I doubt they paid a fee. But clearly, they're either gaming the system or there's a very large population on HN who are trying to break into the industry with no credentials.
From what I have research, a computer science degree and a boot camp certificate are very different in terms of education. The former focuses on depth and the fundamentals of CS. The latter is more practical and focuses implementation where languages matter more.
This is spot on. I've employed 2 people in the last year and I can say that the guy with a CS degree had heard of binary tree and big O notation but has no idea about how everything ties together. And CSS and HTML concepts are totally foreign to him. CS degrees are stuck in C land, learning shitty bubble sort implementation in C++ and other crap that doesn't help day to day at all.
From my experience doing a bit of both the bootcamp was focused on getting the results using technology X, Y and traditional study was understanding the paradigms that allow technology X, Y.
To me it is the difference between learning to build and learning to design (something to build).
> But clearly, they're either gaming the system or there's a very large population on HN who are trying to break into the industry with no credentials.
Not necessarily "clearly"; perhaps it's another thing altogether. We tend to be anti-marketing, and many see coding schools as selling a dream ("99% of our graduates get hired at a $100K starting salary"), while producing graduates that are ready to be interns at best. The idea of the anti-bootcamp, in the sense that it's not profit-driven, resonates.
I'm curious what kind of credentials you're referring to, however. Paid boot camps? CS degree?
