Radical new programming campus in South Africa taking shape

Yeah I got accepted into the program, but due to full time commitment I cannot attend that bootcamp. What they're aiming to do is really quite radical. WeThinkCode_ is essentially an extension of the group called "42" in France.
 
RustyPrincess said:
That's shocking... What kind of questions were asked in the test?
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There are two tests. To progress to the second test you had to pass the 1st. To pass the first test you had to complete 7 questions correctly in a 15 minute time limit. The second test was a 2 hour test and was a lot more challenging. You had to get a minimum of 14 questions correct to have passed and be considered for a place in their bootcamp.

They asked us not to speak about the test, so I'll respect that. The only thing I'll say is the 2nd test had some rough questions in it that will bend your brain.

My results were 8/8 or 9/9 for the first, and for the second test I'm pretty sure I got to question 16 or 17 before my time ran out. There was one question in particular for test 2 that I fiddled around for 10 minutes with it, got frustrated and walked away for 30 minutes. Came back and completed it in 5 minutes.
 
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Brings back memories of the Van Zyl & Pritchard aptitude tests in the 80's and 90's, the institution provided free courses and guaranteed employment in the corporate world. Similar to Born to Code they also had two entry tests, only about 4% of initial applicants made it into the course. If I recall correctly, the second test was four hours long. I failed the first tests several times but was allowed to take the second test, for which I scored 25% :whistle: To make a long story short, I was eventually allowed to enter the course and ended with a 94% overall score. Said all this to encourage anyone that can't pass those damned aptitude tests :mad:
 
XennoX said:
There are two tests. To progress to the second test you had to pass the 1st. To pass the first test you had to complete 7 questions correctly in a 15 minute time limit. The second test was a 2 hour test and was a lot more challenging. You had to get a minimum of 14 questions correct to have passed and be considered for a place in their bootcamp.

They asked us not to speak about the test, so I'll respect that. The only thing I'll say is the 2nd test had some rough questions in it that will bend your brain.

My results were 8/8 or 9/9 for the first, and for the second test I'm pretty sure I got to question 16 or 17 before my time ran out. There was one question in particular for test 2 that I fiddled around for 10 minutes with it, got frustrated and walked away for 30 minutes. Came back and completed it in 5 minutes.
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proud of you. pitty i missed it lol
 
ngwenyas said:
proud of you. pitty i missed it lol
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You haven't missed it. After this first bootcamp, they will be running another one. So do the tests now and you may still have a shot. If I wasn't employed full time I'd jump into this with both feet. I mean you get the opportunity to work for the likes of FNB, BBD, Derivco, Allan Gray, etc. (First 3 are the founding members, the rest are sponsors).

It's a lot of commitment though. The bootcamp runs for 1 month, 7 days a week, 12 hours+ a day. Of the 300 or so people in the boot camp, the top 120 get chosen to go through to the actual course which is 2 years full time with 2 mandatory internships at the partners.
 
XennoX said:
There are two tests. To progress to the second test you had to pass the 1st. To pass the first test you had to complete 7 questions correctly in a 15 minute time limit. The second test was a 2 hour test and was a lot more challenging. You had to get a minimum of 14 questions correct to have passed and be considered for a place in their bootcamp.

They asked us not to speak about the test, so I'll respect that. The only thing I'll say is the 2nd test had some rough questions in it that will bend your brain.

My results were 8/8 or 9/9 for the first, and for the second test I'm pretty sure I got to question 16 or 17 before my time ran out. There was one question in particular for test 2 that I fiddled around for 10 minutes with it, got frustrated and walked away for 30 minutes. Came back and completed it in 5 minutes.
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So is it logic based questions or coding based or math or english? Just trying to understand why so few people were successful.
 
RustyPrincess said:
So is it logic based questions or coding based or math or english? Just trying to understand why so few people were successful.
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I would like to know the general breakdown as well.

My guess is that the aptitude test focused on reasoning , lateral thinking and problem solving. As much as we hope these are common skills - they aren't.

A 1.9% pass rate is probably a fairly accurate representation of the percentage of the population who have the ability to pursue a software development career. This doesn't mean they'll be good at it - it just means they have a foot in the door.

The whole "leaning to code" thing is very different from actually doing anything useful with that code. Its like learning to play golf compared to playing professional golf for prize money.
 
Chevron said:
Yeah was thinking of C++.
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C++ is a lot better, but still has that backwards compatability to C - when students look for answers on the internet they'll find people recommending tricks with pointers or funny typecasting which are great shortcuts and optimizations for pros, but I've seen them cause problems for MANY coders over time.

I always recommend C# as a learning language, the dev environment is the best in the world IMO (a view shared my all my peers, mostly professional coders with 20+ years exp), it's a modern language so doesn't have a lot of the legacy baggage that Java (another popular learning language) has and actively enforces good habits, while getting out the way and letting you concentrate on solving the problem, and not fighting with the language to get what you want it to do.
 
RustyPrincess said:
So is it logic based questions or coding based or math or english? Just trying to understand why so few people were successful.
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It requires lateral thinking and problem solving via logic.

retromodcoza said:
My guess is that the aptitude test focused on reasoning , lateral thinking and problem solving. As much as we hope these are common skills - they aren't.
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Pretty much.
 
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