7 ms·
Ask HN: Why are self-taught developers deprived of “free for education” tools?
Github Copilot is free for students, but what about "self-taught" people for which school is too far or too expansive?
- phendrenad2 4y agoI think because there's no way to differentiate someone who's a learner vs someone who already has lots of experience. They'd basically be giving it away for free to everyone. Another option would be to license it "free for non-commercial use", although then you have the problem of people using it for commercial use without upgrading.
- tgv 4y agoWhy? Because you can verify that someone is a student, if you try hard enough. And they're trying to get people hooked on their product, and then pay for it. OTOH, college is expensive for students, why don't self-taught people have to pay tuition fees as well? I think it's obvious that the being self-taught (technically: self-teaching?) and being a student isn't the same thing.
- langarus 4y agoCollege is expensive only in USA.
- blowski 4y agoIt's not cheap in the UK.
- lesstyzing 4y agoIt’s pretty cheap. Not as cheap as it once was but £9k a year for 3 years with no difficulty in getting the loan and only having to pay it back based on income level after you graduate is a pretty good deal - particularly compared with the US.
- walthamstow 4y agoThe interest rate is RPI+4% which is such an obvious joke that they had to take 5% off the rate recently because it hit 12%, but it's still 7% interest! Those grads are never going to pay their loans off, so that's a 9% tax on their salary every month forever. The only ones who can get out are those with family who can lend/gift the money to pay the loans off.
- rowanajmarshall 4y ago> that's a 9% tax on their salary every month forever Well, 9% of your salary above £28k, and wiped 30 years after your first payment. In any case, it means no-one is too poor to study at tertiary level (recognising that there will always be circumstances that mean someone cant') while still making everything can be funded. It's not perfect, but no system is.
- Anon1096 4y ago9k per year is in line with in state tuition at a lot of schools in the US too.
- jjj123 4y agoIs it? All of the state schools near me (east coast) are like $25k/yr in state. Edit: that’s what they were 10 years ago when I was a student. I’d guess it’s more expensive now.
- BeetleB 4y agoWidely varies. I picked a random university in Scotland - the fees were just under 2000 Pounds per year if you're Scottish. The no-name University in my city in the US charges $10K.
- blowski 4y agoScottish universities are cheaper than the rest of the UK. Tuition fees for the lowest ranking uni in England (London Metropolitan University) is £9,250 per year (~$11,000).
- iamnotbrian 4y agoIt’s free in Scotland (if you’re from Scotland).
- AlchemistCamp 4y agoSomebody always pays. In this case, it's the Scottish people—both those who have and those who haven't had their own schooling subsidized.
- blowski 4y agoThis is why it would be good if the employers who benefit most from these education systems contributed more towards society. Every time a FAAMG company hires a Scottish graduate to work in London or California, the Scottish taxpayer has effectively given big tech a little subsidy.
- walthamstow 4y agoIf more Scottish grads help develop the Scottish economy then it could pay for itself, at least partially.
- unclenoriega 4y agoI'm always confused when people make this type of comment. As an American, I usually see it in discussions of health care, but also on other types of government services. Perhaps you can help. Do you think the people reading it don't know this? Are you trying to make some sort of implied argument?
- MisterBastahrd 4y agoAnd most tech companies offering services like this happen to be in the USA.
- willcipriano 4y ago> why don't self-taught people have to pay tuition fees as well? People are currently arguing that we should.
- bitexploder 4y agoHuh? You mean state/govt funded college? Or student loan debt forgiveness?
- willcipriano 4y agoStudent loan debt forgiveness.
- bandyaboot 4y agoAre you this dramatic about every form of government bailout that doesn’t directly benefit you? Edited subsidy to bailout.
- willcipriano 4y agoOnly ones that go to extremely privileged people.
- game-of-throws 4y agoBy "extremely privileged", are you referring to people whose parents didn't pay for their education and so they had to take out loans?
- willcipriano 4y agoPeople who came from backgrounds where the idea of spending a house worth of money on a piece of paper that employers aren't even interested in isn't batshit insane. Sue the school if they lied to you about the prospects of the degree. If they didn't and you went into this deal clear eyed, why am I paying for your years of partying?
- spiffytech 4y agoI had a friend who bypassed free-for-education restrictions by using an email like "johndoe@pretend.edu.mydomain.com". Turns out a lot of the code that looks for .edu emails doesn't correctly do end-of-line matching on the string.
- 7speter 4y agoA lot of sites are catching up and verifying with institutions or are asking for proof of enrollment.
- amadeuspagel 4y ago> I think it's obvious that the being self-taught (technically: self-teaching?) and being a student isn't the same thing. Sure, but why shouldn't it be treated the same for the purpose of free dev tools.
- cassianoleal 4y ago> being self-taught (...) and being a student isn't the same thing. Are they not? If you're teaching yourself, you're by definition studying the subject matter, hence you're a student. You're not a formal student but a student nonetheless. > why don't self-taught people have to pay tuition fees as well? That should be fairly obvious. Tuition fees are meant to (at least partially) pay for teachers (time, expertise), teaching infrastructure and ancillary structures to a formal education. Since you're self-teaching, you're providing all of those yourself. You could pay, but you'd pay yourself and that would be silly. Note that I'm not arguing about the general point of the OP but rather about these specific points.
- mellosouls 4y agoYou don't need Copilot (or other free-to-education stuff) and there is enough that is available (eg VSCode) for you to establish yourself.
- belltaco 4y agoBecause college students have to pay tution so they cannot afford those tools.
- ushakov 4y agobecause CS students are more likely to pursue software engineering as a career free for education really is a marketing tool to get the students to use and depend on the product so that when they land a job they can convince their Product Manager to pay for it this is business, not a charity
- oxff 4y ago> free for education really is a marketing tool to get the students to use and depend the product so they when they land a job they can convince their Product Manager to pay for it lol (i was extremely guilty to this)
- ushakov 4y agoi was guilty of refusing to offer the service for free to a student at the time it didn’t make sense to me why i should offer something for free when it costs me money to operate the student in question switched to a competitor, got a job at FAANG and now their bosses pay big bucks for his usage lessons learned: offer free (subsidized) accounts to students so when they make it you could bill them or their employers
- lfpeb8b45ez 4y agoThere are free tiers of software and services everywhere. Businesses make the calculation that sponsoring university students’ use of their product will create loyal paying customers down the road, and students are both easy to identify via email domain and probably more likely than the general population to make purchasing decisions on software and services.
- ushakov 4y agoyes, as in my own comment: this is a business, not a charity if businesses give you something for free, they still expect to profit, but at later point the logic here is to give you the product while you’re studying so when you finished they can start bill you or your future employer this is not to help students, but to help companies find leads who will help fill their own pockets
- weswil07 4y agoYou don't need any of those "free for education" tools to learn to be a developer. You can bootstrap yourself using the FOSS ecosystem until someone will pay you to be a developer, then you can afford all the paid devtools your heart desires.
- Kwpolska 4y agoOr your employer will buy tools for you.
- likeraindrops 4y agoThey.... aren't. Awhile back, I wanted to check out Tableau, which offers free licensing to students. I signed up at my local CC (in US) to get a student .edu email, but didn't register for courses. IIRC, registration was required to get a student ID card, but not the email address.
- lrvick 4y agoI learned on only open source tooling and I feel learning to collaborate with the open source community benefited me greatly. Ignore everyone saying you need special corporate controlled tools to succeed. The best tools are the ones no one can take away from you.
- turtlebits 4y agoDevelopers don’t need access to paid tooling. At least in the past 15 years or so. You used to need Visual Studio and/or Borland, but these days open source tools are as good as or better.
- charcircuit 4y agoJust because you don't need something it doesn't mean you can't improve your workflow with a paid for tool. IntelliJ is well worth the money I spend on it for me.
- ziffusion 4y agoBecause "free for students" is a marketing ploy to get them using the product in the hope that they will pay for it when they start earning.
- amadeuspagel 4y agoDoesn't this apply just as much to self-taught devs?
- ziffusion 4y agoIt is more straight forward for them to identify regular students (through their student ids or institutions).
- Kwpolska 4y agoWhen does the state of “self-taught” developer end? After some set amount of time? After you earn a set amount of money? How do you verify that? How do you make sure the “self-taught” developer isn’t using the tools for a well-paying job and not for learning? For students, this is limited by the access to their .edu e-mail address, which is often cut after graduation. GitHub Copilot is a purely optional tool you can live without with (and that I personally don’t find worthy of the $10/month price tag). Many other things are free (VS Code, IntelliJ IDEA Community), and you can be quite productive with that. And speaking of JetBrains tools, you can get a free license if you’re an open-source developer.
- dedzycide 4y agoI mean I graduated almost 8 years ago and still have my .edu email address, been using it for Spotify and random stuff here and there. I know people that apply online for college just to get their email addres and then cancel the application. it's a pretty fucked up system
- frozencell 4y agoDo you still have access to your college classes?
- amadeuspagel 4y ago> When does the state of “self-taught” developer end? Maybe after a certain age?
- sam0x17 4y agoA good strategy is to just find a friend with a .edu email and bother them
- charcircuit 4y agoWhy not just enroll in a college to get an email and then don't take any courses?
- AlchemistCamp 4y agoEssentially, there's a very broad attempt to brand an actually regressive business bet as progressive. Microsoft (and Github) would love to appear generous, but they aren't. Most Americans don't go to college and the vast majority don't get 4-year degrees. Those who do are the wealthier, more privileged 3/5 to 4/5 of the country. Some are scraping by on financial aid or scholarships, but as a whole, they'll have more money than other people throughout their careers. As a result, it's a good marketing investment to give free access to those students capable of putting up 10K+ USD/year in tuition. In the future, a large number of them will be target customers or possibly subsidized via their employers. Taking bets on self-taught people without those financial resources (present or future) is a great, prosocial thing to do, but it's not necessarily profitable.
- amadeuspagel 4y agoYeah, I think it would be far better if companies made things free for young people in general rather then just students.