Today, some high schoolers are learning programming. Entry-level coding has been becoming a commodity for decades. Since the 1990s, outsourcing has been pushing Americans out of entry-level software development jobs. Many LCCs (low-cost countries) gear their education systems to the job market in the west. It’s hard to compete with foreign programmers making under $10 per hour. Is it worth the (corporate) savings? Google “Boeing 737 Max disaster.”

Bringing information technology/coding education to the North Country can be a great success. Educational opportunities in “high tech” can be an economic boon in our community if done right. The press release (“NCCC to offer software engineering course,” Malone Telegram, reprinted in Enterprise on April 15) makes bold and ambitious claims with no details. NCCC, please clarify.

“… Meets the needs for skilled workers in the North Country … make good pay and work remotely … there is no shortage of jobs …” Show us the current in-demand, good paying, work-remotely-from-home, entry-level programming jobs in the North Country. I want one.

“Potential entry level Full Stack developer …” is an oxymoron and misleading. It sounds like “potential entry level Jedi Master” or “Navy boot-camp, can potentially lead to SEAL Team 6.” A Full Stack developer is responsible for all aspects of an IT project, forest and all the trees. Breadth and depth. Soup to nuts. An expert in all parts of the SDLC (software development lifecycle).

“Machine Learning Engineer” — do you mean the intense math involved? Will UpNCoding teach NVIDIA Jetson on Ubuntu 14.xx (Where does the jet pack go?) or just parameterized method calls to existing libraries?

Beginner programmers traditionally don’t do new projects from scratch. There is a lot more to developing in a business environment than bit twiddling and “for” loops. Beginners will most likely be supporting legacy code — crappy (but business critical) drudge work. What little documentation exists is expired; there are maybe a few outdated, semi-relevant emails. It’s a program someone (long since moved on) wrote years ago. May he burn in Hell! The system is broke. Go fix it. By analogy, my tiny home office is packed with stuff. I am long out of space, random piles of it everywhere. Find me the critical, thumbnail-sized do-hicky I lost three years ago. Put back everything as it was, or you will introduce new “bugs.” See you tomorrow (if you haven’t quit).

This class has not started, but NCCC is already preparing “firmware for micro-processors” classes. Do you mean micro-controllers or FPGAs? Most firmware is embedded and written for micro-controllers and FPGAs — musical get-well cards to the “brains” of your truck. Will UpNCoding teach Assembler? “C”? MicroPython, Verilog (and netlists)/VHDL?

So what will UpNCoding’s class teach and how? GUI? DB/RDMS/Backend? SQL? ASP? JS? Connectivity? Writing APIs? Language(s)? Interupt throws? QA? Bandwidth allocation? Socket contention? IT Specific Project Management? Middleware brokering? Issues using artificial intelligence (and pitfalls) by industry? HTML? Bare-Metal? ReqCap?

Imagine you saw this: “Prepare for an exciting career in health care at NCCC.” Is that a certified nursing assistant? Brain surgery? Dietician? Registered nurse? Urologist? Employers hire programmers based on specific language, skill in that language and relevant industry experience. Again — what specific language(s) will UpNCoding teach? What if a language you learned is similar but it’s not what the employer uses? “It’s 95% the same, no big deal.” It will be when your code won’t run right by 9 p.m. Friday. It’s gonna be a long weekend for you.

I don’t like the term “software engineering.” There is formal design and structure on all levels, but it’s also an iterative creative process, not engineering as in Structural Analysis (Karl Arnstein). If it was true engineering there would be software that generates software. (I have written such programs just for kicks. It works … kinda … sorta … more pain than it was worth.) Will this be the wave of the future, though? Eventually. Write a story using Microsoft Word at home. The word processor will catch spelling mistakes, run-ons, sentence fragments, etc. It won’t tell you if your plot development stinks. It’s not engineering for the same reason. It won’t say if your story is boring. You can build a poorly designed system that will load. It will run like crap, crash often and piss off your boss and stake holders. Six Sigma does not apply to writing physical code, although many have tried at GE, etc., and failed … because it’s not engineering.

Slick marketing mentioning today’s hot-topic flashy technical terms can create expectations. Will this 12 week shake-and-bake pay off? How many criminal justice degree holders “can lead to state law enforcement,” became state troopers? Caveat emptor.

I hear there are jobs today in AI, from home, any hours, no experience needed — image tagging. For example: An imaging AI engine can use a human to tell it a picture of a rabbit is a rabbit, not a Pokemon, to start. Now imagine an image of people on a beach. Your job is to type in “hot,” “sunshine,” “summer,” “sand,” “swim,” etc., as tags.

You can also sit at home for a few weeks to learn basic Python (the most in-demand language today) at zero cost. Free tutorials on YouTube and internet. I hear it’s the easiest language for beginners to learn fast.

NCCC and UpNCoding: Specifics, please. Guaranteed placement? Salaries? Hours? Percent graduate? Percent working from home? Courses syllabus? Max class size? “Teachers” hours? Your qualifications (to teach)? Software job market analysis for North Country? Specific skills taught? The web page has lots of info on ways to pay the $12,500 fee but no course details.

It appears NCCC’s ambition is a full blown computer science program. It can be a big success if done right. NCCC and UpNCoding are making claims and selling their “skills and teaching ability” for big money. No problem — just show us what’s under the hood before we buy.

There’s more, but I’m out of space here.

Just some thoughts … and the UpNCoding CEO’s name is misspelled four times in the press release.

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Ira Weinberg lives in Saranac Lake.