From: "Jan E." <lists@...>
Date: 2012-12-16T23:28:48+09:00
Subject: Re: Wondering About Flatiron School

@ Florian:

It seems we have a very different understanding of being a programmer.
Somebody who can do basic tasks within a team that looks after him is a
code monkey to me, not a programmer. Yeah, you can probably become a
decent code monkey in a few months. Many school kids today don't even
have to be taught the basics, because they've already published projects
on GitHub, maybe done some small jobs etc.

But that doesn't make them programmers! There's a big difference
between, say, writing an SQL query that kind of works -- and being able
to understand an execution plan and write a query that won't break down
even if thousands of customers visit the page simulatenously. A
programmer to me is somebody who actually knows what he's doing and can
come up with workable solutions in a short amount of time. And that's
something you won't learn in a few weeks.

Of course you don't necessarily need formal education. But it does help
to come down to earth and get *real* knowledge and experience as opposed
to "Hey, I've read some PHP tutorials, I'm a web developer now!".

It's like with any other serious job: I'm sure there are many great
self-taught  architects out there. But when you hire one, you *probably*
want him to have an actual diploma and not just a certificate from
"Learn statics in only 1 week!".

I'm not saying that those Flatiron courses are useless. I don't know
them. But I think they give a a very wrong impression of what you can do 
with your knowledge. What kind of jobs will that be when all you need is 
a few weeks of training?

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