PBS高端访谈:代码开发院校成为找到好工作的最快渠道

 　　GWEN IFILL: Now: becoming a professional computer programmer in just weeks.

　　Economics correspondent Paul Solman has the story. It's part of our ongoing¹ reporting Making Sense, which airs every Thursday on the NewsHour.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: What's making this drone fly? Not a remote-control gizmo, but computer code written by students at New York's Flatiron School, one of numerous coding boot camps online and around the country designed to land their graduates gigs in perhaps the hottest field in America right now, Web development.

　　AVI FLOMBAUM, Co-Founder² and Dean, Flatiron School: I think that, if you program today, you're a man that can see in a blind man's world.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Programming is big right now, says Flatiron co-founder and dean Avi Flombaum, and it will be even bigger in the future, which growth in coding jobs forecast to be double that of job growth overall.

　　AVI FLOMBAUM: There's just such a demand for these kinds of skills that, if you are competent and you are passionate³ about this and you are a self-driven person, there are more opportunities than we can possibly fill.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Twelve weeks of immersive coding, no experience required, at a cost of $12,000 to $15,000. But, at the end, 99 percent of Flatiron graduates get jobs as developers, making, on average, $74,000 a year to start.

　　Armando Amador graduated a year ago, after losing his marketing⁴ design job in 2013.

　　ARMANDO AMADOR, Flatiron School Graduate: I remember being unemployed⁵, and I couldn't find anything. I couldn't find — not even an interview. People wouldn't respond back to the e-mails. And once I finished the program and I changed my job title to software engineer, just like that same hour, my inbox was full of messages, just like people send you e-mails and calling you.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: How did you feel?

　　ARMANDO AMADOR: I felt like I was on top of the mountain. I just felt like powerful, like, where were you guys a couple months ago, when I was looking for a job?

　　PAUL SOLMAN: At Manhattan start-up Wizard Development, Amador now makes double what he used to. It's jobs like his that drew current student Geraldina Garcia to Flatiron. She dropped out of college to attend.

　　GERALDINA GARCIA, Flatiron School Student: I kind of got into the tech industry and realized how unimportant a college degree really is.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Garcia, who had majored in computer science, joins a growing chorus of those questioning the value of a degree from a traditional four-year university, especially if it means assuming debt.

　　WOMAN: A lot of my friends that graduate this past year and the year before are still looking for jobs. I think part of the reason for that is, is that they know a lot of the theory, but they don't have hands-on experience.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Maybe that's why college didn't work out for classmate Lewaa Bahmad.

　　LEWAA BAHMAD, Flatiron School Student: I took two intro to programming classes at the University of Michigan. I failed the first time and then I failed again the second time. I thought, I'm not a programmer. I'm definitely not cut out for this.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: But he went online, started learning how to code on his own, then applied⁶ to Flatiron.

　　LEWAA BAHMAD: Why go to college for four years and work up a corporate⁷ ladder to get in the position to do something great, when you can just learn to create something great?

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Now, the dropout⁸ and code approach isn't for everyone. After all, the unemployment rate for those without a traditional college degree is double the rate of those who graduated. Moreover, few applicants⁹ get into Flatiron at the moment. Its 6 percent acceptance rate rivals Harvard's, but, insists founder Flombaum, literally¹⁰ anyone can learn to code.

　　AVI FLOMBAUM: So, right now, we're looking at your Web site, Making Sense. You can view the page's source and immediately see the source code that is describing the instructions to the browser¹¹ for how to make your page look. If I want, I can change this text to say, “Welcome to Flatiron School, Paul.”

　　PAUL SOLMAN: I see. These are just all instructions.

　　AVI FLOMBAUM: Everything — yes, that's what code is, just instructions. We call this, as programmers, the joke, string theory, because all the World Wide Web, Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, your Web site, they are just giant strings¹² of code.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Flombaum's own interest in coding began in elementary school with a computer game called Nibbles¹³.

　　AVI FLOMBAUM: Eventually, I got so good at that game that I could just beat it every time. So, I opened up the source code to try to make the game harder and make it move faster.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Flombaum went on to teach himself how to code, although it wasn't easy.

　　AVI FLOMBAUM: The way in which I learned how to program was one of the darkest times of my life. I was in high school, and I was all alone, and I had no support. And it was really a struggle. So, with all the beginners that come through Flatiron School, we very much talk about what the process of learning something difficult feels like, and not to give up, to just continue struggling through it, because, one day, you will understand it.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Thirty-seven-year-old Natacha Springer was in biotech, but left the job market to raise two children. When she tried to go back:

　　NATACHA SPRINGER: They thought I was out of the market. Maybe I didn't really have the same skills anymore. So they — they wanted to offer me a job at entry level.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: So she applied to Flatiron and now creates Web sites at Dow Jones.

　　So, if I — if you clip on Benoit Thomas…

　　NATACHA SPRINGER: It mails that person.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Oh, there's an e-mail. I see. Oh, that's cool.

　　NATACHA SPRINGER: This was my first project when I got here, and this is my team.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: But you're the only woman here.

　　NATACHA SPRINGER: That's right.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Well, why is that?

　　NATACHA SPRINGER: In the tech industry, it's mostly men, a lot of, like, 25-year-old men.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: And it's not just that the field is dominated by young men. On TV, and in reality, most of them are either white or Asian.

　　WOMAN: Normally, the tech world is 2 percent women. Guys, these next three days, 15 percent.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: We heard many explanations for the lack of diversity.

　　ARMANDO AMADOR: You see Mark Zuckerberg from Facebook, and you don't see people that look like you.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Growing up in the Bronx, Armando Amador couldn't afford a laptop.

　　ARMANDO AMADOR: I just didn't have the resources to play around and hack¹⁴ and around just really learn all about technology.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: The well-known digital divide may help explain some of the minority exclusion¹⁵, but what about women?

　　WOMAN: Boys like to play more video games, so it might have something to do with how they have grown up in the culture of video games.

　　AMY GIMMA, Developer: I think it's a confidence issue for girls, because they expect it to be a boys club, and it's hard for a woman to get into a boys club.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: But whatever the historical reasons, a young boys club it has been for years. There are efforts under way to make the coding community more diverse. For instance, Amador attended Flatiron as part of a New York City-sponsored free fellowship for underrepresented groups.

　　And Francis Gulotta, Amador's boss at Wizard Development, says that, for his company, diversity is a market opportunity.

　　FRANCIS GULOTTA, CEO,Wizard Development: Everyone has got a different approach to solving problems.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Gulotta believes his company has a competitive advantage, hiring programmers who look and think differently from young white boys like him.

　　FRANCIS GULOTTA: I am representative of most mid- to senior-level developers right now, but I don't think that a team of me would make very good products.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: For example, Amador was confused by a calender Gulotta had made for an online bakery order form.

　　FRANCIS GULOTTA: Why we were doing what we were doing didn't make sense to him, when it made perfect sense to me. And, of course, it made sense to me because I came up with it. The same problem he was having is the same problem I imagine most of our users are going to be having.

　　PAUL SOLMAN: Meanwhile, the jobs are there for pretty much everyone these days, so many Web sites, so much software, the programming pool will simply have to grow to keep up with demand.

　　This is economics correspondent Paul Solman, reporting for the PBS NewsHour from New York.

1 ongoing   

adj.进行中的，前进的

参考例句：

• The problem is ongoing.这个问题尚未解决。
• The issues raised in the report relate directly to Age Concern's ongoing work in this area.报告中提出的问题与“关心老人”组织在这方面正在做的工作有直接的关系。

2 Founder   

n.创始者，缔造者

参考例句：

• He was extolled as the founder of their Florentine school.他被称颂为佛罗伦萨画派的鼻祖。
• According to the old tradition,Romulus was the founder of Rome.按照古老的传说，罗穆卢斯是古罗马的建国者。

3 passionate   

adj.热情的，热烈的，激昂的，易动情的，易怒的，性情暴躁的

参考例句：

• He is said to be the most passionate man.据说他是最有激情的人。
• He is very passionate about the project.他对那个项目非常热心。

4 marketing   

n.行销，在市场的买卖，买东西

参考例句：

• They are developing marketing network.他们正在发展销售网络。
• He often goes marketing.他经常去市场做生意。

5 unemployed   

adj.失业的，没有工作的；未动用的，闲置的

参考例句：

• There are now over four million unemployed workers in this country.这个国家现有四百万失业人员。
• The unemployed hunger for jobs.失业者渴望得到工作。

6 applied   

adj.应用的；v.应用，适用

参考例句：

• She plans to take a course in applied linguistics.她打算学习应用语言学课程。
• This cream is best applied to the face at night.这种乳霜最好晚上擦脸用。

7 corporate   

adj.共同的，全体的；公司的，企业的

参考例句：

• This is our corporate responsibility.这是我们共同的责任。
• His corporate's life will be as short as a rabbit's tail.他的公司的寿命是兔子尾巴长不了。

8 dropout   

n.退学的学生；退学；退出者

参考例句：

• There is a high dropout rate from some college courses.有些大学课程的退出率很高。
• In the long haul,she'll regret having been a school dropout.她终归会后悔不该中途辍学。

9 applicants   

申请人，求职人( applicant的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There were over 500 applicants for the job. 有500多人申请这份工作。
• He was impressed by the high calibre of applicants for the job. 求职人员出色的能力给他留下了深刻印象。

10 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

11 browser   

n.浏览者

参考例句：

• View edits in a web browser.在浏览器中看编辑的效果。
• I think my browser has a list of shareware links.我想在浏览器中会有一系列的共享软件链接。

12 strings   

n.弦

参考例句：

• He sat on the bed,idly plucking the strings of his guitar.他坐在床上，随意地拨着吉他的弦。
• She swept her fingers over the strings of the harp.她用手指划过竖琴的琴弦。

13 nibbles   

vt.& vi.啃，一点一点地咬（nibble的第三人称单数形式）

参考例句：

• A fish nibbles at the bait. 一条鱼在轻轻地啃鱼饵。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Units of four bits are sometimes referred to as nibbles. 有时将四位数字组成的单元叫做半字节。 来自辞典例句

14 hack   

n.劈，砍，出租马车；v.劈，砍，干咳

参考例句：

• He made a hack at the log.他朝圆木上砍了一下。
• Early settlers had to hack out a clearing in the forest where they could grow crops.早期移民不得不在森林里劈出空地种庄稼。

15 exclusion   

n.拒绝，排除，排斥，远足，远途旅行

参考例句：

• Don't revise a few topics to the exclusion of all others.不要修改少数论题以致排除所有其他的。
• He plays golf to the exclusion of all other sports.他专打高尔夫球，其他运动一概不参加。