I'm both happy and sad to see these bootcamps spread. Happy, because I think they're a good way for people to get into the industry or learn rails/node/ios/whatever. Sad, because they indicate the failure of colleges and universities to teach modern development tools, environments, and frameworks. Yes, I understand that education is supposed to "prepare" for the workplace rather than "train." But the notion that in 4 years of undergraduate study a 200k education can't bother with what these bootcamps do in 6-12 weeks....
Except that they do. A friend of mine currently in school seems to be spending half his time writing Android apps. I find this a little disgusting, since it's like teaching political science students by asking them to write speeches for current politicians, but I guess industry is king.
I'd be okay with it if it were a vocational school, but it's not.
I suppose I have to asterisk what I said. My university didn't, and few friends with eng/cs degrees from other schools did anything like that.
I'd be interested to know why you find writing Android apps disgusting. My personal opinion is that hands on, real world experience like actually building software drives home theory far better than talking about building software. I'm not saying that schools should only teach android or something, but I would have been far more satisfied with my education if I had actually built things as part of it. Have students build a webapp one year, one or two mobile apps another, an os another year, a compiler another year. Something like that with the order shuffled, and you should be able to ram home all the theory you want AND students can graduate with a small portfolio, a strong understanding of current topics in industry and computer science, and strong theoretical knowledge.
Maybe what I'm saying is that the current "accredited" degrees are so sparse compared with these bootcamps that the value proposition of a 200k, 4 year cs degree vs a 10-20k, 10 week program is so fatally flawed as to be... not worth it.
> I'd be interested to know why you find writing Android apps disgusting.
The long and short of it is that industry is not the purpose of education. The knowledge gained should be for the sake of gaining knowledge, not for the sake of making money.
CS students don't feel like they understand theory? The correct response is to set up "bootcamps", hosted and endorsed by the university and vetted by the faculty, outside the classroom. Research practica and MIT's Battlecode and the like are examples of hybridizing this: using the structure of a class schedule to explicitly set aside time for building software.
It doesn't really matter; my opinion isn't going to sway anyone. The university has largely already been commoditized and that's a part of why it's so vulnerable to disruption. The purpose of the university is now hugely to serve as a state-owned racket at the behest of industry. And of course industry is unimpressed by the transient state it's currently in, as you are unimpressed: what industry really wants is, well... these bootcamps: ways for industry to make money so that industry can have more workers who make them more money, neatly cutting the state out.
>It doesn't really matter; my opinion isn't going to sway anyone. The university has largely already been commoditized and that's a part of why it's so vulnerable to disruption.
Ah, but that's what I'm saying. I would fully agree with industry not being the purpose of education iff the only people who went to universities had the financial means to not need to join industry afterwards, and our world didn't require highly educated people for something other than research and education. It is unfortunate that the two are so incompatible at the moment, but I think they will adapt to each other in the next decade.
To address the initial point, I don't feel strongly about it but I don't think programming Android or iOS apps in college as part of a curriculum is a bad thing, even if it is tied to industry. As long as it's used as a vehicle to drive home cs fundamentals and theories, that is. Best way to learn to code is to code and all that.
> failure of colleges and universities
> to teach modern development tools, environments, and frameworks.
They shouldn't. Universities should teach fundamental knowledge necessary in the field. I find it ridiculous that people go to universities and expect to be taught how to make websites and mobile apps. That's something you teach yourself over the weekend. You don't need to go to a university to learn that.
You don't need to go to university to learn computer science. That's something you can easily teach yourself using a book and/or the many freely available resources on the internet!
This. This is what my point is. So if someone is going to go to a 200k 4 year institution, they should get their money's worth.
University is too easy. Pack in more info than is required by the accreditation. You might be able to learn to program iPhone apps in a weekend, but you won't understand the rationality behind a lot of the decisions you make. So professors should have their students watch the iTunes U iPhone course at home, then come in and work on an app, running through design decisions, data structures, what have you, all in the context of reality.
I think people have been told that you can't do both theory and actually build something.
