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Fast Crimes at Lambda School

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Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#241

Post by rahimnathwani »

golergka wrote: post #238
rahimnathwani wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine you go and work for a hedge fund straight out of university, have a great year, and earn £1m. Does the government get 9% of that? Or is it capped at the outstanding loan amount? If the latter, and someone earning $1m pays the same as someone evening $500k, it doesn't seem like an income share agreement.

I suspect the government gets much more than that, because it also taxes it.

Of course, but this isn't relevant to the consideration of whether UK student loans being are equivalent to an income share agreement.

If the point were relevant, then we might as well consider government spending on K-12 schooling the same way.

But general taxation is obviously not what we're talking about here. We're talking about the extra money someone pays in return for the government supporting their degree.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#242

Post by threecheese »

OhMeadhbh wrote: post #43

Back in the late 80s / early 90s, I taught non-traditional students coming in through state-funded retraining programs at UT Arlington Continuing Education and Texas State Technical Institute (now TSTC) in Waco. The idea was "here are a bunch of laid-off manufacturing workers who want to retrain as SOMETHING with high-tech." The most popular courses were of the very short "here's how to do some things with Unix" vari…

> Make for the perplexed

Chefs-kiss

That’s me every time I start a new project ;). Thanks for the chuckle, and please publish a book having that title.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#243

Post by ThrowawayR2 »

lispisok wrote: post #178
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 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 mon…

> "I dont get why so many people want to drop calculus from computer science curriculum."

People want the easy money that a programming job represents and resent anything that gets in the way of getting it.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#244

Post by rahimnathwani »

heymijo wrote: post #209
DANmode wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you say more, or even link, to proper methodologies for measuring iterations of your curriculum? I'm a very amateur teacher, but have received great feedback on my "teaching style", which I've refined based on two things: how often I get puzzled looks during a technique, how often I get thanked for using a specific technique. I'm curious what this looks like in the big leagues - how this "scales". Thanks for yo…

Hi DANmode, I'm obviously not OP, but I am a teacher who has gained a broad understanding of the field from practice and research. One thing about feedback this is counterintuitive is that, students are generally very bad at understanding what actually helps them learn. When I say learn I mean gain a conceptual understanding and procedural fluency in whatever they are learning that sticks with an ability to appropria…

The study set up is a bit unusual.

Consider three ways to teach:

A) Do what's best for the student's long term learning. ("deep learning".)

B) Optimize for the student doing well on a specific type of test (e.g. AP Calculus AB). ("teach to the test")

C) Optimize for the student doing well on a specific set of questions known in advance.

In the study, instructors had all three options.

In most high stakes testing, instructors have only options A and B.

The study seems to conflate B and C.

But A and B are more similar, than are B and C.

It would have been an interesting study if the instructors hadn't had access to the exams beforehand.

(Although typical US university high stakes exams are designed by course instructors who can do (C), I don't see this as relevant, as instructors can more easily help their students do well by making the tests easier.)

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#245

Post by DistractionRect »

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…

In light of the flaming, I'd like to underscore why it's entirely reasonable to redact the author of the comment in question: the author outted themselves as knowingly and egregiously violating a ToS for another site, and using//promoting services which are at best unethical, but probably illegal (residential proxies//large scale proxy services are usually built off the backs of botnets//malware).

This isn't, IMO, favoritism or protecting YC interests//founders. The thread in question has nothing to do with Lamda, YC, or anything in that regard. It's someone talking about blackhat growth hacking in the open, which might bite them in the ass later. It's a textbook example of HN's stated policy about deletion/redaction in action.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#246

Post by 7thpower »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #199
7thpower wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter point, I have worked with a company we’ll call “C” and they have been able to build a pipeline of folks who have been incredibly effective (>50). That being said the program is a bit more than ~3 months and the students go all in, they’re not doing it part time. The students come from different backgrounds, some have not graduated highschool, and they come hungry for better opportunities. We’ve tried this wit…

Teaching is a really time-consuming task, if you want to do it right. I'm in the middle of creating a series on implementing Universal Links and URL Schemes, for iOS. May be a while, before it's ready. I spend a lot of time, testing the supporting materials, and making sure that I'm giving good info.

That’s wonderful. Good luck!

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#247

Post by ryandrake »

ilamont wrote: post #159
elawler24 wrote: post #121

VC incentives are the real problem here. I was a mentor at another bootcamp and also the founder of a high-skill developer marketplace in 2017. A valuation of $1B for this business is crazy. Investors were simply underwriting students paying for trade school, there's no tangible tech innovation. Like Theranos, WeWork, and FTX - it's the story of a darling founder who has to justify an unrealistic valuation in a froth…

Like Theranos, WeWork, and FTX - it's the story of a darling founder who has to justify an unrealistic valuation in a frothy market. The other issue for all of the examples you cited (and Lambda) is an-almost complete failure for the VCs and accelerators and other gatekeepers to effectively carry out due diligence. I say "almost" because in the case of Theranos, some investors did pass, according to the documentary a…

The ease by which the Investor Class can be duped by smooth-talking, charismatic phonies is Silicon Valley's Achilles Heel. They see someone who "fits the image of what they want to invest in" and that's it. From there on, it's "I Want To Believe" and they're willing to set aside technical warning signs and all detractors.

It's sad. For every Theranos out there, there are probably 100 feasible, solid business ideas that are technically sound that get passed up because the founders don't wear black turtlenecks and didn't drop out of Stanford or whatever.

If I could go back in time and reset my Character, I'd put all my skill points into "Charisma" and cruise through life as a billionaire, fooling everyone.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#248

Post by ryandrake »

kagakuninja wrote: post #210
red_admiral wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the binary tree question more of a "low-pass filter"? As in, if someone can't even do that, they don't get as far as the interview where you talk about architecture and other cool things?

I've been programming professionally for 35 years. I've never needed to invert or balance a tree. When I need a tree, there is usually a library that does what I need, and if not, I can google the algorithm that I need. I could figure it out, but the issue is that it will take time, and it is stressful. A new college grad by contrast still remembers Data Structures 101, and how to manipulate trees. This kind of "bozo…

Yea, the real low pass filter is simply FizzBuzz or "Write a for loop." That will eliminate over 50% of your candidate funnel who literally don't know how to program. For a real candidate, it should take 30-90 seconds and you got it out of the way.

"Invert a binary tree" like questions just filter out anyone who hasn't recently graduated with a CS degree or recently and deliberately studied algorithms. I don't think they're that useful if you want to find a leader.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#249

Post by cod1r »

What's funny is that I thought bloomtech had some relation to bloomberg and I also thought this austen allred guy was a big deal. I randomly DM'd him on twitter in 2022 thinking it was some superstar tech guy and he actually replied back; XD. Now that I know more about him...yea...I'm going to stay away.

Re: Fast Crimes at Lambda School

#250

Post by jonathankoren »

smabie wrote: post #239
jjmarr wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buying equity in a person is literally what indentured servitude is. Someone making a deal to give up their future earnings for several years in exchange for a trip to the American colonies and a better life isn't fundamentally different than giving up your future earnings to a coding bootcamp in exchange for a trip to FAANG. The difference is in the degree of future earnings ceded.

Well maybe indentured servitude is fine too?

yOu cAn'T tRulLy bE fReE iF yOu cAn'T sELL yOuRsELf iNtO sLaVeRy.

I remember this take. It's the kind of thing that only makes sense in a dorm room full of financially secure people that ignore that this is simply creates a slave class of economically disadvantaged.

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