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Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

codecrafters.io

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Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#91

Post by sarupbanskota »

ethanrc wrote: post #70
altruios wrote: post #23

Price 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…

It seems like they are specifically targeting engineers at big co's with learning budgets rather than people paying out of pocket. Much cheaper than sending an engineer to a conference

True. From our research and speaking with customers, many tech companies have learning / professional development budgets in the range of $500-$5000. Often they're trust-based, and self-directed, so engineers are free to spend them on whatever they feel helps them most with their growth.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#92

Post by sarupbanskota »

lamontcg wrote: post #71
altruios wrote: post #23

Price 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 prices are more or less in line with what they're offering. Based on the descriptions I expected low-to-high triple digits, which is in-line with Arden Labs golang training. The subscription model is a bit annoying, though, I'd prefer to spend a bit more to get lifetime access to sets of tutorials so that you can come back to it at any time in the future. The future upsell would be new tutorials sold to e…

Thanks for your feedback here! While we don't offer lifetime plans currently, our quarterly and annual plans are one-time.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#93

Post by yardie »

sarupbanskota wrote: post #85
yardie wrote: post #82

This is awesome but the only way I would be able to afford it is if my company paid for it. I'd have to make a case for prof. dev. anyway to add some sort of certification to it? HR really, really likes certificates, degrees, etc. for PD.

We do have user pages. Here's an example of a real user's page, who's in-progress: https://codecrafters.io/users/jaredpalmer And some examples of "completed" users: https://codecrafters.io/users/eyalfoni https://codecrafters.io/users/byarr Do these help? Please feel free to drop me a brief note (sarup@codecrafters.io) and I'll be happy to help you write a compelling case for PD and also explore certificates.

I'll ask and see.

I just renewed my CPR/First Aid they took a photo and added it to my profile with the expiration date. And it was my name and the date literally scribbled on cardstock.

It might be pedant but even a simple PDF with name, date, and subject taken would probably satisfy HR. They are rigidly loose like that.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#94

Post by sarupbanskota »

gbersac wrote: post #19
scottydelta wrote: post #10

I like the idea but the price seems very high and it’s not even for continued access but a subscription for a limited time. The kind of experienced engineers you are targeting are also the people capable of doing this kind of learning on their own. But if someone’s employer is paying for it then it helps expedite the learning because of the guided process you guys provide.

If it's done on my spare time, I don't have time to create proper test suite, proper CI... This is done for me by CodeCrafters. It helps save a lot of time.

Agreed!

One of the things we also hear frequently is: "I don't know what to build"

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#96

Post by sarupbanskota »

yardie wrote: post #93
sarupbanskota wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We do have user pages. Here's an example of a real user's page, who's in-progress: https://codecrafters.io/users/jaredpalmer And some examples of "completed" users: https://codecrafters.io/users/eyalfoni https://codecrafters.io/users/byarr Do these help? Please feel free to drop me a brief note (sarup@codecrafters.io) and I'll be happy to help you write a compelling case for PD and also explore certificates.

I'll ask and see. I just renewed my CPR/First Aid they took a photo and added it to my profile with the expiration date. And it was my name and the date literally scribbled on cardstock. It might be pedant but even a simple PDF with name, date, and subject taken would probably satisfy HR. They are rigidly loose like that.

Gotcha, I got this. I'm happy to spend some time on Figma hand-crafting a super slick certificate for you. Just reach out and ask!

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#97

Post by sarupbanskota »

thewebcount wrote: post #64

This is a really cool idea! I may check this out. One concern I have is that it looks like you're having people rebuild Unix command line tools. Tools which have a tendency to look at the world in one particular way. Unfortunately, that way is not very good to users. I'm really concerned about how many different programming courses, from boot camps to graduate level CS courses, push this narrow view of programming. I…

Thanks for your question. If I understand right, you mean for example projects that involve a frontend web component?

That's on the cards (e.g we have Build your own React on the pipeline). There are unique challenges to making that experience predictable, so we're focusing on the "console-based" projects for now. There's also often a "subjective" nature when reviewing/testing UI so we need to think through the ideal feedback workflow for courses with frontend components.

That said, I do wanna highlight that these courses do cover a lot of ground. I look forward to your feedback once you manage to get your hands on it!

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#98

Post by sarupbanskota »

rayman22201 wrote: post #95

I was pleasantly surprised to see support for Nim as a task language! very cool! Particularly considering your target market of developers with corporate education budgets, I expected a much smaller set of mainstream languages.

Thank you! Our language support mechanism is OSS, and we welcome community contributions. It's designed in such a way that you don't strictly need to have knowledge of the course material to be able to add support for a language.

https://github.com/codecrafters-io/languages/blob/master/doc...

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#99

Post by sarupbanskota »

cercatrova wrote: post #72
qsort wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you are already a professional developer though, it's also questionable what is the added value. I'm willing to trust them that the quality is top notch, but it's basically a glorified tutorial; I have to agree with GP that the price point is way too high. I think they're targeting professional developers with self-training/learning budgets. I'd be totally down for this if my company were willing to pay the time a…

The value is many devs know how to do their work but many might not know enough of the intricacies to build their own Redis for example. I do full stack and while I can make a website with a corresponding API, I don't know enough to rewrite Redis which includes more low-level backend knowledge than a typical fullstack engineer might have, so this would be useful for me.

From a customer call I had last night —

They were 4 years into their job, and felt that their job was mostly cobbling together a bunch of frameworks. Nothing wrong with that, but they constantly had the itch of not knowing how the pieces really tie together.

Their next goal is to explore platform engineering roles, which involves work that is one level lower in the stack.

Re: Launch HN: CodeCrafters (YC S22) – Practice writing complex software

#100

Post by sarupbanskota »

gbersac wrote: post #22

Since 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.

Great suggestion! I'd take that course :-D
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