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It’s interesting how much hostility there is around talking about this sort of thing. When I replied with a comment to the original post, pulling some numbers out of the studies, with a comment saying that the numbers didn’t support the conclusion, I was immediately downvoted (-1, troll).
Now that this blog post has been publicized, the author of the post I’m responding seems to be running a twitter smear campaign against me, with a series of personal attacks and an appeal to authority thrown in for good measure.
I’d like to see a real discussion of the issues, but that’s not happening here and it’s difficult to see how it’s even possible.
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Sorry for side-tracking here:
What is Engineering Technology, should it be include with Engineering? Why are CS and IT lumped together? Why are Bio/PhysSci/Science Technology(same question as E.T.)/Math/AgSci all lumped together?
I don’t know if these categorizations were yours or the original studys.
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The categorization is from the original study. My post is actually pretty boring; there’s no synthesis or analysis, just quotes from the actual studies with some comments here and there.
Good question about engineering tech; I hadn’t heard of it myself until I did grad school at a place that offered EE and EETech degrees. In my mind, engineering tech and engineering folks have pretty much the same skillset. With EETech, there’s more of a focus on the practical and less on the theoretical.
For some strange reason, learning about solid state physics, combinatorics, and gauge fields made me a lot more employable, despite having little practical value in my professional life (combinatorics has occasionally been useful). Employers seem to prefer hiring folks with EE degrees to folks with EETech degrees, especially for higher level positions.
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Sometimes I wonder if programming is destined to become a race to the bottom. An “hour of code” and some “hacking schools”, off-shoring, and pretty much everyone thinks they can do my job.
My son is in highschool. Programming has been a great career for me, but I hesitate to recommend it to young people
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According to one documentary on the subject, there are no plumbers in the year 2505. Or any skilled trades.
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I am of course referring to “Idiocracy” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/
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If you start from scratch, even if you study 14 hours/day you’re not going to be a full-stack developer in 3 months.
That said, I think these hacker schools can be a good entry point for non-technical folks (especially those with math/science type backgrounds) who want to become programmers. I certainly think that it’s possible for graduates of the 3-month programs to do useful programming work when they graduate – provided that it’s work that’s tailored for their background and experience level.
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Great points. I think a lot of people (me included) really like building things but then find it more unnatural to go sell.
My conclusion is that I need to feel a little bit pushy / annoying when you’re selling — otherwise I’m not hustling enough.
This reminds me of the parable of the frog and the scorpion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Scorpion_and_the_Frog