[dliff]

No, I don't think the quality has gone down. I think this outlook is a way of gatekeeping engineers who don't have a formal CS background. I happen to be one of them.

Most people who go to a bootcamp (I did not, but have hired a developer who did) do not end up working in a role that requires understanding of the 5 topics above you mentioned, with the exception of cache and maybe algorithms. It's just not what most bootcamps are targeted for.

I have seen a lot of terrible code from both sides, and don't believe the quality of the code to be a function of the developer's level of formal education.

[overgard]

I think you can get that knowledge from anywhere, and university education is only one path. That being said, that knowledge is REALLY important. I don't care if you come from a boot camp or not, but I wouldn't want to hire a developer that doesn't understand those 5 things (plus a lot more).

I mean, you're using "gate keeping" as a pejorative, but, gate keeping is super important in any profession. Doctors and lawyers have a lot of "gate keeping" too, but would you really want to go to a doctor without a medical degree or a lawyer that's been disbarred? You might say what engineers do isn't as important, but then, if you're running a software business that employees 50 people, that business shutting down because their engineers can't cut it is a fairly impactful thing to a lot of people.

There's nothing wrong with having novices at work. We need novices and apprentices, they're the lifeblood of our industry. The problem is that our novices don't know they're novices, and now we have novices teaching novices and telling them that a lot of important stuff doesn't matter. Or you have novices hiring novices, and now you have bloated engineering organizations that take a ton of time and manpower to do things that should be simple, and the entire industry gets a black eye for it.

[dliff]

Yes, clearly I am not advocating that anyone of any experience should be allowed to do any job. OP is positing that there is a decline in software quality because of developers who don't know those CS concepts. I don't agree.

If you're saying you wouldn't hire a developer who didn't know those concepts in your domain, OK.. I don't know what your domain is. Software is a huge field as I'm sure you know and there are many domains in which the requirements include understanding these CS concepts.

If you're saying you wouldn't hire a developer who didn't understand CPU pipelines in ANY software engineering context, I strongly believe you would be missing out on some highly skilled & capable people.

[sandofsky]

> I think this outlook is a way of gatekeeping engineers who don't have a formal CS background.

If a driving school doesn't teach parallel parking, pointing out that deficiency is not gatekeeping.

> It's just not what most bootcamps are targeted for.

If you're making $35,000 a year in the service industry, making $70,000 translating Photoshop files into HTML is life changing. If making that transition is your only goal, great.

But I think many people enter bootcamps with more ambitious goals. They'd like to move up the career ladder, take on more responsibilities, tackle more difficult problems, and receive commensurate compensation.

People I've talked to who come from non-CS backgrounds said they hit a wall years into their careers, having to play catch-up on the job. In my experience, CS didn't help me as a junior engineer; by the time I was senior, those concepts were invaluable.

When people with CS-gaps hit a wall in their career, we have a two options: we can give them more responsibilities anyway, which sets them up to fail, or we can identify gaps early and help them. That's the opposite of gatekeeping.

[dliff]

Gatekeeping may not be the best word, and I think you misunderstood what I was trying to say. OP is not merely pointing out a deficiency: they are suggesting that there is a decline in software quality because of these non-CS people entering the market. Pointing out a deficiency and blaming said deficiencies for a trend of bad software quality are two very different claims. It suggests that one cannot produce good software without a CS background, with which I disagree as an absolute statement. That may be a slight leap, but I think OP made a pretty broad suggestion.

I haven't and wouldn't suggest that people be moved to a position with responsibilities over their head If you want to move up and you need to learn more, of course you need to find a way to learn the required concepts. I did this and continue to do it.

My point about bootcamps is most people who finish them aren't out there getting jobs that require knowledge of CPU pipelines. If that IS happening, someone is really bad at hiring.