randomsong

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/

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 should pay: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Amazon, PayPal, Apple, etc. etc.

My goal that I'm working towards is to lead sustainable open source projects and negotiate a direct employment contract from companies because the engineers we produce are of such good quality.

Its an ambitious journey (I know), but it makes the most sense to me.

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.

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.