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GP, There's no need to attack the author?

"42 School" which is the "school" his degree comes from is a glorified boot camp. It's one of the popular ones (in France)

It's an immediate red flag for many French tech companies when hiring.

Rant: I dislike this boot camp for what it does to parents of teenagers who are promised their child will have a career in tech, but then are not taught the skills they need to grow, so they come on the job market with -2 years of experience because they have to relearn everything (but often don't want to put the effort to do so) because they are attracting lost teenagers that like playing video games, not teenagers that actually want to learn CS and/or Software Dev.

So, you get unmotivated people with a bad attitude and no useful skill, as they need babysitting.

Source: I've interviewed many ppl coming from this school and talked with n>10 founders about their experience hiring from there




Now that you post this it puts things in a totally different light


OTOH it is gatekeeping you need a degree to code. And a bootcamp completion is not a fake degree. No more than a CS degree is a fake programming vocational qualification.


I'm not saying 'all bootcamps are bad' here, I'm saying 'this particular bootcamp is bad'.

I think there's a clear distinction between CS and Software Dev.

The latter _can_ be self-taught, or learned with a bootcamp, if it's good. It's essentially a trade which means practice is everything. And also includes a good bit of project management.

The former is a scientific field, much like physics, sociology, etc. and having a CS degree is useful for doing research (which in CS could mean coding, and could mean writing software, e.g a new type of database/algorithm/other) hence the confusion between the two. And some/most Software Devs need to understand/improve/adapt artifacts from the field of CS, so a CS degree is often beneficial for software devs, but not needed.

So, I don't think it's fair to say that it's a 'fake programming vocational qualification', it's not what it's for, and people that say the contrary misunderstand what a CS degree is.


Computer Science is and was never intended to be a pathway to programming. If you want a career in software engineering then you should get a degree in Software Engineering and also a Masters in Systems Engineering.

Coding bootcamps aren’t bad but in my opinion they should accompany a CS/SWE degree + Masters.

You should have systems thinking skills and be a lifelong learner. It’s not a one shot




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