All of randomsong's Comments + Replies

Nature vs nurture. I agree there are less competent people. I believe their incompetence is due to nurture. Anything nurtured can be unlearned.

One year is a long time. I believe that less competent people, over time, could be nurtured into great people with the right mentorship. 10 years of good strong mentorship could make incompetent person a great person.

We may have a disagreement based on 1st principles, which is okay. I'm glad we got down to that.

Perhaps so. If I fail I will write about it. One thing I can confidently say is that teaching is very difficult, so failure is a real possibility. I sure hope this works out though.

10 / 15 original students were random people who raised their hand on a facebook group when I posted a potential pilot program. I think this prepared me well for the coding bootcamp at our local public library that was launched last week. I hope to keep this going throughout 2020 and see what happens.

Here's the meetup group, if you are around the area come say hi! https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3/

4Daniel Kokotajlo
I'm fascinated to hear how this went. Well done, Randomsong, and please let us know what happened!
My perspective was that maybe having some of the money back would allow you to teach more people.

I understand where you are coming from. From my perspective, I don't see the point of helping "more" people. Doing so lowers the quality for the existing students and creates more burden on myself. If you were in my shoes, what would be the inspiration for helping more? For me, I'm just looking for a balance. One person at a time, when a student leaves I'll get one or two more to fill the spot depending on budget.

payments in style of L
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I always get this comment:

Maybe you could make a contract with them that they will return you the money if they get a software development job

No offense, but I don't like that idea and the answer will always be no. Why should somebody whom society left behind be expected to pay in their pursuit to have a normal life like everybody else? These people are just getting their lives started, I don't want them to have a looming payment hanging over their heads. If you have been in debt before you know how stressful it feels to be indebted.

These guys sh... (read more)

Why should somebody whom society left behind be expected to pay in their pursuit to have a normal life like everybody else? These people are just getting their lives started, I don't want them to have a looming payment hanging over their heads.

Do as you wish, of course; it's your (potential) money and your time. My perspective was that maybe having some of the money back would allow you to teach more people. Like, that you can afford to donate money to ten people, but you could loan money to hundred people; and although getting a gift is bette... (read more)

I don't know how to say this except, you are wrong.

I've been trying to prove you correct since 2011 by teaching every low-ranking society person and I succeeded every time. I saw a college dropout (with multiple Fs on her transcript) become a good engineer, I saw a 40 year old become a good engineer.

Last year my dad (60 years old with 0 coding experience) picked up coding and I think he's gonna do great.

I had hoped that you are right so I could have the same sense of job security, but the belief that "being a good software developer is very very difficult" is wrong.

It may be helpful for you to start seeing things from a different perspective, better sooner than later.

I don't think your experiment gives much evidence that "anybody" can learn coding, just that it isn't very strongly correlated with social status.

Last year, my dad (60 years old with 0 coding experience) picked up coding and I think he's gonna do great

That's not the question being posed. The question being posed is whether your dad is now in a similar enough reference class to you to be considered a substitute for you, and thereby lower your salary.

I'm inclined to agree with Mark Roberts here. Not everyone has the mental horsepower and right ticket in the lottery of fascinations to be a programmer. It's like with any other trade skill. Can I do woodworking? Absolutely. I can knock together small

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You touched on something important here. The most important hurdle I have to overcome with students is making them feel empowered and needed so they care about coding. Afterwards, the problem solving skills become easier to teach.

If you are the only carpenter in town and your family needs a home, you can absolutely care enough to become a professional carpenter.

You can also develop the aptitude and interest to become a professional plumber if you feel valued and people around you needed a great plumber.

6quanticle
I disagree and what I've seen and read of people doing their own construction work seems to back me up. If you're the only skilled person in town and you need a home, then you'll probably be able to knock something together. But will that structure be safe? Will it keep out the rain in a storm? Will it keep out the wind in winter? Will it work reasonably well immediately after you've built it or will it require constant patching for months or year before it finally becomes usable? All of these questions have fairly direct analogs to programming. I do think there are differences between programmers that speak to aptitude differences, rather than differences of experience. When comparing two programmers with roughly equivalent amounts of experience, I have noticed that some programmers just "get it", whereas others don't. Their first solutions are faster (often algorithmically faster). They've thought through more edge conditions. Their code is simpler and easier to read. I agree that even a less talented programmer, perhaps with coaching and assistance, will eventually be able to arrive at the solution that the more talented programmer arrives at immediately. But it doesn't matter. By the time the less talented programmer has found the best solution for problem 1, the more talented programmer has moved on to problems 2, 3, 4 and 5. This is definitely noticeable over a 6-12 month period, and it's likely that the less talented programmer will be eased out of the organization. I don't know if these differences are due to IQ or the lottery of fascinations. I suspect it's both. However, it is plain to me that there are differences in ability between programmers who have equivalent experience, and these differences do go some way towards determining who is successful as a programmer and who isn't.

I had a similar realization many years ago but I have a very different (and lonely) perspective. Nobody seems to get it, maybe someone here will.

I realized this (unfair income) in 2011 as a junior in university, right after I got an internship at Facebook. They paid me $6000 / month and I had only been coding for one year (literally). Previously I dabbled in multiple other majors and my internship offer was higher than the full time salary of my peers in other majors (whom I respected deeply).

I saw this as an opportunity. During my internship and my senior... (read more)

4Viliam
The idea of paying your students for studying sounds fantastic! Maybe you could make a contract with them that they will return you the money if they get a software development job (similar to how Lambda School does it, except they don't pay their students, only teach them for free).