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Stuff I read, Feb 2023 edition
# forum
j
https://tfos.co/p/stuff-i-read-2023-03-06/ Each sentence was crafted with love and tenderness
j
Launch school does indeed look legit and I can agree with their perspective. One of my friends went to a bootcamp and is now doing well but there were plenty of others in his cohort that weren’t able to get developer jobs after the program.
j
glad it worked out for your friend at least! I do feel like aptitude factors in a lot
based on launch school's pricing ($200/month) I'm guessing it's mostly self-driven with a small amount of guidance/feedback, which is probably the best way to do it anyway
too bad they don't teach Clojure! of course that would make it harder to get employed than if the students didn't learn programming at all "you will be doomed to never work as a software engineer because you won't be able to tolerate any of the mainstream languages"
t
Cool initiative, Jacob, keep it up.
l
that’s the real Lisp curse 🥲
That does suck to hear about the Lambda/Bloom School/Institute. I’d been lightly promoting them for years because it’s hard for me to give a full-throated recommendation for a CS degree, but seeing so many bootcamps rise and fall has not been heartening.
j
yeah... I felt like my own cs degree was largely a poor use of time myself, hence originally being excited about lambda school. I think they just kinda screwed themselves over by taking all the money the VCs offered them and trying to scale way too fast before they actually figured out how to teach well/efficiently
plus the whole ISA model I think is much less of a silver bullet than they hoped it would be
t
Is there a school of this kind you'd recommend?
j
Launch School, the one I mentioned in the post, looks worth checking out. I don't have much familiarity with them other than reading a couple blog posts, but from what I've seen it looks promising.
I like that they charge a fixed monthly rate instead of doing an ISA. I think ISAs incentive schools to treat students like slot machines--some are naturally going to have more aptitude/readiness than others, and business-wise it just doesn't make sense to invest extra resources into students that are likely to have low payouts, so to speak--better to just try to filter for "winners" and hope you make enough from them to cover the cost of the duds. But with fixed monthly pricing, the school can afford to invest more time into students who need more help, which is required for mastery-based learning.
t
Their methodology is interesting. I'm not sure about the scientific backing, but they do mention the right things, like Barbara Oakley (I did her course on Coursera), and it makes sense in general. I'm in my 40s and did a Python course in 2013, on Coursera. I'd score myself significantly lower than average compared to other students in that course, as I struggled. Is Launch School suitable for old donkeys like me?
j
I certainly think it'd be worth a shot! It's not terribly expensive in any case; about the same as private music lessons. So if you decide after a couple months that it isn't that great, at least you're no in the hole too much. I think they have a free do-it-yourself introductory course too. If you do look into it more or try it out, definitely let me know how it goes.
t
$200/mo? It may not be expensive in the US, but it is a significant amount in other places, especially depressed countries and people in a worse financial position (unemployed).
j
certainly--mainly I mean it's cheap compared to boot camps/college
I guess it comes out to about the same price as a course at a community college I went to
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