Q&A With Julien Barbier and Guillaume Salva: If You Are Copying Code/Cheating, You Are Not Learning

The ALX software engineering program was designed to prepare young African learners with technical and work-ready skills, effectively providing the opportunity for those who want to develop careers in tech. Unfortunately, a sentiment that we have become aware of is that some learners have resorted to copying code in an effort to move forward in the program. Obviously, this is not something that we encourage or endorse, it is an issue that needs to be openly discussed. Copying and pasting code is not uncommon in the tech space, however, as you will read in this article, context matters. This write-up includes excerpts from a Twitter space with ALX's Chief Product Officer, Julien Barbier and our Chief Technology Officer, Guillaume Salva. They are bona fide tech professionals and they weighed in on the subject of copying code. Be sure to check out Julien Barbier’s and Guillaume Salva’s bios at the end of the article.

Q&A

Q: We’ve noticed that there is a temptation from some learners to copy code from more competent coders to help them get along in their coursework. How effective of a strategy is that for those wanting to get into the profession of tech??

Guillaume Salva: Having someone that wants to learn but then just copies and pastes someone else’s code is not learning, it's clearly called cheating. I think as a learner, it's not deserving of your learning experience to copy-paste something. Looking at someone else's code and understanding it is different from taking it just to make sure that you get the right score. Those are completely different. We see it (cheating/copying) during the whole education process. It's key for us to be able to help learners understand the difference between, “I will look at someone's code to understand it” - but you will erase it from your mind because you know what they did and how they were able to do it - and “I will take it to get the best score.” There’s a complete difference between, “I want to have the best score” versus, “I want to learn.” If someone starts any curriculum on earth and says, “I will look at someone more advanced and I will take what they did and therefore continue and move forward in the program,” at the end of the day, they won't know anything. So why would you spend time trying to learn when you are not learning?

Julien Barbier: You're right (Guillaume) it's a question of context, right? When you are taking a course, the context is that you want to learn and with Alx specifically, the context is to learn and also to get a good job in tech. To get there, you are going to have to; understand the concept, be able to explain things in an interview and live code something in front of someone while commenting on everything you're doing. That's your end goal. If you're cheating, you're not learning anything there. That being said, the context is very different when you're working at a company, the most important thing is the time to market, it's building the feature before a deadline. So you have business objectives and the goal of your job is not to learn anymore. The objective is to ship as fast as possible. So if you find the perfect piece of code in a library somewhere on the internet, you want to do that and you don't want to recreate everything yourself. These are the errors people make, not context-switching one thing from another. In one instance, it's counterproductive to copy code from someone else, but in another instance, it's counterproductive not to do so. Always think about what the context is and the goal of what you’re doing. How then are these actions moving you towards your own learning or your company’s objectives?

Q: What are companies looking for in junior-level, mid-level, and senior-level tech professionals?

Guillaume Salva: I hire a lot of various engineers with different levels. One thing that I love the most about the juniors and what I will really look for in that level of engineers will be the trajectory of their career. Like, is this someone that knows how to learn? With any new student that starts their career, are they able to catch up with something? When you see a job offer that needs you to know X, Y and Z language, and you don't know them because at school you probably weren’t trained on that, but are you able to catch up quickly on it? Are you able to train yourself on it? That is something that I will really look at as a hiring manager. I will look to see if my junior engineer will be able to jump on a problem, ask a few questions and will also be able to grow by themselves. That is key. If a junior engineer says, “well, I know Python and I know only Python and I won't do anything other than Python,” I would probably not be interested in such a candidate. However, I would be interested in someone that says, “I know Python, but I can also train myself in Ruby or any other language.”

Julien Barbier: The reason why the program has been built this way is to push everybody outside their comfort zone all the time. So once you get there on the job it's just another day at ALX. Knowing how to learn is critical, especially as we enter the fourth industrial revolution where everything's going to be replaced at a pace that has been unseen so far. If you are learning and you're very good at JavaScript, and then JavaScript suddenly disappears because it's not the new shiny thing on the market, you're gonna have to learn this new framework. You're going to have to learn this new way of doing things, otherwise, you're going to get behind and the company's going to get behind as well. Then you're not gonna find a job for 10 years after that. So it's very important that you have this skill set, “learning how to learn.” This is so you are not pushed outside of your comfort zone for the first time on the job, because then it's too late.

Conclusion

We are incredibly grateful to have had Julien Barbier and Guillaume Salva for taking the time to speak to our learners. As professionals who have experience in the tech space and tech education, their takes on this topic are invaluable. If you don’t want to miss any other amazing speakers and conversations, be sure to follow alx_africa on all social media platforms.

BIOS

Julien Barbier

Julien Barbier joined ALX last month as Chief Product Officer. He is working with the entire team at ALX on creating the next software engineering program in the world and offering it to millions of people in Africa and beyond.

Before that, Julien was the CEO and founder of Holberton, a revolutionary new type of software engineering school that has no teachers, no lectures, and no upfront tuition. His innovative educational model is supported by tech leaders Jeff Weiner (Executive Chairman at LinkedIn), Jerry Yang (founder of Yahoo!), and Solomon Hykes (founder of Docker), as well as R&B singer Ne-Yo and actor, producer, and social activist Priyanka Chopra.

Before that, Julien was the head of marketing and community at Docker, arguably one of the fastest-growing products for software developers over the last few years, now heavily used by companies such as Google, Uber, Spotify, Yelp, eBay, PayPal, Microsoft, Amazon, IBM, etc… His innovative approach to communication and community has been one of the key factors that led the company from a $0 to a $1B+ valuation.

Julien is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best selling author and was recognized as one of the top United States’s CEOs in the Education Space in 2022. Julien has also been listed on Vanity Fair’s Future Innovator Index 2018 and was the winner of the EdTech Leadership Award 2017 for School Leader.

Guillaume Salva

With an Engineering degree in Computer science option network, distributed systems and security, Guillaume started his career as iOS developer with iOS 3.0. With 15 years of experience in the industry, Guillaume is the CTO of Holberton School, creator of the Checker and all other tools that he and his team developed for allowing students to learn “at the Holberton way”. Passionate about education and mainly to see a student grow month after month. Always happy to help!