[HN Gopher] Do Coding Boot Camps Make Sense in an A.I. World?
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Do Coding Boot Camps Make Sense in an A.I. World?
Author : DamnInteresting
Score : 27 points
Date : 2024-11-25 01:08 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| n_ary wrote:
| Non-paywalled link: https://archive.ph/yYVus
|
| Opinion:
|
| I am extremely tired of this same old bs about "almost 60%
| developers use AI". Yes, 60% developers use AI because the
| previous glorious Google/Bing has drowned in slop and now my
| search for documentation of a particular library or an arcane
| question returns 100% SEO spam, so I need to ask claude(or my
| local llama running on ollama) and get a decent enough(albeit
| outdated) valuable result from which I can pursue more from
| somewhere. At no time does it mean that, AI is doing a
| significant part of my work, and no my IDE already generates all
| the code I need and no I am not going to blindly use the rote
| replication of the example from StackOverflow that the AI just
| generated when I said it to generate a particular function,
| because these examples are often not the best implementations.
|
| The AI hype and the desperate lobbying is doing a lot of harm to
| our industry as a whole. We should see it for what it is, some
| rich naive dudes invested a lot of money because they feel FOMO
| from last gold mind rush if AirBnB/Uber/Netflix/Spotify era and
| is freshly burned from crypto dud hype, so they want to kill the
| industry by scaring away new folks and make everyone as lazy so
| we get slow frog boiled to accept garbage from these AI crop.
|
| Also, the market and macro economy is unstable for almost 5 years
| now due to ZIRP expiring, random war, uncertain geopolitical
| power struggle, failed regulatory keep up allowing a handful of
| tech predators to acquire and extinguish new ideas and
| competitions and so many factors. It is just an uncertain time,
| money now flows on hype and not so much on good ideas because
| previous good hype has paved way to too much greed, and of course
| certain giants built too big of a moat and raised the bar and now
| the new management is milking the cows until the cows collapse in
| next few years when the new competition rise once the macro
| settles a bit.
|
| I am optimistic, from next year, we will see a massive
| improvement in prospects(despite trump happened). We just need to
| hold on a bit.
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| Reminds me of quote Sussman gave when asked about MIT switching
| away from Scheme:
|
| "Nowadays you muck around with incomprehensible or nonexistent
| man pages for software you don't know who wrote. You have to do
| basic science on your libraries to see how they work, trying
| out different inputs and seeing how the code reacts. This is a
| fundamentally different job, and it needed a different course."
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I am extremely tired of this same old bs about "almost 60%
| developers use AI".
|
| I don't even believe that is accurate unless you're considering
| things like IDE autocomplete to be AI or assuming everyone
| using visual studio user is using copilot.
| danjl wrote:
| Or, you can look at the positive contribution that AI is adding
| for developers. This is true even for curmudgeons like me that
| tried it early on and had bad experiences. Using AI to look up
| documentation, and asking the AI to summarize alternatives
| takes many fewer clicks than searching Google. I also find it
| generates good code _if you ask the right questions_. That is,
| as an experienced programmer, I 'm able to generate much
| better, iterative prompts than a nontechnical person or a
| junior programmer. With tools and the AI evolving, making
| iterative changes across your app using an AI is clearly part
| of the future of programming. Heck, it even chooses good
| variable names, and that's been the bane of programmers since
| the dawn of programming.
| simonw wrote:
| "Between the time Mr. Rendon applied for the coding boot camp and
| the time he graduated, what Mr. Rendon imagined as a "golden
| ticket" to a better life had expired. About 135,000 start-up and
| tech industry workers were laid off from their jobs, according to
| one count. At the same time, new artificial intelligence tools
| like ChatGPT, an online chatbot from OpenAI, which could be used
| as coding assistants, were quickly becoming mainstream, and the
| outlook for coding jobs was shifting."
|
| The big question for me is how much of the reduction in available
| job for boot camp graduates is because of AI-assisted programming
| productivity boosts, and how much is because they are now
| competing with 100,000+ more experienced people who got laid off
| in the last couple of years (due to a retraction in market size
| after an over-exuberant hiring period by tech companies during
| the pandemic).
|
| Anyone seen any credible studies about that?
| hedora wrote:
| For experienced developers, copilot and friends seem to be a
| slight win. (Maybe 2x one day out of five.)
|
| That's as not as big a boost as, say, IDE autocomplete.
|
| However, for entry level Lego style coding, I can imagine it's
| a bigger improvement.
|
| I'd be curious to see a study that breaks productivity gains
| out by task. (Including learning new languages/frameworks/code
| bases).
|
| My prediction is that the sorts of jobs coder camps target will
| get hit harder than most, because most productivity gains will
| be there. That probably implies that type of development
| training will need to focus more on higher level tasks, like
| incorporating requirements or making tactical design decisions.
| stevekrouse wrote:
| I 100% agree that this is the right question. My intuition is
| that higher interest rates, lower multiples, and layoffs are
| the cause. AI is just what we point to to give ourselves
| comfort that our smaller teams can accomplish as much as our
| bigger teams used to.
| blitzar wrote:
| I would put gross overhiring (and overpaying) which caused a
| positive(/negative) feedback loop and fomo ahead of the other
| factors. The pace and scale of hiring wasnt even justified by
| the rates / multiples which had been low (rates ) and high
| (multiples) for the best part of a decade.
| mike_hearn wrote:
| Seems hard to do a credible study on that. You'd need hiring
| managers to answer "how many more bootcampers would you have
| hired in a counterfactual world without AI", which seems very
| hard and subjective.
|
| Intuitively you'd expect AI to be a big win for bootcampers.
| Their productivity is typically low because they're constantly
| hitting roadblocks and getting stuck, even on simple tasks.
| Unsticking them is an AI strong suit so they should be able to
| plough through tasks much more effectively despite still asking
| for the same low starting salaries.
|
| Problem is, AI also benefits the more experienced types, even
| if less. And if you can pick between a desperate senior or a
| bootcamper, and the price gap isn't that big, why would you go
| for the bootcamper? The senior will still be much easier to
| work with even if they both would have access to top of the
| line models.
|
| So it's got to be the layoffs (ending of ZIRP and COVID
| stimulus).
| downrightmike wrote:
| Microsoft is not going to subsidize AI forever, they'll need to
| make a profit, and last quarter the spent $19B and only earned
| $2.5B from it. People are cheaper in the long run, probably
| forever.
| kristopolous wrote:
| it will be people + machine as it always is. For instance,
| modern robotics hasn't made factories unmanned, instead it's
| just a small fraction of what was once needed. Same thing is
| true for mining. Over 90% of the jobs will vanish and they
| will be different. In the 1800s, the professional
| photographer replaced the portraiture painter. Different
| pricing point, different skill, comparable product.
|
| But none of these 100% disappeared. Ai is not a buggy whip to
| programming. It's more of a camera to painting.
| Havoc wrote:
| To me they never made sense in the first place - outside of ZIRP
| era that is which was very much a fluke. Something that someone
| from the street can pick up in a couple months isn't likely to
| command an enduring market premium.
|
| Doesn't help that most of them taught precisely the things LLMs
| are good at. Boiler plate front end and a sprinkling of glue
| together back ends.
| toast0 wrote:
| To the extent that they could be a somewhat reliable pipeline
| into a programming job, they made sense for people with
| reasonable programming skills (or perhaps capacity, if we're
| generous) and a lack of credentials.
|
| Can do the work, but can't get hired? Find a reasonable boot
| camp (hard), do the time and get access to their placement
| assistance. From there, now you've got work experience and will
| have an easier time getting through hiring pipelines.
|
| I think they were definitely oversold as the solution to
| everyone's lack of a good job, and some of them were outright
| scams.
| willio58 wrote:
| I've hired a couple of quality developers from bootcamps.
| Especially if you're looking to hire Junior devs, I highly
| recommend keeping an open mind about these bootcamps if
| you're a hiring manager.
|
| I went to a 4-yr university for a CS degree. I mean I did
| learn a lot and I don't regret it, but tbh I didn't learn any
| web dev languages or most things I use at my job today
| through my program. I learned C, C++, etc. which was super
| interesting at the time but it just doesn't translate into
| JS/React-world super well. I think there's a place for legit
| bootcamps that focus on what you'll be using in your day-to-
| day and connecting you with some potential hiring companies.
| They just need to be careful to not guarantee anything and I
| think they could benefit from almost an internal hiring round
| after the program to see if you have the skills to even be
| recommended for a job. That way hiring managers could build
| more trust with the bootcamps.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| > I learned C, C++, etc. which was super interesting at the
| time but it just doesn't translate into JS/React-world
| super well.
|
| The technology you learn is not really the point though,
| it's all of the fundamental underlying principles
|
| Have you ever worked with someone who has no concept of Big
| O? I have. They wrote almost woefully inefficient code, and
| actually had no concept that code efficiency was even
| something you could reason about
|
| This is not a terribly difficult thing to teach to a
| Junior, but it's just one example of things you learn in a
| degree program that bootcamps generally gloss over
| kid64 wrote:
| Holy fuck, hope I never come to depend on your company's
| products.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| To back up your point, I taught myself sans boot camp. I got
| my first job 4 years later. Although I was ready much sooner,
| it was tough, and I lost motivation a few times.
|
| When I finally got hired, somebody applied who had started
| coding the same time i did, only she had gone to a bootcamp.
| All the time I had been looking for work, she had been
| working. Not saying I'd do anything differently, but no
| question bootcamp would have shortened the journey.
| j45 wrote:
| You are missing out on the huge world of self-taught developers
| who run many of the massive companies out there. Many of them
| dropped out too.
|
| Learning informally, or formally, in person, online, in groups
| is all valuable.
| harrall wrote:
| A bootcamp can be someone's best entry into the field if
| they're later in their life where a 4-year institution would be
| difficult to swing.
|
| The average lower bound for the quality of a bootcamp graduate
| is likely lower but the upper bound is limitless.
|
| And I'm saying that as a electrical engineering graduate who
| knows some basic things that some CS grads don't know that they
| should really know better than I know.
| kid64 wrote:
| That's ridiculous. If you can't afford actual education,
| settle for a scam? Wtf?
| psunavy03 wrote:
| Today: "We can save money! We don't have to hire all these junior
| devs!"
|
| 2035-2045: "Why does our software suck? Why is it so hard to find
| good senior devs and architects?"
| downrightmike wrote:
| "Why are we having to pay 10x what we paid a couple years ago
| for a senior developer???"
| flustercan wrote:
| I hope so.
|
| Also possible: "Wow people are still paying good money for our
| sucky software. I guess we never needed good software nor good
| developers."
| j45 wrote:
| Learning to code, both in person, and online, both formally, and
| informally are invaluable.
| benopal64 wrote:
| Agreed. The more unique situations I program in, whether it is
| new people I am building software for or whether I am building
| on a new tech stack, the more I realize why so many packages
| and solutions exist in pip and npm.
|
| Coding new solutions in new ways has helped me learn so much.
| Getting a career that supports that was one of the biggest
| catalysts for me (unsurprisingly), however, attempting to code
| anything is certainly beneficial.
| j45 wrote:
| Getting started in any way, keeping going, keeping growing is
| the key.
|
| Self-taught developers are equally as formidable and can be
| found at or near the top of any company and required on
| balanced teams with "formally" educated developers.
|
| Different styles of thinking, both are required on a
| successful team.
| carbine wrote:
| The inherent nature of the technology industry is that we all
| always have to be levelling up and finding new ways to create
| value. The better your ability to reason from first principles,
| learn new tech, etc. the better you will do.
|
| Teaching people a specific approach and tactical skillset without
| the underlying fundamentals does not set them up for success in a
| fast moving industry, particularly right now when we're
| undergoing an enormous shift on virtually every level. But it
| _can_ be an accelerant for some people, so I'd never discount a
| bootcamp grad on the basis of their learning method alone.
| holtkam2 wrote:
| This bootcamp grad now works on AI (LLM augmented services as
| well as traditional ML models) on a daily basis at a big tech
| company.
| thegrim33 wrote:
| I feel like "AI taking programming jobs" is just yet another in a
| long list of hyped up things that so many people seem convinced
| about, but then never ends up happening.
|
| In X years from now are the people that pushed this idea going to
| reflect and change their approach to things? I doubt it, they'll
| just have moved on to hyping up the next thing.
|
| Off the top of my head, hyped up things that everyone "knew" that
| have yet to happen:
|
| - Driverless cars. 10-20 years ago they were all the hype, my
| friends thought that in a year or two they'd have a driverless
| car, and now it's 10-20 years later and they can still not buy a
| driverless car.
|
| - Bitcoin hype. All the people that were so convinced that
| bitcoin would take over, and people would be paying for groceries
| with bitcoin, and everyone would switch to bitcoin for everything
| and it'd be a huge revolution .. and it has yet to happen.
|
| - NFT stuff. I feel like I don't need to explain this one.
|
| - Another current one is "just keep scaling LLMs and AGI will
| magically happen, we're really close". Related to AI programming
| I guess. Check back in in 10 years on this one, it ain't going to
| happen.
|
| - Various short-lived hypes where a bank closes down and everyone
| on HN and elsewhere is spreading doom about how it'll be a chain
| reaction and the whole economy will crash and .. it never
| happens, and everyone just forgets what was said.
|
| It's just hype after hype after hype, it's exhausting.
| joseangel_sc wrote:
| printing press was hyped radio was hyped tv was hyped planes
| were hyped the internet was hyped
|
| things arrive slow, big things take time
|
| btc is almost 100k today i can take a waymo right now
|
| i agree in between a there are letdowns and scams, but not all
| is hype
|
| hype after hype is not exhausting, it's exciting
| seangrogg wrote:
| Of course they do. It doesn't matter if it's independent self-
| study, a bootcamp, or a formal degree. The goal is to iteratively
| build on your knowledge, grasp the fundamentals, develop
| intuitions, and put yourself in a place to continue to build upon
| that foundation in perpetuity.
|
| It's a starting point. Not a stopping point.
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