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Sorry, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn the CS fundamentals in 9 months. Period. What you may be able to do is to teach people how to game interviews within 9 mont

Sorry, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn the CS fundamentals in 9 months. Period. What you may be able to do is to teach people how to game interviews within 9 months, sure. Good luck once that performance review comes around... I was very interested in math and theoretical CS. It took the whole batch of students, including the ones in honors math bachelor a good 2 years of daily intense study alone to get the basic feeling for math straight (I was part of the IDEA league program in Europe and I would consider my CS studies among the best in Europe, especially when I see what students come out of Berkeley and Toronto). Then it took at least another year or two of algorithm studies to properly deal with algorithms and data structures. Also note the exam failure rate of about 90%. Sure, you can hack some knowledge together in 9 months. But it is biologically impossible for the brain to properly learn these things in 9 months. If you can do it, you are a genius and your talents are completely wasted in this bootcamp. You should instead apply for a PhD in astrophysics at MIT or something and start contributing to mankind...

SamReidHughes 7y ago
What do you consider the CS fundamentals? Data structures & algorithms, and what else? Also, what is the baseline you're starting at, before you start the timer? Maybe I'm just arguing about what you call a genius, but I think it's totally biologically possible for many students to learn CS fundamentals beyond the capabilities of the average CS major, in 9 months.
- tempsolution 7y ago
  I mean "Data structures & Algorithms" is a very broad topic. The baseline is high-school. Well "the average CS major" is also a very broad statement :D. I have no good overview of what an average CS major is, to be honest. I think we are talking about different things. Let's say you learn how to build a hashmap, how to solve TSP with dynamic programming. Conceptually, this is possible to learn in 9 months if you are a good student (and therefore, your are talents are already wasted in this bootcamp). But what if I ask you some follow up questions? Modify the problem. Will you be able to explain how perfect hashing works or what the runtime of a hashmap is if the hashing function is not O(1). How different hashing procedures lead to different qualities for different implementations of hash maps? We are not talking about knowing that hashmap give you O(1) lookup if you are lucky. If that is the skill you want to learn, sure, 9 months will do. But truly understanding what you are talking about and being able to explain, augment, modify/improve data structure and suit algorithms to your needs... Proving that they still work correctly after your modification. Understanding how that damn distributed consensus algorithm works that seems to have a bug that fucks up your database every now and then. Yes agreed. You don't need to know that for 99% of CS jobs. But we are not talking about whether bootcamps can prepare you for work in average code mills, we are talking about whether they can replace CS education. As a matter of fact I DO believe that bootcamps solve a critical purpose in filling the vast amount of gaps in our IT market. But I am always surprised again and again why "the new kid on the block" always needs to attack other completely valid paths (like CS major). They are completely different things made for a different purpose. I think people need to realize that CS major is NOT the right choice for most coding jobs. But that does not mean that a bootcamp can replace a CS major, it just means that a bootcamp can be an efficient shortcut to hit the job market running.
  - austenallred 7y ago
    > Yes agreed. You don't need to know that for 99% of CS jobs. But we are not talking about whether bootcamps can prepare you for work in average code mills, we are talking about whether they can replace CS education. We're discussing "what happens to tech workers when their skills become obsolete." If being able to contribute to a scaled system as a great software engineer at Google or Amazon is not a sufficient measure of "Knowing CS well enough," I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. Is it enough CS to do fundamental AI research? Eh probably not. Is it enough CS to do pretty much any other job out there? Yes.
    - anon9001 7y ago
      It probably doesn't even matter for AI research. I don't know any professional AI researchers, but I bet reading arxiv and reproducing other's work, and publishing your own work is how you go about that. Why would you do coursework when there's papers to read?
      - virgilp 7y ago
        _Maybe_ you don't need that much CS per se (debateable, but an argument can be made); however you do need a lot of math coursework. Also, it's far easier to grasp the basics of AI from a course than to reconstruct "basic body of knowledge" just from reading arxiv. As a matter of practical considerations, I just don't believe anybody can become an expert by reading only the research, without going first through the basic training. It's too damned difficult, too much work (and pointless, too - people did that work for you already and built great courses with the summaries, why not take advantage of that?
  - virgilp 7y ago
    >how to solve TSP with dynamic programming. Impressive. (TSP is NP-hard. Not even NP-complete because you can't verify the solution in polynomial time... or at least, I don't know how to do it and would love to see a solution with dynamic programming)
    - 7y ago
- archgoon 7y ago
  9 months is 3 quarters. A dedicated student could easily fit 12 courses into that. 12 courses is the bulk of a CS degree (barring a few electives). See for example this one: https://undergrad.soe.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/curriculum-charts/2018-07/CS_BS_18-19.pdf https://undergrad.soe.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/curriculu... It'd be intensive; but doable.
  - learc83 7y ago
    Forgetting the fact that most schools aren't on quarters, the 12 courses all have prerequisites for a reason. You can't just take them all at the same time. Even if you could take them all at the same time, maybe 2 or 3% of students would have been capable of completing those courses in that time frame at my University. You're also cutting out 5 classes because they are called electives. In most programs electives are structured so that you're going to get exposure to certain topics no matter which electives you take, so randomly cutting out 5 classes just because there is some choice doesn't make sense.
bootlooped 7y ago
I think you could teach decent, but not stellar, CS in 9 months. Most of the crap I had to take in college was not related at all to CS, or only conditionally or infreqently related. Calc 2? Wonder when I'll need to pull that out again, probably never. Western Civ? Totally irrelevant, even if it was interesting and enjoyable and made me a "more well rounded" student. There's a lot of fat to cut out of traditional CS programs at traditional colleges.
- learc83 7y ago
  Calc 2 usually covers sequences and series. That's very relevant to CS.
  - austenallred 7y ago
    You could also learn sequences and series outside of Calc 2 in a fraction of the time
    - learc83 7y ago
      Probably--assuming you already have the prerequisite knowledge required. But will you? Probably not.
      - austenallred 7y ago
        What prerequisites would you need? Notation and arithmetic?
        learc83 7y ago
        Have you ever tutored or taught a Calc 2 class?
        conductr 7y ago
        Have you ever taught yourself something complicated? Books can be read and comprehend and applied without paying tuition and yes sometimes you will find you need to read another book first before continuing. There are plenty of people who can do this just fine, maybe you have a different learning style but don’t assert that on everyone else.
icelancer 7y ago
>> biologically impossible for the brain to properly learn these things in 9 months [citation needed]
- colmvp 7y ago
  I mean is that really a controversial statement? I've been doing self-studying for the past few years and there's no way I could possibly truly learn the bulk of CS in only nine months. Every skill needs many hours of practice and the brain needs time to process information. Unless you're part of the 1% of people who are extremely quick learners and have profound memory retention skills, most people need a lot of time to comprehend complex topics. It's not pure coincidence that some of the best performers of a lot of subjects started when they were young: by the time they were in college/adulthood they already had thousands of hours of practice.
  - austenallred 7y ago
    Could you learn all of computer science in nine months? No. Could you learn the necessary CS fundamentals that are included in a CS degree in nine months? Nine months of Lambda School full-time is virtually equivalent to the amount of time you'd spend in the CS portion of a four-year CS degree.
    - username90 7y ago
      Lambda school has 8 weeks of CS and the rest is just learning frameworks. At least according to this: https://lambdaschool.com/courses/full-stack-web-development https://lambdaschool.com/courses/full-stack-web-development Also notable that the CS block is last, right before interviews. It would have made more sense if you put that first and then refereed to that knowledge in the other parts, but now it looks like Lambda school just treats CS fundamentals as interview prep instead of necessary building blocks.
      - bootlooped 7y ago
        It may be just a difference of bottom up vs top down teaching methods.
chrischattin 7y ago
I 100% disagree. College moves at a glacial pace once you're used to learning on your own. It's definitely possible to have a stronger grasp of CS concepts after a 9 month intensive study than 4 years in traditional education. Corollary, it's also common to not have any practical skills coming out of a CS degree.
- zests 7y ago
  You can get a piece of paper saying you have a degree with no work. Conversely, you can work really hard in college and learn orders of magnitude more than at any bootcamp.
felipemnoa 7y ago
>>You should instead apply for a PhD in astrophysics at MIT or something and start contributing to mankind... I think that is horrible advise. They will pay you peanuts and abuse you. Instead go found a startup and make lots of money. Then you can fund interesting research that contributes to humanity, if you want. Or you could get a PhD once you've gotten your money. This is all assuming that said person is a genius, of course. Otherwise disregard this advise.
kls 7y ago
Article is talking about Flash Developers, who most likely became JS front end developers when the wheels fell off the cart. No need to even know a single algorithm to be a successful front end developer. Any algorithm you can think of, that would possibly be relevant to their job is already implemented in some NPM and probably far better than any of us would implement it. I value CS degrees and value mine, but reality is, not everyone that writes code, need a CS degree from MIT or Stanford. Bootcamps serve their purpose and I have worked with many self taught and Bootcamp grad developers who went on to be exceptional developers. I myself was self taught before I entered into a CS program and honestly I wish I would have went into applied mathematics. Everything I learned in school I could have self taught by already having a base in programming. I also never use anything I learned in school at my day job since I left AI and 3D dev. More relevant to the story, aging techs can actually be quite lucrative once you pass the curve of no new people are learning it, and all the skilled workers have left for greener pastures and are not looking back. I have taken some gigs for IBM Universe, VB 6, and COBOL JCL that have been quite lucrative because no one wants to touch them and most of the talent has retired out of the field.
barry-cotter 7y ago
It sounds like you have very high standards for CS fundamentals, so high that the average software engineer definitely doesn’t know them and very few companies have a workforce that does.
rmilejczz 7y ago
What a ridiculous assertion, it’s impossible to learn fundamentals in 9 months?? 2000 hours is a LONG time to do something, you will certainly have a grasp of the fundamentals after 2000 hours. Will you be a master? No, but did you stop learning when you got your first engineering job? Hell, most traditional CS degrees (at least their core credit requirements) can be completed within 9 months if you crunch
scarface74 7y ago
Sorry, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn the CS fundamentals in 9 months. Period. What you may be able to do is to teach people how to game interviews within 9 months, sure. Good luck once that performance review comes around... How many jobs require a knowledge of “CS fundamentals”. The typical development job are basically the “dark matter developers” writing yet another software as a service CRUD app or bespoke internal app that will never see the light of day outside of the company.
- apersona 7y ago
  That sounds depressing. Why would you want to confine yourself to working on CRUD apps instead of working on cool tech?
  - scarface74 7y ago
    Because after programming either professionally or as a hobby for over 30 years, no “tech” is “cool”. It’s simply a means to have enough money deposited into my bank account to enjoy an upper middle class lifestyle. In given week, I’m up and down the stack from the web to the infrastructure (AWS). I found all of the things that AWS enabled that took literally months to provision in the old world “cool” for about a year and then it became just another means to an end.

SamReidHughes 7y ago

What do you consider the CS fundamentals? Data structures & algorithms, and what else? Also, what is the baseline you're starting at, before you start the timer? Maybe I'm just arguing about what you call a genius, but I think it's totally biologically possible for many students to learn CS fundamentals beyond the capabilities of the average CS major, in 9 months.

tempsolution 7y ago
I mean "Data structures & Algorithms" is a very broad topic. The baseline is high-school. Well "the average CS major" is also a very broad statement :D. I have no good overview of what an average CS major is, to be honest. I think we are talking about different things. Let's say you learn how to build a hashmap, how to solve TSP with dynamic programming. Conceptually, this is possible to learn in 9 months if you are a good student (and therefore, your are talents are already wasted in this bootcamp). But what if I ask you some follow up questions? Modify the problem. Will you be able to explain how perfect hashing works or what the runtime of a hashmap is if the hashing function is not O(1). How different hashing procedures lead to different qualities for different implementations of hash maps? We are not talking about knowing that hashmap give you O(1) lookup if you are lucky. If that is the skill you want to learn, sure, 9 months will do. But truly understanding what you are talking about and being able to explain, augment, modify/improve data structure and suit algorithms to your needs... Proving that they still work correctly after your modification. Understanding how that damn distributed consensus algorithm works that seems to have a bug that fucks up your database every now and then. Yes agreed. You don't need to know that for 99% of CS jobs. But we are not talking about whether bootcamps can prepare you for work in average code mills, we are talking about whether they can replace CS education. As a matter of fact I DO believe that bootcamps solve a critical purpose in filling the vast amount of gaps in our IT market. But I am always surprised again and again why "the new kid on the block" always needs to attack other completely valid paths (like CS major). They are completely different things made for a different purpose. I think people need to realize that CS major is NOT the right choice for most coding jobs. But that does not mean that a bootcamp can replace a CS major, it just means that a bootcamp can be an efficient shortcut to hit the job market running.
- austenallred 7y ago
  > Yes agreed. You don't need to know that for 99% of CS jobs. But we are not talking about whether bootcamps can prepare you for work in average code mills, we are talking about whether they can replace CS education. We're discussing "what happens to tech workers when their skills become obsolete." If being able to contribute to a scaled system as a great software engineer at Google or Amazon is not a sufficient measure of "Knowing CS well enough," I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. Is it enough CS to do fundamental AI research? Eh probably not. Is it enough CS to do pretty much any other job out there? Yes.
  - anon9001 7y ago
    It probably doesn't even matter for AI research. I don't know any professional AI researchers, but I bet reading arxiv and reproducing other's work, and publishing your own work is how you go about that. Why would you do coursework when there's papers to read?
    - virgilp 7y ago
      _Maybe_ you don't need that much CS per se (debateable, but an argument can be made); however you do need a lot of math coursework. Also, it's far easier to grasp the basics of AI from a course than to reconstruct "basic body of knowledge" just from reading arxiv. As a matter of practical considerations, I just don't believe anybody can become an expert by reading only the research, without going first through the basic training. It's too damned difficult, too much work (and pointless, too - people did that work for you already and built great courses with the summaries, why not take advantage of that?
- virgilp 7y ago
  >how to solve TSP with dynamic programming. Impressive. (TSP is NP-hard. Not even NP-complete because you can't verify the solution in polynomial time... or at least, I don't know how to do it and would love to see a solution with dynamic programming)
  - 7y ago
archgoon 7y ago
9 months is 3 quarters. A dedicated student could easily fit 12 courses into that. 12 courses is the bulk of a CS degree (barring a few electives). See for example this one: https://undergrad.soe.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/curriculum-charts/2018-07/CS_BS_18-19.pdf https://undergrad.soe.ucsc.edu/sites/default/files/curriculu... It'd be intensive; but doable.
- learc83 7y ago
  Forgetting the fact that most schools aren't on quarters, the 12 courses all have prerequisites for a reason. You can't just take them all at the same time. Even if you could take them all at the same time, maybe 2 or 3% of students would have been capable of completing those courses in that time frame at my University. You're also cutting out 5 classes because they are called electives. In most programs electives are structured so that you're going to get exposure to certain topics no matter which electives you take, so randomly cutting out 5 classes just because there is some choice doesn't make sense.

bootlooped 7y ago

I think you could teach decent, but not stellar, CS in 9 months. Most of the crap I had to take in college was not related at all to CS, or only conditionally or infreqently related. Calc 2? Wonder when I'll need to pull that out again, probably never. Western Civ? Totally irrelevant, even if it was interesting and enjoyable and made me a "more well rounded" student. There's a lot of fat to cut out of traditional CS programs at traditional colleges.

learc83 7y ago
Calc 2 usually covers sequences and series. That's very relevant to CS.
- austenallred 7y ago
  You could also learn sequences and series outside of Calc 2 in a fraction of the time
  - learc83 7y ago
    Probably--assuming you already have the prerequisite knowledge required. But will you? Probably not.
    - austenallred 7y ago
      What prerequisites would you need? Notation and arithmetic?
      - learc83 7y ago
        Have you ever tutored or taught a Calc 2 class?
        conductr 7y ago
        Have you ever taught yourself something complicated? Books can be read and comprehend and applied without paying tuition and yes sometimes you will find you need to read another book first before continuing. There are plenty of people who can do this just fine, maybe you have a different learning style but don’t assert that on everyone else.

icelancer 7y ago

>> biologically impossible for the brain to properly learn these things in 9 months [citation needed]

colmvp 7y ago
I mean is that really a controversial statement? I've been doing self-studying for the past few years and there's no way I could possibly truly learn the bulk of CS in only nine months. Every skill needs many hours of practice and the brain needs time to process information. Unless you're part of the 1% of people who are extremely quick learners and have profound memory retention skills, most people need a lot of time to comprehend complex topics. It's not pure coincidence that some of the best performers of a lot of subjects started when they were young: by the time they were in college/adulthood they already had thousands of hours of practice.
- austenallred 7y ago
  Could you learn all of computer science in nine months? No. Could you learn the necessary CS fundamentals that are included in a CS degree in nine months? Nine months of Lambda School full-time is virtually equivalent to the amount of time you'd spend in the CS portion of a four-year CS degree.
  - username90 7y ago
    Lambda school has 8 weeks of CS and the rest is just learning frameworks. At least according to this: https://lambdaschool.com/courses/full-stack-web-development https://lambdaschool.com/courses/full-stack-web-development Also notable that the CS block is last, right before interviews. It would have made more sense if you put that first and then refereed to that knowledge in the other parts, but now it looks like Lambda school just treats CS fundamentals as interview prep instead of necessary building blocks.
    - bootlooped 7y ago
      It may be just a difference of bottom up vs top down teaching methods.

chrischattin 7y ago

I 100% disagree. College moves at a glacial pace once you're used to learning on your own. It's definitely possible to have a stronger grasp of CS concepts after a 9 month intensive study than 4 years in traditional education. Corollary, it's also common to not have any practical skills coming out of a CS degree.

zests 7y ago
You can get a piece of paper saying you have a degree with no work. Conversely, you can work really hard in college and learn orders of magnitude more than at any bootcamp.

felipemnoa 7y ago

>>You should instead apply for a PhD in astrophysics at MIT or something and start contributing to mankind... I think that is horrible advise. They will pay you peanuts and abuse you. Instead go found a startup and make lots of money. Then you can fund interesting research that contributes to humanity, if you want. Or you could get a PhD once you've gotten your money. This is all assuming that said person is a genius, of course. Otherwise disregard this advise.

kls 7y ago

Article is talking about Flash Developers, who most likely became JS front end developers when the wheels fell off the cart. No need to even know a single algorithm to be a successful front end developer. Any algorithm you can think of, that would possibly be relevant to their job is already implemented in some NPM and probably far better than any of us would implement it. I value CS degrees and value mine, but reality is, not everyone that writes code, need a CS degree from MIT or Stanford. Bootcamps serve their purpose and I have worked with many self taught and Bootcamp grad developers who went on to be exceptional developers. I myself was self taught before I entered into a CS program and honestly I wish I would have went into applied mathematics. Everything I learned in school I could have self taught by already having a base in programming. I also never use anything I learned in school at my day job since I left AI and 3D dev. More relevant to the story, aging techs can actually be quite lucrative once you pass the curve of no new people are learning it, and all the skilled workers have left for greener pastures and are not looking back. I have taken some gigs for IBM Universe, VB 6, and COBOL JCL that have been quite lucrative because no one wants to touch them and most of the talent has retired out of the field.

barry-cotter 7y ago

It sounds like you have very high standards for CS fundamentals, so high that the average software engineer definitely doesn’t know them and very few companies have a workforce that does.

rmilejczz 7y ago

What a ridiculous assertion, it’s impossible to learn fundamentals in 9 months?? 2000 hours is a LONG time to do something, you will certainly have a grasp of the fundamentals after 2000 hours. Will you be a master? No, but did you stop learning when you got your first engineering job? Hell, most traditional CS degrees (at least their core credit requirements) can be completed within 9 months if you crunch

scarface74 7y ago

Sorry, but it is IMPOSSIBLE to learn the CS fundamentals in 9 months. Period. What you may be able to do is to teach people how to game interviews within 9 months, sure. Good luck once that performance review comes around... How many jobs require a knowledge of “CS fundamentals”. The typical development job are basically the “dark matter developers” writing yet another software as a service CRUD app or bespoke internal app that will never see the light of day outside of the company.

apersona 7y ago
That sounds depressing. Why would you want to confine yourself to working on CRUD apps instead of working on cool tech?
- scarface74 7y ago
  Because after programming either professionally or as a hobby for over 30 years, no “tech” is “cool”. It’s simply a means to have enough money deposited into my bank account to enjoy an upper middle class lifestyle. In given week, I’m up and down the stack from the web to the infrastructure (AWS). I found all of the things that AWS enabled that took literally months to provision in the old world “cool” for about a year and then it became just another means to an end.