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

Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 412 posts

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#151

Post by ancode »

horsawlarway wrote: post #117
ericb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the issue. The issue is that the United States provides such a poor safety net for those with health issues that one person's failing health destroys the economic potential of one or more people around them. From a sheer utilitarian perspective, healthcare and safety nets are positive ROI. Imagine the job-producing startups that don't exist because "how do you pay for insurance?"

It's worse than just lost startup opportunities. I think healthcare in the US is riddled with ways to "accidentally"* spend the entire accumulation of your wealth, leaving absolutely nothing to the next generation. Long term care is needed by a lot of folks over the age of 65 (~70% of adults age 65 will require at least partial long term care). Even "reasonably cheap" care (in my experience, roughly the same quality…

> I think healthcare in the US is riddled with ways to "accidentally"* spend the entire accumulation of your wealth, leaving absolutely nothing to the next generation.

That's not true, the money isn't just lost. The money is passed to the children of the person who extracts the money from the sick people. It's by design.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#152

Post by hellbannedguy »

ghaff wrote: post #132
xtracto wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought was around those lines: 60/70 year olds shouldn't be struggling to get retrained. They should be able to live the rest of their lives in retirement. Society should take care of their elders. That's where I would start a UBI program if I could. Sure, if anyone wants to use their time to learn something new that would be a plus for them.

Well, we sort of do. It's called social security. Now, you could argue that social security by itself only supports a pretty spartan lifestyle. But any UBI proposal is probably even less money.

I'm for not giving SS to those that don't need it.

Your 65 and wealthy. Why do you need a that piddley SS check? The USA has reniged on promises before. Oh yea, everyone would still have to contribute to SS.

I imagine the money saved might go to a Basic Income? A Basic Income that would help out the poorest of Americans.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#153

Post by herbturbo »

ghaff wrote: post #136
herbturbo wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That said, two of our best junior devs (at Arist YC S20) are Lambda School and Ironclad grads respectively, and neither of them had any background in programming and went right from bootcamp into their current positions. So it definitely works for some people. Isn't that just a case of some students having natural ability where a large percentage do not? If being a good developer was only about knowing syntax and wri…

I very much doubt it's exclusively "natural ability" (whatever that means exactly. I suspect that most people who are really motivated to finish and can set aside the time to do so can get the certificate even if they don't have the whatever to become really good developers.

The whatever you refer to is natural ability. Two people from a bootcamp turning out to be immediately useful developers says more about the people than the bootcamp which is what the original point was about.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#154

Post by ghaff »

notJim wrote: post #141
woah wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Python and Java are probably just as bad as Javascript. I started with Javascript (and self taught) and never had many issues. Javascript is very easy to get running and play around. With Java you will spend a huge amount of time on pointless ceremony that can seem important to a beginner but is really pedantic enforcement of programming preferences from the Java designers (everything is a class for example). With Py…

I agree that Java has a lot of silly boilerplate, but I don't see that as a huge hurdle. Most people will use an IDE that populates it for you. Keep in mind this is for a complete beginner. Dependency management with either Java or Python is PITA IMO, but my idea would be to avoid dependencies during this initial phase of learning the basics.

Python seems to be the goto for intro programming courses at a lot of universities today. I assume that bootcamps are more focused on Javascript because front-end wbdev is probably more marketable than Python in isolation.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#155

Post by ctvo »

tjpnz wrote: post #65
ctvo wrote: post #38

My partner went through a bootcamp, and there was an interview process after the application process. In my partner's case, they hold an advance degree in a STEM field from an Ivy League. A few of their peers had similar backgrounds, and that group didn't have trouble finishing. I wonder if the push to scale out these programs meant lowering standards, since folks with the ability / discipline to finish are few. If s…

I've interviewed a few candidates in a similar situation to your partner. My impression is that the bootcamps had very little to do with their success. I would put it more down to personal drive and possibly the programming STEM grads tend to get exposed to.

Right, I agree. I think that's the problem. Misattributing initial successes to the program, and not the people you filtered in, meant it became progressively harder to achieve the same placement rates year over year.

I imagine the above coupled with investor pressure and your own hype / marketing makes for a situation like Lambda School.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#156

Post by threatofrain »

skrebbel wrote: post #100
sam0x17 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They run into enough problems with objectness just learning map / filter / reduce. I've seen so many angry / frustrated students trying to use a for each loop to iterate over an Array only to find that although this works in most languages, in js these just loop over the fucking KEYS of the object (which now opens up the discussion about how `obj[1]` is not a key but `obj['hey']` is a key and the differences therein.

I wonder if there would be a market for a "stricter mode" version of JavaScript that simply does not allow you to use the legacy features that are so quirky. Eg just disallow for...in to be used at all (but allow for...of) No iterating over objects except via eg Object.entries No inheriting objects from other objects (ie no prototypal inheritance) No var No anonymous functions (ie only named function declarations or…

That's something which can be done at build time, such as through a linter.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#157

Post by makomk »

horsawlarway wrote: post #117
ericb wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that's the issue. The issue is that the United States provides such a poor safety net for those with health issues that one person's failing health destroys the economic potential of one or more people around them. From a sheer utilitarian perspective, healthcare and safety nets are positive ROI. Imagine the job-producing startups that don't exist because "how do you pay for insurance?"

It's worse than just lost startup opportunities. I think healthcare in the US is riddled with ways to "accidentally"* spend the entire accumulation of your wealth, leaving absolutely nothing to the next generation. Long term care is needed by a lot of folks over the age of 65 (~70% of adults age 65 will require at least partial long term care). Even "reasonably cheap" care (in my experience, roughly the same quality…

This isn't just a US thing. For example, even though healthcare is nominally free at the point of use here in the UK, that doesn't cover long-term care for the elderly - you will have to pay privately for that out of your wealth to companies of varying degress of sleaziness until you have no more left, at which point the government will hopefully consider picking up the bill. Our current conservative goverment is planning on capping this and it seems fairly controversial.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#158

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

I've been coding since I was a wee bairn (well, 21, really). I was introduced to programming, in 1982-3, during a tech school course. I don't really consider the Heathkit calculator I built and programmed in the 1970s to be "real" programming.

Mostly self-taught. I'm smarter than the average bear, and pick things up, fairly well, but I've also taken somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 bootcamps, seminars, and college classes.

Not one single one of them (after my tech school, which was actually quite vocationally-based) was particularly useful for immediate use in the real world. I think one or two of the project management ones were in the same zip code, and the Apple DU (dating myself) courses were relatively practical, but they were all "training wheels" classes.

What has been my real education, has been writing code to ship. Everything I write, I write as "ship" code. Even my "throwaway" projects and experiments.

Having a clear end goal, and becoming habituated to finishing all my work, has been incredibly valuable. Solving my own problems, doing my own research, not "kicking the can down the road," and releasing with full tests, documentation, and support, have been great teachers.

People seem to like the work I do.

Bootcamps are nice, but they only light the fuse.

I don't think I was ever qualified to write ship code after any one of my classes. In many cases, I already knew how to ship, and just wanted to learn about different directions. In the last year or so, I've taken a whole bunch of short courses on new Apple tech. I probably won't use what I learned for months, but I like to keep the axle greased.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#159

Post by ghaff »

herbturbo wrote: post #153
ghaff wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I very much doubt it's exclusively "natural ability" (whatever that means exactly. I suspect that most people who are really motivated to finish and can set aside the time to do so can get the certificate even if they don't have the whatever to become really good developers.

The whatever you refer to is natural ability. Two people from a bootcamp turning out to be immediately useful developers says more about the people than the bootcamp which is what the original point was about.

Maybe it doesn't apply at the bootcamp level. But there are certainly things I could be very motivated to learn but I'm pretty sure I'd really struggle with serious math/physics even if I put a lot effort in.

Re: Lambda School leaked documents show poor performance over the last two years

#160

Post by lostinquebec »

sunny--tech wrote: post #98

> “Danner, who invested $1 million shortly after Lambda School's Series A, compared the complaints to his own experience launching the charter school Rocketship Education, which received public backlash for teaching elementary-school students on laptops without instructors for part of their day. "They said we were experimenting on the backs of children," Danner said. "But when SpaceX launched their first five rockets…

> last time I checked, SpaceX wasn’t promising 80% of its rockets would work back in its early days.

Is your criticism that these places are making false promises, or:

> “Move fast and break things” doesn’t work when the “things” are humans, not code and technology.

RCTs and placebos work exactly this way. People literally die to help us learn what does and does not work. We lost 8-9 months of COVID-19 deaths because of a system that needs to go slow, and yet had experimentation regimes that still put participants at risk.

I don't know of any verification method that doesn't require some degree of risk for the participants, but I'd love to hear one.

Post reply on HN