The concept seems cool and the price seems reasonable if the quality is high. But how does this translate to value for subscribers? It seems like the company is treating curation as the core value prop but I see it as more of a means to some end.
Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
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Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#22Since most developers started programming because they dreamed of becoming a game developer, you should create a course to create a game engine by yourself. It sure would gain a lot of success.
Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#23Price point I feel is too high for specifically what it is offering.
A general point I would make.
In education: cost is a barrier of entry - a smaller ask might yield far more results from people in disadvantaged situations able to scrabble up ladder. A rising tide raises all ships.
You are doing work creating the material and course work - I'm not saying release stuff for free. but $80/mo is something to bat an eye at for a lot of people that would otherwise be interested in this.
I would price it at $40-60, with maybe an intro month at $20. the $60 price point is a video game: which fits in my mind as roughly the value you seem to be offering per month. but I don't actually know how much time each course takes - thus the range from $40-60.
that's just my two cents.
Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#24Congrats on the launch! I've been using CodeCrafters for a year now and am a huge fan of the product. One problem I had was finding proper documentation/guidance for when I got blocked. Beyond the Discord are there any plans to unblock users?
Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#25Is this targeted at companies? Sounds right up my alley but the pricing is a bit steep.
We're targeting engineers with access to company-provided learning / professional-development budgets. From speaking with customers, we're seeing companies offer employees between $500-$5000 in annual allowances. Which course intrigues you most? :)
Are there pricing options for developers that aren't in this position? The platform looks great, but $80/month on a personal subscription feels really steep.
Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#26I think a bigger value I see with your product is replacing leetcode challenges with something like this. We often give take home assignments to our potential candidates and this would be a great fit, if the platform had features around code evaluation, ephemeral environment with seeded data that would be great. I think that is quite a big market too.
Good insight, we've been suggested that using CodeCrafters for onboarding engineers increases your overall talent pool (hire language agnostically, then internally train engineers in your target language). In the absence of leetcode-style challenges, what do your current take-home assignments look like? Do they test for skills specific to your domain, or are they agnostic?
Key thing we look for in a candidate is the ability to solve real world problem. We are an early stage startup, so most of the people we hire has to a broad spectrum of knowledge which I think is hard to capture with leetcode. Ideally we would like to capture their networking skills, programming skills, operational skill, understanding computer science basics etc. I think we would definitely pay subscription for a service like this as lot of grunt work is currently is done by us.
Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#27Love the concept, and could see myself really benefitting from this as a self-taught developer.
That said, I agree with most everyone's assessment that the price-point is a bit too high.
Is providing different pricing schemes for companies/hobbyists/students something you're looking into?
Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#28If only the market cared about this and not soley leetcode.
Looks cool though, I will likely try this out.
Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#29This looks great!
What languages are supported? Are the tests language agnostic, or is the coursework specific to a subset of languages? I see reference to Rust, Go, Python and JS...but am unsure if this would be useful for something like Clojure, where I can produce JS, JVM or compiled code, that could be tested against, but wouldn't expect an imperative pseudo-code explanation of an algorithm to be helpful for explaining a functional solution.
Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software
#30Price point I feel is too high for specifically what it is offering. A general point I would make. In education: cost is a barrier of entry - a smaller ask might yield far more results from people in disadvantaged situations able to scrabble up ladder. A rising tide raises all ships. You are doing work creating the material and course work - I'm not saying release stuff for free. but $80/mo is something to bat an eye…
I think the reason that the charge is that high is because they are targeting 1. people who are already in the field i.e. employed and have source of income and 2. people who are serios about it.
Just my $0.02.