Re:The Coding Bootcamp That Wants To Be The CS Degree Of The...
by atjoslin on Friday September 06, 2013 @01:25PM
(#6341538)
I think a heavy theory focus is very less likely to be useful.
In my CS degree, we learned some cool theory. Eg I learned what big O was, which these guys probably won't.
But I think for most people it's much more important to learn to make things than to learn advanced theory that only a very select group of programmers use (eg compiler writers).
And I know how to learn any theory I need to learn or any language I need to learn. my CS degree never taught me to teach myself, though, I had to do that.
I very recently graduated with a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science here in the UK. Course length was three years and i'd say only the first year was hands on coding most of the time to get everyone up to speed. The two years that followed were all theoretical courses on fields in Computer Science (Natural Language Processing, Computational Vision, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning etc.). Of course there was a coding requirement for each module but it was a lot more of a theory and research oriented approach. I feel i've gotten the most worth from my degree from this theory side of things. The real worth from a computer science degree is having access to cutting edge researchers and lecturers and having them teach you their interests and generating discussions.
What these bootcamps look like are just the basics where they teach you how to create a basic REST app in <insert hot language here>. Sure it'll get you a job at a place where REST developers are necessary but it won't prepare you for jobs beyond that whereas a proper computer science degree would. A computer science degree has a very large scope of topics covered beyond just programming.