These are all programs that are at least 2 years long and act as alternatives to a typical CS degree.
Originally planned for release on April 10th, 2017 but stuff happens.
After interviewing with a few of the new and upcoming alternative long-term programs for CS education, I wanted to provide others a brief overview of how they operate differently.
Most coding bootcamps are 2 to 4 months (8 to 12 weeks) long.
These programs instead act as alternative options to a CS degree which is usually 4 years long.
Common Patterns Found
- gamification
- thorough admissions process
- all these programs will accept someone who is at least 18 years but some of them have upper age limits
Alternative Programs
- Make School
- Holberton School
- 42
- Ada Developers Academy
- Turing School
- Galvanize
- Horizons One
- MissionU
- Lambda School
Make School
- 2 years
- 18+
- San Francisco, CA
- coach/advisor – switch maybe
- 2 core courses – twice a week for an hour
- 2 classes – 3 times a week – 2 hours – advisor projects
- 25 hours of work/week for courses
- teach core courses
- 5 6-week sessions per year
- 2 sprints this fall vs 3 sprints this spring
- two 15 weeks semester
- fall shorter than spring
- technical education
- web/mobile development – 10 courses
- fullstack web – 10 courses
- devops/AWS
- front-end web-dev
- data science/ml/ai
- gaming/VR – club
- devices in IoT
- gen. courses
- design, economics, product dev
Holberton School
- Syllabus for the 1st year of their program
- 2 years
- 18+
- San Francisco, CA
- internet projects with deadlines – always released at midnight
- no formal lectures/teachers
- access to resources that have more experience and knowledge
- overlapping batches
- staff here on-site who write most of the projects anyways
- mentors who are available in a number of different channels (emails, slack, meetups (fireside chats), in-person)
- no formal teacher – just uses mentor to provide up to date knowledge on whatever they’re working on
- i.e. mentor who is a man who works in cyber-security in SF (Dave) – look over my resume
- networking really important component of those who come in
- constant feedback on program and how it is relevant in industry
- we cannot implement things that we think are important – so whatever we’re teaching here – they have to be relevant for industry
- mentors critique curriculum and provide feedback in different roles/companies
- huge sense of comraderie and teamwork and collaboration –> important for us too
- current student interviewing me
- help other students –> status quo
- focuses community, collaboration, and helping others, sharing knowledge
- 1st 9 months –> 60 hours a week –> on-site intensive learning
- first 3 months
- theories, fundamentals
- C programming languages
- projects build up
- last one is “building a shell”
- next 3 months
- front-end
- back-end
- APIs
- databases
- uses Python
- not about learning Python but about understanding methods/routes and understanding OOP fundamental concepts so you could easily translate that syntax
- C projects don’t stop
- next 3 months
- systems administration
- devops
- next 6 months
- full-time internship
- this can turn into job
- full-time job
- full-time internship
- first 3 months
- next 9 months
- full-time specialization
- part-time
- if a bunch of people in your cohort are interested in something specific – then that is a specialization that is created – has to be at least 4 people in a specialization
- no set group of specializations because industry changes every year
- specializations now: low-level algorithms, back-end engineering, system administration/devops/SRE (site reliability engineer)
- specialization can be done part-time –> meant with full-time job
- others are back full-time with specialization b/c they didn’t get full-time job after 6 months or they choose hiatus/quit
- majority choose part-time
- cohort demographics (January 2017)
- 50% female, 30 or 40%
- 50% POC
- average age range
- most of students are in mid-20s to 30s
- right out of high school
- at least 18
- 40’s, 50’s, 58 is oldest we’ve gotten
- are any of projects given by a contract
- all are created by staff here
- staff members are not experts in front-end/UX/UI field
- so some you can collaborate with mentors
- can you give me examples of jobs folks from your cohort have gotten
- systems administration/devops roles
- 2 people with Apple doing SRE
- 2 people with Dropbox doing SRE
- 1 with Docker as SWE
- 1 with LinkedIn as SWE
- 2 people with medical tech company as SWE intern
- full-time jobs right after Holberton but it’s definitely not the expectation
- 3 with scality as junior SWE
42
- I would recommend using the game Lightbot to prepare.
- A bulk of their admissions process to getting into a piscine involves solving puzzles exactly like ones you would find playing Lightbot but a bit more complicated.
- There are also videos online…
- 3-5 years
- San Francisco
- Free
- ages 18-30
- certain time of life
- very competitive
- difficult
- isolating
- referral bonus – headhunting fee
Ada Developers Academy
Turing School
Galvanize
Horizons One
Horizons School of Technology
The Horizons School of Technology bridges traditional education and the world of technology. We give high-potential students the skills of an engineer and perspective of an entrepreneur.
- The world’s first tuition-free technology co-op program
[pdf-embedder url=”https://francescoronel.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Horizons_Immersive.pdf”%5D
[pdf-embedder url=”https://francescoronel.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/HorizonsOne-ProgramOverview.pdf” title=”Horizons+One+-+Program+Overview”]
MissionU
MissionU
Data Analytics + Business Intelligence
- If you are interested in something other than Computer Science, MissionU offers a one year program in Data Analytics + Business Intelligence.
- It has a tuition deferral model which means you only pay once you get a salary of at least $50K.