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Fast Crimes at Lambda School

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Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#171

Post by fudged71 »

Around the time that Lambda school was trending I joined a company that is providing large scale process re-engineering to Universities. At the time I was optimistic that Lambda would succeed.

I’m fairly confident now that the cumulative student journey improvement, work allocation, cross-faculty collaboration, beurocracy-reduction, and general efficiencies we have delivered to a stable large post-secondary institution across all faculties is going to make a larger and longer lasting positive improvement to more students and people’s lives than what Lambda achieved. (With fewer people, less funding, etc)

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#172

Post by light_triad »

There’s clearly a need to disrupt expensive colleges and some type of pay later arrangement is a good idea, but there’s some difficulties every ed startup will face:

- schools need to be selective to keep the quality of the student body high so they persevere to finish the program and succeed

- getting students hired in a competitive field is a very high bar that is much higher compared to most schools

- software is a difficult field with high frustration and a steep learning curve

Lambda was open to everyone, in a tough field, with a high bar for success. Alternatives might be possible in less competitive fields

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#173

Post by wk_end »

swyx wrote: post #136
rideontime wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you read the linked article? I'm struggling to empathize with this fraud, especially after listening to the interview mentioned.

skimmed it. was a fan of @fulligin since before he became a citizen journalist and have followed it closely, i didnt really see much new info here in my browse thru. i'm not saying to empathize WITH THE FRAUD lol, just responding to GP about why austen stopped answering qtns. yes he fucked up, now give the guy a chance to build Bloom into something legit instead of constantly reading the most negative take into simpl…

> now give the guy a chance to build Bloom into something legit

That'd be the (perhaps too) generous thing to do, but there's no evidence at this point that he has any interest in doing that. You said that he "fucked up", but there's zero reason to believe that the past tense and not the continuous present is appropriate here. To my knowledge, he's never offered an apology, an acknowledgement of wrongdoing - either in his predatory business model or his mendacious self-promotion - or a promise to do better. The last word we have from Mr. Allred is that he believes that everyone who criticizes him is a "hater" who's just too stupid to appreciate his genius.

The message of turning the other cheek is beautiful, but perhaps a little impractical to those of us who aren't totally Christ-like all the time, and - in the context of a conversation discussing clear wrongdoing - a little banal. We're not single-handedly going to stop him from doing whatever he wants with Bloom but we should say, very loudly, that until further evidence arises his history implies that he's not to be trusted and advise everyone within a hundred yards of him to be wary.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#174

Post by Suppafly »

duxup wrote: post #30
Bjorkbat wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former instructor (not at Lambda), I'm kind of inclined to believe it has more to do with the fact that it takes a certain kind of person to put up with the demands of corporate software engineering. Getting both kids and adults (especially kids) to figure out how to program is easy if you understand that most of the concepts are better taught visually through p5js or what have you. Once they leave that sandbox,…

The frustration factor is a big deal. I took a bootcamp. One day and another student and I were working on something and a third member of our group (who had other issues) was really frustrated and took it out on us and then went to the teacher. She told the teacher "they just get it and I don't". But in truth the other student and I were not "just getting it", we were failing frequently, we had made no more progress…

>a third member of our group (who had other issues) was really frustrated and took it out on us and then went to the teacher

University courses for programming generally get around this issue by having a CS110 type course that functions as a weed out class where people can find out if they have the ability to do the basic problem solving and logical thinking to succeed in that path or not. I imagine it's hard to implement something like that as part of a bootcamp though. The bootcamp really should be pre-screening people using some basic testing or such, but often they are more commercially minded and willing to accept students that will obviously fail because it keeps a steady supply of cash coming in.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#175

Post by parpfish »

btown wrote: post #142
parpfish wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar view and am skeptical of bootcamp claims that they can get anybody a job with X weeks of training. I'm reminded of the ending of Ratatouille when the critic figures out that the motto "Anyone can cook" means "Not everyone can become a great artist; but a great artist can come from anywhere". I'm personally biased, but I feel like one bootcamp program that got this right (for a while) was Insight Data…

Apparently when the pandemic hit Insight pivoted into a remote model with ISAs, then stopped accepting new cohorts. https://www.teamblind.com/post/Insight-data-science-scam-dur... https://www.reddit.com/r/datascience/s/sdKVWBP2GJ

Not surprised that they didn’t make it, but it’s too bad that had to do that bit of a heel turn right at the end

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#176

Post by JoshTriplett »

SuurRae wrote: post #130
itronitron wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious how much Calculus as a prerequisite is a barrier to entry for students. CS as a topic is not hard, but a lot of students are blocked from entry with fairly rigorous Calculus requirements.

I'm sorry, but if you are unable to understand the basics of calculus and discrete math, then you should not be in a Computer Science program (with emphasis on the "science" part). CS isn't just programming - it's the theory of how computers work and math is an integral part of that. Just because you don't use it every day in the job itself doesn't mean that the information is useless.

While I've certainly found calculus useful on many occasions, I don't think calculus is a particularly important requirement for understanding how computers work.

On the other hand, calculus prerequisites are a filter that filters out anyone who might be inclined to say "math is hard" and give up, which might correlate with people who say "computers are hard" and give up. Or in other words, it's easier to say "Prerequisite: Calculus 2" than it is to say "Prerequisite: be sufficiently determined to complete something many people find hard and give up on, or be one of the people who found it easy to begin with". And lo and behold, rather than getting people taking an advanced CS class and giving up, you instead get people not taking the class in the first place because they don't meet the prerequisites, which makes numbers look a lot better.

This is not the best solution for the problem. It's the solution most CS programs take, though.

(Necessary disclaimer because internet discourse: this is a comment on CS education in general, not a comment on Lambda School in any aspect.)

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#177

Post by DangLovesAusten »

networked wrote: post #168

The HN comment originally made by 'austenallred in https://www.sandofsky.com/content/images/2024/05/image-13.pn... is still available at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13502774 but is now by user '_pecl. The ownership of the comment changed between July 3, 2019 and January 31, 2020 according to https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://news.ycombinator.com/i... . I guess the author realized it reflected badly on hi…

Dang just banned my other account because I questioned if the comment was really just Austen using his network of burners. pretty obvious the HN people are in cohoots with their precious Austen and don't want to see his terrible reputation tarnished even more

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#178

Post by lispisok »

itronitron wrote: post #111
bee_rider wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there’s probably room for something like: programming with less CS. But I mean, we already have trade schools and community colleges for that sort of thing. I also think there’s a ton of value in everybody learning a little bit of programming to help them automate things like office jobs. But that’s have to be carefully handled with nice intuitive libraries and thoughtfully restricted network stuff. Getting t…

I'm curious how much Calculus as a prerequisite is a barrier to entry for students. CS as a topic is not hard, but a lot of students are blocked from entry with fairly rigorous Calculus requirements.

I dont get why so many people want to drop calculus from computer science curriculum. Calculus is necessary for basic science and math literacy. People act like it's graduate level math and not something easily learned by any somewhat studious high schooler. 4 year CS programs are supposed to give you an education which is a foundation for wherever your career takes you not teach you to be a create-react-app code monkey for life. What if you come across the need or desire to do anything related to science or engineering?

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#179

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

karaterobot wrote: post #128
dustincoates wrote: post #14

I'm convinced that Lambda School was shady, and I'm not debating that, but some of this seems over the top. ISAs as indentured servitude? The shadowy negotiating a company's validation "behind closed doors?" (Where else are you supposed to do it.) The criticism of Lambda School can stand on its own without wading into the extreme hyperbole.

Yeah. This article is a combination of an interesting story with a really unfortunate insertion of POV that sends up red flags for trustworthiness. My favorite example is when he's talking about Lambda not registering with the state: > Austen claimed the school had made an honest mistake, and the company lawyer, who he claimed told them that since all the classes were online, it didn't need approval. Sure. And that's…

Thats just the typical Mastodon commie. Resentful of the man in the arena and always looking to make themselves feel better by endlessly moralizing about others.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#180

Post by breadsniffer »

csa wrote: post #138
ryandrake wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Programming is easy. Putting a bunch of black-boxes together in order to build some app or whatever is much, much harder and more complex This is why I think those low-level "invert a binary tree" and "find a substring in a string" questions are not really that great if you're trying to find someone to actually build an application. Many more people know how to invert a binary tree than know how to go from an empty…

> Many more people know how to invert a binary tree than know how to go from an empty text file to a non-trivial mobile app distributed in an App Store. As someone who can do both but values the latter skills much more, I wonder about what these “low level questions” actually optimize for selection at some companies. Part of me says that many companies want to select for willingness to “play the game” / conform rathe…

Interesting. How many companies need people to build things from the ground up vs maintainers/janitors of complex systems? I think the type of interview (leetcode vs system design) might depend on what category the job fits into.
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