Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

makeschool.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 101 posts

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#61

Post by s73v3r »

pitt1980 wrote: post #20
nmrm2 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But they're looking for top students , so presumably their competitors are MIT, CMU, Stanford, etc. rather than the local Community College. Trade schools are great things, but I'm not sure I could feel comfortable advising a student to turn down MIT for a trade school, even one with really great connections.

considering the price tag of those schools, they should be the most vulnerable to competition

If you do well at any of those schools, you'll likely end up with a job that will easily allow you to pay off any student loans you need to take out.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#62

Post by joshvm »

aesthetics1 wrote: post #52

What is the deal with this?: You'll need a mac laptop purchased in the last 2 years running the latest version of OS X and an iPhone or iPod touch running the latest version of iOS. We provide need-based hardware assistance for students who can't afford a mac or iPod.

Given that a big chunk of the course is developing iOS apps, it makes sense for participants to own both a Macbook (for XCode) and the hardware they're running their code on.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#63

Post by beisner »

pitt1980 wrote: post #32
swatow wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But almost all top schools have needs-blind admissions which means that if you get in, they will provide the financial aid that you need if you can't afford it. So it's actually very unlikely someone gets into a top school but then decides it's not worth the money (assuming the school is worth the money, which it is, and the only issue is whether they can afford it right now).

what college adminstrators will decide you need, and what you think you might need, can differ significantly

They can differ, but they are usually extremely generous. I know loads of people who pay less for Princeton, Harvard, and MIT than they would for state school.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#64

Post by s73v3r »

aesthetics1 wrote: post #52

What is the deal with this?: You'll need a mac laptop purchased in the last 2 years running the latest version of OS X and an iPhone or iPod touch running the latest version of iOS. We provide need-based hardware assistance for students who can't afford a mac or iPod.

One of the big pillars of their curriculum is iOS development.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#65

Post by peri »

hackuser wrote: post #51
bphogan wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it's really not. We have students in debt because they MAJOR in areas where they end up with no marketable skills. Taking a history class, a philosophy class, and a sociology class along with some economics and science helps you solve problems with people as well as the world around you. When I was in my 20s and taking those classes I found it a waste of time. Now that I'm older I'm thankful for them. Can you get…

> We have students in debt because they MAJOR in areas where they end up with no marketable skills. I disagree. I've never hired someone based on their undergraduate major; I rarely know what they are. The skills imparted by an undergraduate educational institution are very valuable, but not directly applicable to professional work, and that even applies to graduate schools such as law, for example -- no law firm car…

As someone who's much better off as a person having a B.A. in Computer Science in five years than their intended B.S./B.F.A. in four, I think the both components are vital.

The undergraduate major I ended up with has definitely opened some doors; if I had finished the other half of my degree I wouldn't need to spend nearly as much time proving my literacy in other languages on the job. Most of my clients do business in English, so it's not a major disadvantage, but for someone who wasn't lucky enough to pick up a midwestern American accent at home, both the liberal arts side and the major can be vital for proving that you can do what you need to while you're not a "senior" or "highly experienced" candidate.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#66

Post by nmrm2 »

eonw wrote: post #58
dollar wrote: post #45

Sorry, but 25% of a persons salary for two years is a ridiculous amount of money. With a first year programmer making $75-$85k this cost will be similar to college debt. Will these payments qualify as tuition and be tax deductible? That could soften the blow slightly. I like the idea that companies will pay the school for their candidates and relieve the student burden. But why not go all-in on this model and just gu…

you are aware of what most higher-end 4 year colleges cost? i think 25% of two years wages is a lot less debt than many are left with.

This is not true.

The opposite is true.

The average person has 27k, which means it's a pretty exceptional person who leaves college with 40k in debt (that's 25% of 80k over 2 years). The real cost disparity is probably even larger than 10k due to taxes.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#67

Post by glesica »

woah wrote: post #37
glesica wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're not happy with the education then do something about it . One great option that isn't presented often enough is to transfer to a different institution. Don't think that just because the school you're at sucks for you that all of them will. In some cases you can actually get into a better school than you got into out of high school as a transfer student (although some schools are weird about accepting transf…

Does a CS education at all prepare one to deal with spaghetti code? My impression from working with CS degreeholders is that maintainability and craftsmanship is completely orthogonal to algorithms and theory.

It depends on the programming. There are actual degrees (not a ton of them, but they exist) in "software engineering". Different programs also have more or less emphasis on such things. That was part of my advice, to think about whether the program was a good fit for the goals the student had in mind.

As for the spaghetti code example, there's definitely more going on there than I implied, but my point was that having an extremely solid grounding in algorithms and theory can be a huge asset, assuming the student has actually taken the lessons to heart. For example, I have spotted bugs and inefficient algorithms before just by looking at code or even hearing a description of what it is supposed to do that colleagues with less "theory" knowledge have missed.

Of course YMMV, there is no silver bullet. My point was just that a broad knowledge of theory isn't useless, but it also isn't necessary for everyone to have. We end up in the best place when every person gets the education that best suits what s/he wants to do, and having enough information up-front to make that happen is critical.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#68

Post by Geekette »

Seems odd that the actual cost of tuition is not stated anywhere on the site and discussion on it is vague; all that's stated is that you pay it with your internship earnings + 25% of your salary for 2 years post-graduation. Seems ridiculously steep[1] and unscrupulously variable[2].

[1] With some companies paying interns to $10k+ monthly, a student could pay out around up to 60k earned (a 6 month internship period is referenced on the site), then get a $120 job afterwards and have to pay another 60k over two years, totaling 120k.

[2] Meanwhile, a student who gets a 30k internship + 100k job only pays back 80k for attending the same school.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#69

Post by DesaiAshu »

PhoenixWright wrote: post #55

As someone who took their online gaming course I wouldn't have anything to do with these guys. They abandoned Make games with us and have been spamming my inbox with at least 3 different business models since then, this being their latest one. The online gaming course had buggy code and horrible stumbling lessons. I heard about them on here and was conned out of $100. Stay away from these scammers.

Founder of Make School here. I'm really sorry you had a bad experience with our online game development course :(. We're continuing to improve both the curriculum and user experience. Please drop me a line - ashu@makeschool.com - and I'll be sure to give you a refund.

Re: Show HN: Make School – College replacement for founders and developers

#70

Post by DesaiAshu »

pskittle wrote: post #43

This seems too good to be true. Are there any plans of making the curriculum available to students who are not in the US. Perhaps for a fee? You could reach a wider audience. Don't know how the internship thing would work. As a student on leave from school in the US, this is something i could see myself doing

Let's chat :) - ashu@makeschool.com
Post reply on HN