Alternative Programs To A CS Degree

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
• 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"][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.

Lambda School