Your Coding Skills May Be Due For “Boot Camp”
I fully believe that writing software as a profession will continue to grow dramatically. However, what’s currently slowing it down is the difficulty of learning to understand software languages and various tools and how to use these languages and tools to create new software. For all our advancements, we haven’t figured out how to make it easier to create software that is useful, so the threshold is still very high.
As time goes on, however, I believe we’ll have less of a learning curve required to reach far more productivity. In the mid-to-long term, we’ll probably see more people getting into technology after they get their degree (or they may decide not to bother with a regular degree at all).
In fact, there are a number of startups with substantial funding that are training people how to program. These are typically 12-week boot camps or “Code Academies,” in which someone who has never programmed at more than a hobby level is trained on languages such as Python, Ruby and Java.
Several of these boot camps claim extremely high placement records with guarantees that the person will get a job or their money back. Now, I might take that with a grain of salt considering some boot camps often only accept people with very high capabilities and aptitude, not just anyone. As such, students are able to absorb the knowledge very quickly and become useful programmers.
Still, this democratization of education speaks to a trend in the mid-to-long-term in which a lot more people could learn to write software. These “Code Academies,” because they want to get quick placement results, will often steer their curriculum in the direction of the market. If the market trends toward a certain programming language, they’re probably going to be teaching it before anybody else. When a given language loses its attraction, they probably will be one of the first to recognize that too.
If structured properly, coding boot camps can work well in two ways:
1) It sets people up with a mindset in which they know they will be expected to work extremely hard, long hours during that period and there is a certain advantage with absorbing a lot of information quickly as opposed to stretching it over a number of years.
2) These types of dynamic courses are not designed to teach some holistic view of broad areas of computer science that take longer to learn. They are designed to teach someone how to get something done that is useful. And for what it’s worth, most college courses in computer science don’t teach truly useful skills “on the spot.” Quite often, the most useful skills people pick up are the ones when they get to their first job. Call them “crash courses,” but by using a fairly narrow set of tools to solve a narrow set of problems, these are probably some of the most effective classes for the subject matter.
It’s early on to truly evaluate how many people from this segment of rapidly converted programmers are coming into the market in very large numbers. However, if you’re considering whether or not certain skills of yours are due for an upgrade, a conversation with us at Roy Talman & Associates can help clarify if that’s a path worth pursuing based on your goals and current trends in the marketplace. And that just may save you a lot of time and money while giving you peace of mind. So let’s talk today at 312.425.1300 or email us at info@roytalman.com.
Data Management at Scale
9ythis is a very interesting article. in my personal experience, the skills of problem solving, abstracting, and the basic concepts of programming that I learned in my undergrad year at University of Alexandria, and the analytical thinking and research skills that I gained during my graduate work in University of Alexandria and University of Pittsburgh, are the basics of all my advancements in my career. On top is the skill to be a fast learner, we were very well trained at both universities to "grasp it fast". So, I wonder why you say that people gain real skills from first job? To me, it is like training to run a marathon. Training is the core, and you do that at school. Running an actual marathon adds a lot to learn, but you cannot do it without the initial training by someone else, and the continuous self-training.