Bootcamp - Day One
in Metis
Bootcamp has begun!!
I realize I’ve not yet published a post describing the Metis Bootcamp, or my motivations for pursuing colloboration wtih Metis to jump into a career in Data Science. I may have to get to that soon…
I’m starting this post while Alice is lecturing about command line. A fair amount of the first week is going to be somewhat old hat for me. So I should have lots of bandwidth to do other things.
But this is a bit of an illusion. The instructors (David and Alice) actually discussed this earlier in their introductory presentations. They fully expect that each and every one of us will hit a wall at some point in the bootcamp. It just will be different for each person. I believe for me it will be at about the third week. That’s because we all can see the curriculum.
The bootcamp starts with the basics. This is largely because all of us are coming from different backgrounds. Many of us will have different sets of strengths and weaknesses. We could see this after all the introductions. It’s a fascinating mix. I seem to be the only one coming from a telecommunications industry background. There are some “things” that seem to be represented by more than one person, like Psychology, Economics. There’s one person who is a former recruiter. There’s another who actually is coming from a Data Analytics background.
But… thing are going to shift into warp speed rather soon. They repeated the concept there there will be a “core” set of things that we repeat and stress and will be expected to “master”. But the bootcamp also covers a sufficient amount of things in a broad overview fashion such that pretty much nobody can master everything.
Next… we’re all coming in with slightly different laptop configurations. The suggested thing is MacOS. I’m using Linux in a Virtual Machine on top of Windows. Kendall has a Windows laptop and has installed an Unbuntu app. I had to look into that. Apparently, Microsoft and Ubuntu have colloborated to put an app in the Windows App Store which is accessible for Windows 10. What you end up with is something like a Docker container to provide you with a Linux shell. It doesn’t seem to support a GUI. So… it seems to be something like Cygwin on steroids… or more appropriately a real Linux… but only the shell.
I may not need this now… especially since I have a robust VM. But this is interesting nonetheless.
I also just learned about “NerdTree” - a plugin for vim. I’m so much an old-timer that when Amy asked me if I used “vim” it didn’t register to me… because I know it as “Vee-Eye”. But to be honest I DO use vi rather tham vim or gvim. But I may have try this one. I may not feel it as a “need” so much because I’m just so used to using vi without this. But I believe this is what I’ve seen others using on the train. And it’s not just that this plugin shows the directory structure… it shows git status as well.
This is what’s fun about this sort of group experience… learning from each other all the nifty things and tricks that are out there.
In addition to the start of actual instruction, today involved several introdoction presentations. Nathan (Program Manager) explained policies (attendance policy?!? grades ?!?). Ashley (Career Advisor) went over the support Metis provides overall to assist with the Career Support.
This is the interesting aspect of this bootcamp. Metis is very focused on placement. The Metis bootcamp is audited. Their auditor does require employment/placement tracking. This seems rather different from the training provided via WorkNet… where the junior colleges or universities don’t do this so much and even WorkNet may be more focused on ensuring you get any external certification tied to that course. As such, quite literally the Metis Bootcamp may be viewed as a Career Placement effort.
More instruction and then eventually we formed groups and began work on the first project.