I'd only heard the name App Academy before this article. I did a bit of reading on it. It's an intensive twelve-week program, and it looks like applicants have

I'd only heard the name App Academy before this article. I did a bit of reading on it. It's an intensive twelve-week program, and it looks like applicants have to pass heavy screening for aptitude. I can well believe that properly screened and highly-motivated people can learn a huge amount in twelve weeks. And Qureshi seems highly intelligent. He's described in the Business Insider article as a former professional poker player with an English degree. His blog says he was a millionaire poker player by the age of 19. So I'm guessing he's pretty powerful analytically. But still. If a company is putting a quarter of a million dollars on the table, I would think they'd be able to find somebody as smart as Qureshi who also had a computer science or computer engineering or mathematics background and years of coding experience. I don't work in the tech world this article is describing, so I don't know. But it seems odd to me.