Your comments about being doomed if you attend a bootcamp to being a CRUD developer and your 60 hours a week comments.

So you believe it is easy to code all day then go home and teach yourself higher math, algorithms, and bit pushing until midnight?

Not saying it can't be done; I'm saying college is the easier route.

I'm not the one who made this about CV. Someone asked if the bootcamps teach CV/ML/AI. Someone else said that they don't, but you can learn those things on your own. I said no, most people can't, then you interjected that the majority of devs don't need that. This line of quotes didn't start about the majority of devs, but about CV/AI/ML devs. Who moved the goal post?

Are we talking about an 18 year old or are we talking about a 30 year old looking for a career change? There's obviously a big difference.

I'm 26 working and in college and that's my day anyways, so now really sure how that's the argument for college vs bootcamp. Unless I misunderstood Dave

You're all insane. Just do what works for you. The biggest downside to a boot camp thing is it seems like a very narrow scope. There's so much cool stuff out there that you might find you love doing. I think any newcomer's goal should be to get the strongest foundation to learn anything they want. I'm not sure of the point of this debate. Neither side will change the other's perspective. All you're really doing is reaffirming what you already believe.

So it's coming close to class registration time and both the C++ and Intro to Java Programming classes are already full. My registration date is 12/09/2013.

My other option is to take this course at my local university instead for $700
http://unex.uci.edu/courses/sectiond...nter&sid=00127

I feel like this is a rip off considering I'll be paying a premium to learn introductory programming when I could be paying much less for the same thing at a local community college.

Or Coursera/Udacity/EDx if you want to go that route. They now have some verified certificates and some of those courses are really top notch.

I might just actually do that instead and try and test out of some of Univ. of DePaul's prereqs classes if I decide to apply in the near future.

Depaul university

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If you're in Irvine and are at all interested in it, you should check out their HCI courses. If I'm not mistaken that program is one of the best.

Quick! Which class should I take? VB.net or C# ? They are prereqs for the C++ class

C#

C# def

I ended up only waitlisting the java class since the c# and vb.net class didn't fit my work schedule

Sorry for the late reply (twoplustwo password issue :[ ). I applied twice for this bootcamp (rejected first time). Both times I went through two interviews and submitted pre-work.

My first submitted pre-work was just a simple site created using HTML/CSS. We didn't spend much time discussing the pre-work during the interview.

Afterward, I spent 3 months learning Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Javascript, and HTML/CSS. Applied for program again... submitted rails application for my pre-work... and interviewed again. Got in!

How about both, college and bootcamp? It is not an either or choice.

What higher level math is essential for doing software development? Please know that I have a great deal of respect for the knowledge that is anpotentially acquired in a university setting. I made a post last month about a situation I encountered at a company where I would definitely be consulting with Phd level talent in algorithm development. I will readily admit I don't have that talent. In my view not many do. I totally agree that pursuing university degrees has a lot of value. Again I don't think it is an either or choice. Also I can see value in attending a boot camp without a degree.

haha I've tried to make that point 10,000 times. Except mine has been college + as much free education as possible = You get good quickly.

I would say that they are, sort of. I mean, if you spent 4 years at a college and can't get a job... As for the flip side, see the post you quoted.

This is hardly an exhaustive list:

SQL -- Classical Logic, Graph Theory.

Machine Learning -- Calculus, Probability, Statistics, Linear Algebra

Image Manipulation and Ray Tracing -- Linear Algebra, Calculus, Trigonometry.

Algorithms -- Calculus, Counting

Marketing -- Statistics, Calculus, Probability

Cryptography -- Statistics, Probability, Classical Logic...

I can think of many more examples, but why waste bandwidth going on and on?

The stock answer is black boxes, and that is fine to a point. Even if you never create the wheel again, there is immense value in learning the foundations that black are created from. It is akin to cashing your paycheck, asking for the account balance, and the teller telling you that your account balance is negative when you know for certain that you had 5k in the bank yesterday. You don't have to be able to precisely know what you should have, but your alarm bells should start ringing.

Engineers use black boxes as well, but I certainly would never trust an engineer to design a bridge that never worked out statics by hand.

Of course, programs generally aren't life-threatening, but there is something seriously wrong with the programs I've had to use at my previous and current jobs. There is something seriously wrong with visiting websites that takes eons to load and cause my computer fan to spin. This is result of not understanding or learning the fundamentals.

I cry foul on "talent." Picasso didn't wake up at 23 years old and decide to paint his masterpiece. I'm a believer in the 10,000 hours theory. Yes, gaining that talent takes a strong interest in the subject and a determination to be damn good, but there is nothing precluding you or I from having "talent." Lack of talent is a lack of desire, will, or time. Perhaps all three. I posit that there is a relatively small difference between the best and worst chess grandmaster. Yes, that status looks unattainable to us, but we aren't poring over books and playing chess for years on end either, are we?

As for what you quoted, I'm sad that you'd dispute me, of all people on this point. I'm the one person in this forum who is doing exactly what I described, so you know that I'm not talking out my ass. It is not easy to go to wake up at 6:30am, get home at 6:30pm, cut time out for food, laundry, and other mundane things and still get in 3 hours of study each day, especially when your work demands staring at a screen and typing the whole day.

The largest issue with self-learning is two-fold: you have no guidance. I have a few 1,000 pages of books. I know for certain that no professor demands his or her students work through all of this in one class, and he is able to guide students in what they need to know. Me? I just grind the whole thing and hope for the best.

When you self-learn, you don't know if you are correct. There really aren't as many answers on the web as you may be led to believe.

Finally, and this is a major point: there is no romance and no reward. People try to self-learn, but really (and this is often said and often ignored), it takes *years* of practice to get the system down, and there is no one that can tell you what works for you. There is much romance to the notion of autodidact, but I never felt it was romantic or easy, and I will say for the vast majority of people, it is utterly impossible. There's lots of data-points on this very fact alone. One only need to look at the drop rates of MOOCs. There are lots of people working on this issue independently, and there are many theories about, but nothing that I've found convincing.

The only good advice, from my, and others autodidacts' experience: don't do it.

Cmon Dave I didn't mean four hours of college and you know it. Sorry Dave some people have more talent than others and in software development there are areas where it really makes a difference.

As far as your list is concerned, are you claiming that are no excellent software developers that aren't competent in higher level university math? If so you are just wrong. In my view the overwhelming majority of at least competent developers are not actually all that knowledgeable of higher level university math. They don't use it in their day to day activities. Personally i think you could skip calculus and I'm not joking. Courses in discrete mathematics are much more valuable. Finally your implication is that a coursework leading to a degree in computer engineering/computer science is all highly relevant and essential in beginning/preparation for a career in software development. Sorry to inform you that you stand an excellent chance to take a lot of irrelevant courses.

Dave, what higher level university math does one need to understand the "gang of 4" design patterns?

The point isn't about some subset of work, but the fact that you may be limiting yourself. The payoff of getting a "real" education is that you have the chance to explore tons of other options. A bootcamp is singularly focused on one topic.

I simply assert the same thing Go_Blue said above: going to college allows you to explore many options and get a bird's eye view of the entire field.

I also assert that it is extraordinary difficult to self-learn. Telling someone to self-educate after going to a nine-month course is terrible advice, for the simple reason that if they were a capable self-educator, they would have that job within one year without needing a bootcamp.

To level out my personal experiences:

I attend one meetup. The office is decorated with hand-written, eye-glazing math on the walls. All sorts of crap I can't understand.

By chance, I watched a talk about network monitoring and a tool used for it. The people in attendance talked in mathematical terms. In fact, the speaker even discussed how he
encoded derivatives in the program, along with many other mathy topics.

So, yes, normal developers do in fact use math, and yes, those topics are very important and very interesting to the world at large.

As for my claims about developer quality, yes, I honestly believe that it isn't possible to be extraordinary at programming without mathematical thinking, which is directly derived from mathematical learning. This does not mean I don't think one can be productive and, heck, even pretty good. But top-flight? No.

I've always felt that uni is sort of different when it comes to programming.

Everyone typically enjoys college life but some would probably benefit more if it wasn't an option. I know many people and myself included, where in the first year of uni or more, you could delay your growth. I could rant about how I think testing and the grade system is awful but I don't think that is necessary.

I'm sure most could just as easily be self teaching with all the resources available on the internet for free(Pirated or not). I would argue that I did self teach myself during the summer and really built my foundation in how I approach problems.

I've never really enjoyed math but can excel at it because it's straight forward.
I don't necessarily believe at all, you need to take all the math courses required in a CS degree in this day in age to program.

If you don't take the math courses and are not a math geek, well you will probably not create anything amazing like what the early creators of doom did but do you have to?

My so far... life conclusion is that you should examine the industry of where you will be liking to work when or if you were to finish uni. Decide on projects that you want to have on your resume and just learn the best way you think is possible. The way you learn doesn't matter but the projects on the resume that you calculate matter the most for getting hired wherever do. Well it did for me in my case and thank my lucky stars I did them.

I'd add that it so much easier the other way around.

Coding is trivial to learn and loads of coders learn by staying up all night with coke and pizza. Just get stuck into some project that interest you and you can pick it all up as you go.

The more abstract material of higher maths, algorithms requires much more motivation and discipline as there isn't the buzz you can get from a coding project and much of it will seem pointless (plus its actually much much harder)

Reading "Coders at Work" it's pretty surprising many of them have very little formal trading (even in basic computer science), nevertheless advanced math.