From: Florian Gilcher <flo@...>
Date: 2012-12-16T20:40:20+09:00
Subject: Re: Wondering About Flatiron School


On Dec 16, 2012, at 1:41 AM, Jan E. <lists@ruby-forum.com> wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> promising to "turn you into a web developer" in 12 weeks (even if
> you have no previous experience) is just laughable and stinks of snake
> oil.

That might be a bit of an upsell, but 12 weeks of intensive training can
get you _very_ far.

> Learning to program takes *years* of practicing. Just ask the guys in
> this forum. In Germany, for example, becoming a "programmer" takes 3
> years. And that's some pretty intense training, which consists of both
> working at a company and going to school. Many companies even require
> you to have solid programming skills beforehand.

Just because the formal apprenticeship takes 3 years to complete doesn't
mean that you need 3 years to learn "programming". Quite frankly, most of
the curriculum in Germany for programming apprenticeships is pretty 
laughable.
For universities, there is a common joke: "Students know Java very well, all
you have to do is teach them programming."

I know more than one apprentice that were perfectly good and productive
team-mates in bigger projects after the first 2 month if you knew about what
they were good at and what they lacked and allowed for some time for self-training
on each tasks.

Also, the number of non-"certified" programmers in good positions in Germany
shows that programming itself is nothing that you have to be tought to work in
that field. Formal education certainly helps, but for many tasks, you don't need it.

> So after those 12 weeks you will *not* be a web developer who's actually
> fit for the job. If they're good, they'll give you a basic overview of
> different techniques. If they are bad, they'll teach you nothing but a 
> bunch of buzzwords and tell you that you're a "Ruby rockstar" now.

Someone that can do many basic tasks is already a valuable asset if you know
how to treat that relationship right. It will certainly not make you a "i am a ninja
and get a lot of cash"-Programmer, but getting to a decent productivity level
for basic tasks in 12 weeks is certainly possible. Have him do landing page
for 3 weeks, you can never have enough of them :).

Also, the concept of having such intensive courses is pretty usual: pretty much
every database vendor sells you DB knowledge in 4 days or less (and you'd be
surprised how good some of these are) and most european universities have
courses on top of their studies that teach skills at a decent level in 3 months.

> So I'd be very sceptical about this. Personally, all this hipster-talk 
> alone makes we wanna close the page immediately.

Thats true, trust is another thing. I wouldn't accept an applicant just by merit of
having finished such a school alone, but thats a question of how the applicant
sells himself. Being upfront about "I am switching professions and took a course"
goes a long way.