pursuing my education, I'm still insulted by this sort of reverse discrimination.
Why is this OK?
Those comments dinging Dev Bootcamp as "toxic" or practicing "reverse discrimination" are revealing a dangerous ignorance. Decades of sexism, racism, and systemic oppression of certain groups are not fixed in their own due time just by natural evolution or luck, they need opposing, direct, and intentional forces such as the one attempted here. I recommend if you really care about the subject to do some deeper reading of the ideology and reasons behind laws and trends towards bringing more absent representation into an industry or organization. There will always be individual instances of "injustice" while systematic oppression is being opposed, but whether you like it or not the system is still racist, even if you as an individual are not. So even though you missed out on your scholarship there are thousands of white privileges you've received without knowing or noticing that you need to own up to as well!
It's not like you minorities can't buy programming books from Barnes and Noble, or can't login to online courses and start learning.
If they don't have a computer, then we're talking strictly about affluence, and that's much different.
You can't just walk away and hope the problem will go away.
We do know that it is stopping women/minorities from pursuing engineering programs/jobs by way of their male dominated nature.
http://www.commerce.gov/blog/2011/08/03/women-stem-opportuni...
http://www.esa.doc.gov/Reports/women-stem-gender-gap-innovat...
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/women-engineers_n_1...
The proof is in the pudding: There are less women in STEM fields and in STEM programs in college. Even making the grandiose assumption that women have the exact same opportunities as men (see above, they don't) fewer women are accepted to universities, they matriculate less, and even less stay in the field. Males on the other hand seem to do just fine. This reveals to us that there is a disparity at each step of the way that is causing women to be unable to compete or desire to.
When one person drops out, it isn't a trend. But when you have industries full of this data combined with a history of sexism and racism, you don't throw your hands up in the air and say "oh the boat will right itself".
Also: Wendy Cukier, Denise Shortt, and Irene Devine. 2002. Gender and nformation technology: implications of definitions. SIGCSE Bull. 34, 4 (December 2002), 142-148. DOI=10.1145/820127.820188 http://www.jise.org/Volume13/Pdf/007.pdf
Do you have any citations, or are you just pulling your sexism out of your ass?
Athletes, young mothers, honor students, mcdonalds employees, etc.
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4441734
tl;dr: The worst argument in the world is "X is Y, therefore, X must be a typical case of Y". Here, "The DBC policy is discrimination, therefore you should associate with it all the bad things you usually associate with discrimination, irrespective of whether they apply here."
Stripped of its misdirection, your question/argument is, "Isn't that bad for the same reason that 'we don't hire blacks' is bad?" No, it's not. There is a sense in which this kind of discrimination is bad, but there's also a sense in which its good (i.e. disrupting the self-reinforcing cycle of certain demographics dominating the programming field and making those outside of it feel out of place).
There are great arguments about which effect is stronger and/or worse, but they aren't helped by saying "That is discrimination."
Disclaimer: I was in the Spring (first) cohort of DBC, though don't have as glowing a review of the program as everyone else seems to.
Good fit for a fast growing Ruby shop that is not too picky about depth of technical skills.
dpritchett 104 days ago | link | parent
Despite being really jealous for how easy this makes it look to 'learn to be a hacker', I personally will stick to the Zed Shaw school of learning.