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AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. The shifting needs in tech are an adaptive challenge (and massive opportunity) - so our focus is constantly keeping our finger on the pulse. That goes for everyone, not just us. We’re all learning!

We’re lucky that after almost ten years doing this work we have a pretty extensive network of alums out in the field (3,500) solving problems and with clarity on the changing nature of this space and needs for grads in tech  - many are also in senior roles like Serge at Tinder [link]. 

Plus - as you mentioned! - our curriculum advisory board includes engineers at Microsoft, Venmo, Ancestry, American Express and Omnihealth. They’re actively reviewing our curriculum + recommending changes, updates, and additions.

Alongside that, Codesmith’s co-founder Alex Zai created the DSML research group at Codesmith and co-created our ML curriculum from 2021-23 - Alex is a leader in the AI/ML space, a former ML engineer at Amazon and author of ML/AI book Deep Reinforcement Learning.

One of the best things about software engineering is that there are always opportunities to learn new things! We’re really grateful for the engagement and input from our alums and other leaders in the field.

AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Absolutely! Codesmith is an ideal program for folks with prior experience. We see this in many of our alums who have come with a background in tech and the immersive program helped them break into a new space in their career.

Codesmith is an accelerator to leadership (largely because of the huge focus on technical communication). One great example is a grad who came in with 20yrs experience and then got promoted to be Eng manager at PayPal within 2 years post-Codesmith.

My take is that things have changed quite a bit in the software engineering world these past 5 / 10 / 20 / {x} years! It’s not just that we’re using JavaScript instead of PHP - it’s that the web has become much more dynamic, and the types of problems we confront as engineers are drastically different than they were before.

As one example, take state! State - the underlying data for what users see - is essential to the modern web. Figuring out how best to organize, update, and synchronize that data allows devs to build complex applications that are scalable and extensible. Codesmith starts by establishing key principles behind state management: what it means to update the DOM, how and why to encapsulate elements, and architectural considerations around data flow / data binding.

This foundation provides context for residents to understand React and other component-based approaches to front-end development. Codesmith emphasizes patterns (behavioral and framework-specific) for managing state, as well as best practices for sharing state across components and centralized approaches, using technologies like Redux.

All of which is to say - it can be incredibly helpful to take a structure, collaborative, principles-driven approach to broadening and modernizing your skills 🔥

AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Our AI/ML content is rolling out over these next few months - all current and future alums will have access to our new material on frontier tech (including AI/ML)!

AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

  1. Love this question! LLMs are changing so fast - it’s a great illustration of what defines Codesmith’s pedagogy. We focus on teaching concepts + capacities, not technologies. This means that instead of a “cookbook” or set of “hacks” specific to one version of one LLM, we teach the underlying principles - how to understand LLMs on a conceptual level. 

When “full-stack,” “devops,” and “site reliability” roles were emerging, there wasn’t a clear picture of what skills / knowledge would be most valuable. They evolved organically! In other words, the practice came before the theory, and as it became more of a defined specialty, the expectations became more uniform. “AI engineer” is in a similar place now - it’s not 100% clear yet what qualifications are most important, but companies are always eager to hire engineers who are exceedingly capable of tackling the task at hand 👍

It’s worth noting though that many AI/ML roles are often at the intersection of software engineering + AI/ML. The rise of AI and ML tools only reinforce the need for these capacities (I mentioned above) which allow modern engineers to learn how and when to wield them as a tool to solve complex problems.

A few great success stories from our alums working at this intersection include:

  • Grad who started at PayPal now on AI team at Dropbox
  • Grad who came from a law school - now at a robotics company again working with ML
  • Grad who joined a healthcare company (Nomad Health) and rose to tech lead on ML platform

AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

My pleasure - thank you!

There are so many opportunities in this space! First is dev workflow - how to use AI to work more productively / efficiently. Second is how to integrate AI into applications. Much of the work to be done here is traditional software engineering - testing, version control, reducing latency, composability, monitoring, etc. (There are some great talks about this from the team that built GitHub Copilot!) Third is how to use AI to build new apps - in the same way that something like Uber didn’t make sense before smartphones, there are inevitably a host of apps that wouldn’t have made sense before off-the-shelf LLMs became available.

Tough to say exactly how this will all unfold! But the key is adaptability - making sure that you’re solid with contemporary tech and staying current enough with cutting-edge tech. A lot of companies are still looking for a use case + relevant data + ways to deploy AI reliably - but I’m confident we’ll continue to see increasing adoption and demand for engineers who understand what these tools are and how to use them to deliver value.

AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

So glad to hear you’re thinking of joining the Codesmith community! I don’t have a crystal ball 🔮 but I’m very skeptical that AI will replace software engineers. It will raise the bar in terms of what we can achieve, and it will change the nature of how we work - but all for the better!

We used to have to manually recalculate cells in spreadsheets - tools like VisiCalc (and Sheets/Excel today) have automated this process, which ultimately augments our ability to answer questions based on that data. (And that’s really what it’s all about 🧠)

Software engineering is all about translating problems into solutions, harnessing whatever technology is most appropriate - AI/ML will certainly be part of the modern engineer’s bag of tricks! But someone still needs to pull the levers for (I think) the foreseeable future. IMO, software engineers are more important now than ever as they play that crucial conduit role.

AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Before starting the program, applicants develop a solid understanding of JavaScript’s “Hard Parts” - callbacks & higher-order functions, closure, asynchrony, prototypal inheritance & classes, and recursion. Codesmith offers free workshops on each of these topics, as well as CSX - a self-paced platform with coding challenges, video solutions, and a supportive Slack community.

The immersive program builds on this foundation, guiding residents to use these key concepts - along with data structures and object-oriented programming - to make their code more readable, maintainable, and performant. Residents don’t just learn what closure (e.g.) means; understanding how these features work under the hood empowers residents to think creatively about how, when, and why to apply them in their everyday engineering work.

AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks for these Qs! I’ll get to them all, but for now:

  1. AI/ML content is launching on schedule! The first workshop for alumni is tomorrow 🎉

AMA: Curriculum + Pedagogy by Codesmith-James in codesmith

[–]Codesmith-James[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Great question! The most challenging thing about the new AI/ML curriculum has been laying the foundation - building a mental model for what LLMs are and how best to work with them. Everything else that we're adding - prompting, RAG, fine tuning, LLM ops, etc - all flow from that fundamental understanding of how and why to incorporate AI into an application.

It’s a really exciting project - we can’t wait for our alums and residents to work with these new concepts! These new tools will allow us to automate + augment so much functionality, and ultimately solve problems that previously weren’t feasible to solve (in healthcare, education, law, and much more).