Developer Bootcamps and Computing Education with Jeff Casimir and Mark Guzdial

Developer Bootcamps and Computing Education with Jeff Casimir and Mark Guzdial

Follow us on Twitter @tech_done_right, and please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts!

Guests

• Mark Guzdial: Professor in Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and Computer Science Education Researcher.
• Jeff Casimir: Executive Director at The Turing School.

Summary

How do people learn computing? Who learns best from traditional computer science education and who from bootcamps? How can we teach people who are not developers but who need to learn some programming to do their jobs? Jeff Casimir, the founder of Turing academy, and Georgia Tech's Mark Guzdial, one of the founders of the International Computing Education Research conference, join Noel to answer these questions and also explain why Excel is both the best and the worst thing in the world.

Notes

01:45 - “Computing Education”

• Paul Krugman: The Excel Depression
• The Language of Programming

05:27 - Teaching Developers at The Turing School

09:53 - Measuring the Quality of Education

14:05 - The Graduation Rate of Women and Underrepresented Groups

16:19 - Skills Acquisition

20:20 - Why not Fix Traditional Computer Science?

24:05 - Computing and Contextualized Computer Education

• “Cargo Culting”

41:00 - Why Do Bootcamps Close?

• Steve Lohr: As Coding Boot Camps Close, the Field Faces a Reality Check (New York Times Piece)
• Audrey Watters: Why Are Coding Boot Camps Going Out of Business?
• The Problems with Coding Bootcamps: Allure with little Payoff (Mark’s Post)
• Barriers Faced by Coding Bootcamp Students by Kyle Thayer and Andrew J. Ko
• What I Learned from Researching Coding Bootcamps by Kyle Thayer

46:11 - Success Rates Between People Who Have Had a Career First vs People Who Skip College and Enter Bootcamps

Special Guests: Jeff Casimir and Mark Guzdial.