13 ms·

Coding School General Assembly Raises $70M

35 points by earlyadapter 11y ago

throw42 11y ago
General assembly mints genius'es. I went to MIT and can't get admitted to their program.
- dntrkv 11y ago
  The fact that you went to MIT is probably the reason you aren't getting admitted.
  - santaclaus 11y ago
    Why would that matter? They have your money either way, and op has an additional MIT degree, which I would imagine would only help one during a job search, likely boosting GA's placement rate stats.
    - strmpnk 11y ago
      It's actually quite hard for instructors to deal with classrooms with very uneven advantages between students. Given that these courses try to get the most of such short time periods, I'd imagine you'd either be unhappy with the pace or perhaps lead other students to feel like they're lost.
EC1 11y ago
Are these types of schools worth the cost for people? I'd love to hear from a student. I took a couple months off work to learn new skills and it cost me nothing (except rent and no income), just a lot of Googling and frustration. What's different about this? Is it the class setting + mentor structure that makes it worth it?
- rgovind 11y ago
  You lost $10k+ of earnings in the meanwhile. Compare that with their fees
  - EC1 11y ago
    I'd lose way more if I signed up for a course. Losing money on rent, no income, + school fees.
    - rgovind 11y ago
      Fair point. I didn't consider that it is a full time program.
- qq66 11y ago
  In most cases, you learn more with a great teacher than you do by yourself, and teaching is a different skill than performing. Even Tom Brady has a quarterbacks coach, who couldn't throw the ball like he can, but can still offer constructive guidance. This is especially true for complete beginners. If I sat down in front of a piano and practiced an hour every day for six months, I would probably not do very well, since I wouldn't know where to start, I wouldn't know good technique, and I'd probably learn a lot of bad habits. If I took just a few weeks of lessons and then practiced an hour a day for six months, I'd make a lot more progress since I'd have a better idea of how to learn piano.
  - gavazzy 11y ago
    The question is not merely "Does GA provide benefit?", but rather, "Does GA provide greater benefit than the cost (financial, time, and otherwise)?"
- firstworldman 11y ago
  I completed a program sort of like this one. My opinion is that it is probably not worth it overall. I learned a lot about how to build things, but I am very lacking when it comes to CS fundamentals, and I would struggle to build something complex from start to finish. A technical interview would be a real struggle. I benefited greatly from the structured curriculum, but it didn't go much deeper than Hartl's Rails tutorial. Once you've got the basics, you're really only limited by your imagination and your desire to make interesting things that have a range of practical applications that might get you job ready. I'm still quite lost in any conversation with advanced programmers, but I'm doing alright helping my sister learn to code at the moment. I've got a lot to learn, and I'm doing that on my own now. The program was a decent jumpstart. Midway through the course I adjusted my expectations for where I'd be by the end, so I'm not really disappointed with how it turned out. Now, I'm basically a marketer with much stronger than average coding chops for someone in marketing.
rgovind 11y ago
I have a gripe with all these online courses. They only target beginners or they target advanced users. I have done hours of googling to find a stuctured course which teaches "intermediate" CSS...I am not a CSS newbie but I am also not an expert who is interested in animations, etc I can may be use bootstrap and make grid based layouts that are non responsive. I am yet to find a course which will help me make, lets say, a hacker news UI or reddit UI. I can guarantee you that all these courses fall short of that.
- memonkey 11y ago
  With CSS, it's a little more do it yourself and finding out the best/efficient hacks [sic] to solve a problem. If you can create a grid based layout, you can make a hacker news clone with html/css.
- firstworldman 11y ago
  I'm not endorsing this program at all, but Bloc's Rails curriculum has students build a Reddit clone from the ground up. In fact, there's a wealth of free tutorials online for building Reddit-style sites. If all you're looking to build is the UI, I'm not sure you'd need much more than to tinker around with Bootstrap.
- timdorr 11y ago
  General Assembly doesn't offer online courses. It's solely in-person training.
- strmpnk 11y ago
  While GA has a minimal online presence, I'd agree that there is a notable lack of courses designed to take a practicing professional from intermediate to advanced. This is likely due to the problem of finding a classroom sized audience at any given time that shares a significant enough background on a topic yet still finding that there common set of things they all lack. While I have ideas on how this could be solved to some extent, most of the time it's going to be a limitation of finding an audience that's willing to pay the same amount as someone who's looking to start a new career. Some of these students have a very strong drive to start something new. An established practitioner is unlikely to have feel as strongly and thus much less likely to pay the same sorts of rates.
misiti3780 11y ago
I dont want to sound like a dick - but how many coding schools equates to too many coding schools. I would love to see some stats on how many people are trying to attend these sort of things. At some point, supply is going out strip demand and its not going to be financially viable.
- enraged_camel 11y ago
  Coding schools are gaining popularity because there's demand, obviously. Many people see them as a way out of their stagnant earnings and soul-crushingly boring middle-class jobs.
- hkmurakami 11y ago
  It's like the housing boom all over again.
- santaclaus 11y ago
  I'm curious how sustainable these schools are in the long term. It seems like there is a limit to how many entry-level devs in a given language and framework you can pump into the local market before it becomes saturated. I suppose you can cycle through technology stacks and hope the market has soaked up enough devs before the next class comes around, but it seems like there is a limit to how big the schools can grow. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with many of these schools getting pumped full of venture funding.
  - misiti3780 11y ago
    i think the elephant in the room is that you can't just graduate one of these coding schools and compete with someone who has been coding for X more years than you have.
    - orrinward 11y ago
      The expected competition, I believe, is to be competing against BA/BSc Comp Psi grads with 12 weeks of learning. With that in mind I think they hold up pretty well.
ogreveins 11y ago
There's a reason that in order to become an actual engineer you're required to pass a professional engineering exam. In many states you're literally breaking the law if you put PE on your business card[1]. Putting it mildly, with all of the asshats that can barely create CRUD apps calling themselves software engineers and making an amazing salary when compared to their pathetic skills its a wonder the median salary hasn't plummeted like a rock. I honestly think having someone legally responsible is necessary for proper programming and security practices to be put into place. It works with HIPAA and the real engineering profession. The people going through these classes are no more than weekend woodshop students and the spaghetti they string together will show them to be. [1]http://sce.uhcl.edu/helm/SWEBOK_IEEE/papers/10%20reprint%205.pdf http://sce.uhcl.edu/helm/SWEBOK_IEEE/papers/10%20reprint%205...
- jpittis 11y ago
  I would guess that there are lot of qualified "engineers" (not certified) with just cs, math or other non engineering degrees. How could we keep certification from excluding all these bright people?

35 points by earlyadapter 11y ago

throw42 11y ago

General assembly mints genius'es. I went to MIT and can't get admitted to their program.

dntrkv 11y ago
The fact that you went to MIT is probably the reason you aren't getting admitted.
- santaclaus 11y ago
  Why would that matter? They have your money either way, and op has an additional MIT degree, which I would imagine would only help one during a job search, likely boosting GA's placement rate stats.
  - strmpnk 11y ago
    It's actually quite hard for instructors to deal with classrooms with very uneven advantages between students. Given that these courses try to get the most of such short time periods, I'd imagine you'd either be unhappy with the pace or perhaps lead other students to feel like they're lost.

EC1 11y ago

Are these types of schools worth the cost for people? I'd love to hear from a student. I took a couple months off work to learn new skills and it cost me nothing (except rent and no income), just a lot of Googling and frustration. What's different about this? Is it the class setting + mentor structure that makes it worth it?

rgovind 11y ago
You lost $10k+ of earnings in the meanwhile. Compare that with their fees
- EC1 11y ago
  I'd lose way more if I signed up for a course. Losing money on rent, no income, + school fees.
  - rgovind 11y ago
    Fair point. I didn't consider that it is a full time program.
qq66 11y ago
In most cases, you learn more with a great teacher than you do by yourself, and teaching is a different skill than performing. Even Tom Brady has a quarterbacks coach, who couldn't throw the ball like he can, but can still offer constructive guidance. This is especially true for complete beginners. If I sat down in front of a piano and practiced an hour every day for six months, I would probably not do very well, since I wouldn't know where to start, I wouldn't know good technique, and I'd probably learn a lot of bad habits. If I took just a few weeks of lessons and then practiced an hour a day for six months, I'd make a lot more progress since I'd have a better idea of how to learn piano.
- gavazzy 11y ago
  The question is not merely "Does GA provide benefit?", but rather, "Does GA provide greater benefit than the cost (financial, time, and otherwise)?"
firstworldman 11y ago
I completed a program sort of like this one. My opinion is that it is probably not worth it overall. I learned a lot about how to build things, but I am very lacking when it comes to CS fundamentals, and I would struggle to build something complex from start to finish. A technical interview would be a real struggle. I benefited greatly from the structured curriculum, but it didn't go much deeper than Hartl's Rails tutorial. Once you've got the basics, you're really only limited by your imagination and your desire to make interesting things that have a range of practical applications that might get you job ready. I'm still quite lost in any conversation with advanced programmers, but I'm doing alright helping my sister learn to code at the moment. I've got a lot to learn, and I'm doing that on my own now. The program was a decent jumpstart. Midway through the course I adjusted my expectations for where I'd be by the end, so I'm not really disappointed with how it turned out. Now, I'm basically a marketer with much stronger than average coding chops for someone in marketing.

rgovind 11y ago

I have a gripe with all these online courses. They only target beginners or they target advanced users. I have done hours of googling to find a stuctured course which teaches "intermediate" CSS...I am not a CSS newbie but I am also not an expert who is interested in animations, etc I can may be use bootstrap and make grid based layouts that are non responsive. I am yet to find a course which will help me make, lets say, a hacker news UI or reddit UI. I can guarantee you that all these courses fall short of that.

memonkey 11y ago
With CSS, it's a little more do it yourself and finding out the best/efficient hacks [sic] to solve a problem. If you can create a grid based layout, you can make a hacker news clone with html/css.
firstworldman 11y ago
I'm not endorsing this program at all, but Bloc's Rails curriculum has students build a Reddit clone from the ground up. In fact, there's a wealth of free tutorials online for building Reddit-style sites. If all you're looking to build is the UI, I'm not sure you'd need much more than to tinker around with Bootstrap.
timdorr 11y ago
General Assembly doesn't offer online courses. It's solely in-person training.
strmpnk 11y ago
While GA has a minimal online presence, I'd agree that there is a notable lack of courses designed to take a practicing professional from intermediate to advanced. This is likely due to the problem of finding a classroom sized audience at any given time that shares a significant enough background on a topic yet still finding that there common set of things they all lack. While I have ideas on how this could be solved to some extent, most of the time it's going to be a limitation of finding an audience that's willing to pay the same amount as someone who's looking to start a new career. Some of these students have a very strong drive to start something new. An established practitioner is unlikely to have feel as strongly and thus much less likely to pay the same sorts of rates.

misiti3780 11y ago

I dont want to sound like a dick - but how many coding schools equates to too many coding schools. I would love to see some stats on how many people are trying to attend these sort of things. At some point, supply is going out strip demand and its not going to be financially viable.

enraged_camel 11y ago
Coding schools are gaining popularity because there's demand, obviously. Many people see them as a way out of their stagnant earnings and soul-crushingly boring middle-class jobs.
hkmurakami 11y ago
It's like the housing boom all over again.
santaclaus 11y ago
I'm curious how sustainable these schools are in the long term. It seems like there is a limit to how many entry-level devs in a given language and framework you can pump into the local market before it becomes saturated. I suppose you can cycle through technology stacks and hope the market has soaked up enough devs before the next class comes around, but it seems like there is a limit to how big the schools can grow. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with many of these schools getting pumped full of venture funding.
- misiti3780 11y ago
  i think the elephant in the room is that you can't just graduate one of these coding schools and compete with someone who has been coding for X more years than you have.
  - orrinward 11y ago
    The expected competition, I believe, is to be competing against BA/BSc Comp Psi grads with 12 weeks of learning. With that in mind I think they hold up pretty well.

ogreveins 11y ago

There's a reason that in order to become an actual engineer you're required to pass a professional engineering exam. In many states you're literally breaking the law if you put PE on your business card[1]. Putting it mildly, with all of the asshats that can barely create CRUD apps calling themselves software engineers and making an amazing salary when compared to their pathetic skills its a wonder the median salary hasn't plummeted like a rock. I honestly think having someone legally responsible is necessary for proper programming and security practices to be put into place. It works with HIPAA and the real engineering profession. The people going through these classes are no more than weekend woodshop students and the spaghetti they string together will show them to be. [1]http://sce.uhcl.edu/helm/SWEBOK_IEEE/papers/10%20reprint%205.pdf http://sce.uhcl.edu/helm/SWEBOK_IEEE/papers/10%20reprint%205...

jpittis 11y ago
I would guess that there are lot of qualified "engineers" (not certified) with just cs, math or other non engineering degrees. How could we keep certification from excluding all these bright people?