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

Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 275 posts

Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job

#131

Post by austenallred »

joshuarcher wrote: post #88
dfabulich wrote: post #30

IMO, the cost of living is the core problem with CS education programs like this. It's always been possible to teach yourself to code for free if you have a computer, Internet, and 40 hours a week to spend on practice. But who can afford to do that? What these programs need most of all are cheap dormitories that offer room and board. (Close proximity to students can also help provide one another with a support networ…

100% agree being around other students would be a huge plus. I went to a school where I was surrounded by 40 other amateur programmers all driven towards building awesome products and writing quality code. Being in that environment is what made me obsessed with software. There's actually a program called Make School that's pretty similar to this Lambda school, except they DO have student dorms and even offer a 2k/mon…

You're still surrounded by other software engineers; you have a set class you'll get to know very well.

Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job

#132

Post by mplewis »

austenallred wrote: post #58
0xffff2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What would you like to see? Not OP, but I think your "syllabus" is seriously lacking in detail. For example, you have a week and a half of "operating systems" That is summarized as 4 bullet points. I would really expect to see at least a paragraph under each of the three sections describing exactly what a student should understand after completing each module. For the operating systems section, I would like to see s…

Good feedback. We'll add more detail.

This is my gold standard for bootcamp syllabi: https://www.turing.io/programs/back-end-engineering

It tells me:

• What grads know when they get out

• How they apply what they've learned

• How it applies to my workplace if I'm considering hiring them

Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job

#133

Post by brlewis »

austenallred wrote: post #114
JavaOffScript wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless they form a contract with their employers saying they will take 49,999 for 2 years with a guaranteed raise to 60k at the end. Employer saves money, employee saves money, school gets screwed...

If that's how you want to optimize your life, congratulations. You cheated the school that gave you a chance out of a few thousand dollars. Might be smarter to just get paid more :)

The way I read it you collect 17% once they start earning $50k+. Do you really collect nothing if their first two years are below?

Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job

#135

Post by 0xffff2 »

bipbip wrote: post #85

Looks very similar to Holberton School - https://www.holbertonschool.com/ - launched 2 years ago, it's also 17% after students get a job. Their curriculum covers low-level programming, high-level programming and system engineering. They have a pretty good track record so far, students finding opportunities at NASA, LinkedIn, Apple, Dropbox, Docker.

>They have a pretty good track record so far, students finding opportunities at NASA, LinkedIn, Apple, Dropbox, Docker.

Where are you getting that information? NASA is doing very little direct hiring right now, certainly not hiring software engineers without a bachelors degree. It's entirely possible to get hired as a contractor working at NASA, but that's really not the same thing.

Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job

#138

Post by SimianLogic2 »

I've thought a bit about how you would structure something like this as a pro-bono service instead of a paid service. The thing I always struggle with is how to get people who currently lack the basic computer skills, math, and logic skills and get them to the point where they could benefit from a bootcamp. Most people I know who've made it through a bootcamp successfully already had some sort of exposure to coding before starting.

You'd almost need a skills camp before the bootcamp that would be less choosy and take the top 20-30% of those students into a further bootcamp... but at that point the economics start to break down (why it'd likely need to be pro-bono).

Anyway, that was a big tangent! I think what you're doing is interesting. Do you have a twitter account set up if we're interested in following along?

Re: Launch HN: Lambda School (YC S17) – CS education that's free until you get a job

#139

Post by tu7001 »

austenallred wrote: post #97
bearcobra wrote: post #80

Do you plan on accepting students from outside the US, and if so how does that change your model?

We will open in the EU and Canada soon.

Hm... EU, Great Britain is still in the EU, but will not be soon; are you going to accept from there?
Post reply on HN