9 ms·

Treehouse gets $7M to bring learn-to-code programs to high schools

88 points by Pasanpr 14y ago

ryancarson 14y ago
Yay yay yay! :)
- BrainScraps 14y ago
  I hope that at least 1/2 of this money goes to making videos that feature Jason's signature end-of-video "Creeper Smile" I've never met him, but I love that guy!
  - jseifer 14y ago
    I love you, too, BrainScraps! I made this for you: http://i.imgur.com/xNOzWJz.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xNOzWJz.jpg
    - BrainScraps 14y ago
      Auuugh! Jason is creepin' on me! Best Day Evarrrr!
- burningion 14y ago
  Congratulations on the funding, really love the direction you guys are heading. Great to see a startup out of Florida doing so well. Are you guys interested in doing some Arduino classes? I think having software control physical things really works for kids who are kinetic learners.
  - bendog24 14y ago
    We don't have anything planned for Treehouse specifically, but one of our teachers, Andrew Chalkley (achalkley) has blogged a few times about working with Arduino: http://forefront.io/a/beginners-guide-to-arduino http://forefront.io/a/beginners-guide-to-arduino and http://forefront.io/a/arduino_apple_remote_controlled_buzzer http://forefront.io/a/arduino_apple_remote_controlled_buzzer
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
SparksZilla 14y ago
I love this for so many reasons.
wesray 14y ago
This is awesome, kids need an easy way to get their feet wet in programming.
PixelPusher 14y ago
Super sweet, good luck. I personally got started in High School and would have loved more advanced classes. The issue was that they bundled people together into the same computer class. We used to have people who didn't even know how to turn on a computer, much less make a Pascal game. Good luck!
johnrob 14y ago
If this can really put high school students on track for 6 figure salaries, then we're going to see a lot less college students in the future. This could truly be a game changer.
- ryancarson 14y ago
  That's the plan. I think High School grads could realistically get $40,000 starting as Entry-Level Web Designers or Developers, then work up to $100,000+
  - andrewljohnson 14y ago
    That's way better than starting out at -40K, and struggling to find a job with your degree.
  - pekk 14y ago
    If tons of high school grads are taking already-scarce entry level developer jobs, it is unlikely that many people will be making $100,000 for it
    - jyu 14y ago
      Think you're reading it wrong. The $100,000 jobs are very different from the $40,000 (or whatever) entry level jobs. Entry level could mean something entirely different with high school vs college graduate developer jobs. In NYC the $100,000 jobs don't seem to be entry level, and there seem to be more mid/senior developer job openings than mid/senior developers looking for new jobs. It's been this way here for at least one year.
dlf 14y ago
Awesome. Maybe now high school computer courses will consist of more than how to make PPT presentations.
anthonycerra 14y ago
Bring a class to impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago where they just closed 50 public schools and the media will have a field day with your story. So many wins here: 1. Win for the community 2. Win for the kids who participate 3. Win for Treehouse in the marketing department. 4. Win for society as a whole to have more critical thinkers in the world But if you sell this company to DeVry or similar (because that's who's in trouble here, not 4 year universities), I'm going to be sorely disappointed.
mikecuesta 14y ago
Congrats Ryan - this tech has huge potential and is targeting such an important problem to solve.
just2n 14y ago
Please allow me to play devil's advocate to this story. Full disclosure: I very much dislike Jolie O'Dell (epitomized by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY), as well as the CEO of Treehouse, Carson (instigated by this: http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone). I am in no way saying that what Treehouse is trying to do is a bad thing, nor that we shouldn't be providing much better resources for learners, though I don't think such education should be paywalled for monetization. I'm very much pro-Khan Academy, Coursera, StackOverflow, etc. I've spent SO much of my free time in IRC channels teaching people and helping people with their problems and I've never asked for a penny in return, so I have a lot of resentment towards any company that wants to charge for access to basic education (https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans). I'm very much for proliferation of high quality teaching materials for learners of all ages and all levels, and so I am conflicted somewhat by this story, and I fully expect to get downvoted to hell for this, but I think it's worth considering motives here. Even the best of actions that are used to veil inconsistent or conflicting motives are questionable, and this seems like wolf in sheep's clothing. >The school I’m most excited about is in San Jose. All the kids are from at-risk homes — they have single parents who are working full time; they’re from minority groups. … Out of 12 [students], we think four or five are going to be job-ready right away. These kids have never coded before, and I’ve talked to them in person, and I’m 99 percent confident we will be able to place them in jobs. <snip> >That pilot program, Carson said, went well, and he’s looking forward to the next phase: rolling out Treehouse to many other schools around the country. The program takes six months, and the total cost is just $9 per month, per student. We jumped straight into a pivot or business expansion into virtual instruction (much the realm of things like KA/Coursera) announcement and talking about how this will help certain kids find jobs. That's great, and I hope it works out, but I'm confused. Are we trying to sell the goal instead of figuring out the logistics? I got the headline, and the summary, so why was discussion about logistics so far separated from the initial announcement of the program? How is this going to be structured? Who pays for this? We're talking about low-income families and at-risk children, so are we expecting them to opt-in to a $54 course? Is it the schools, so it's tax funded? Will it include every student at the school, or just some? If the latter, how is that selection made? If the former, what about people who don't want to pay for it? Further: as a professional in this space I'd love to review the content and provide feedback, too. Why can't we involve the community at large and reduce the costs? But the biggest question, for me, is if Coursera is doing this with the college space where education is significantly more costly, and for free, what does Treehouse offer that Coursera can't? >“This isn’t something we’re doing to get money,” Carson said as we concluded our talk. “This will change the world. And yeah, the company will make a lot of money in the process, but that’s a trailing fact.” But is it, really? Given the target audience, I don't know if this can be considered a "trailing fact." It seems to be so insistent and damaging that it's worth putting in the spotlight. You're going to take money from an audience that is primarily under-privileged in hopes of pulling them up to some glorious $100k/yr salary point in 6 months, or more realistically just set them on that path? How are they going to get the further education necessary to make that transition from High School? The article includes a few anecdotes, which is great, but it's not statistical modeling. What kind of % of these students will be interested and capable of continuing education in this space to reach that goal? Is the idea to pitch the chance at high-salary jobs at under-privileged kids saying "learn this and have your life made?" That feels like a really crappy motivation, to be honest. Making $100k at a big company is definitely achievable for anyone with an aptitude, but there's a lot of work from having never heard about programming to being there. I'm far from sold on this. I hope this is still very early in the planning stages so it can be evolved into something more workable.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
padolsey 14y ago
This is good news for an ambitious startup, but I have to say: this whole thing seems like a bit of a shame. If Carson truly is motivated by by the proliferation of knowledge to the underprivileged, then more power to him. But I still think there are better ways of contributing to such a global effort. I mean, there are better ways than attempting to monetize atop crumbling home lives and shameful education voids. For example: http://www.codeclub.org.uk/ http://www.codeclub.org.uk/ (what a cool initiative!) In an industry so blessed with the huge amount of free knowledge available online, open to both public scrutiny and moderation, like Coursera & Khan Academy, you'd think that there'd be no possible niche for Treehouse to serve. But there is. There is a niche of people who simply don't know better. They don't know of the freely available content nor the millions of hours freely spent by programmers worldwide contributing constantly. Instead of creating a private monetizable bubble of ignorance around the underprivileged, how about letting them learn through the already existing freely available content? So congrats and all, but I just, on a personal level, want more for the future of education.
lquist 14y ago
I've looked at a lot of the "learn-to-code" introductory material that's out there these days, and the Treehouse content is some of the worst there is. I could run down a list of issues, but maybe it suffices to say that I've met many people who've completed the courses and still do not have any understanding of the basics of programming. And this is the material that is going to get high schoolers jobs? I don't think so.
- jmuguy 14y ago
  I've been working through stuff on Treehouse trying to learn Ruby/Rails and thought the content was ok if not a little shallow. Are there better programs/methods that stand out?
mikelewis256 14y ago
It's really tough to beat the attitude that most kids have towards school in general. It's true that bringing these explicit programs will help the very few that would naturally be interested in the subject but for some reason don't know anything about it. However, the problem is that the vast majority of these kids are turned off by anything related to school. The answer lies in consumer hardware. Computers are interesting because they're either horribly closed-off, but attractive (Macbooks) or very open but with such a steep learning curve that they would have a hard time knowing where to start (Raspberry Pi). Something new needs to come out that is immediately accessible and attractive, but with layers of depth that can be readily exposed as the user wants to know more. Oh, and this new thing cannot be a consumption device - games and media will always win in the battle for a child's attention these days.
michaell2 14y ago
this has nothing to do with "underprivileged" or having any real impact on the software industry future or current. Rather it's crony capitalism pure and simple - they make shoddy merchandise and, for lack of paying customers, position themselves to sell to the government that doesn't care about quality, as long as you put the "underprivileged" and similar keywords into promotional materials. If Arlington VA managed to spend $1M of taxpayer money to buy a bus stop http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/1m-bus-stop-cool-expensive-article-1.1309688 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/1m-bus-stop-cool-ex... then assuredly there will be no shortage of officials to purchase whatever crap Mr. Carson is or will be selling. All for the children, of course. They will all be making 100K real soon now, once you sign on the dotted line.
ipince 14y ago
I’m all in favor of teaching kids how to program, but please be careful about setting expectations. To me, it sounds as if you’re telling people “hey, learn to program in 6 months and get a six figure salary at Facebook!”. While that may be a good way to sell the program, it’s unrealistic and deceitful. Can you replace a 4-year CS program with a 6 month course? No offense, but I doubt so. I figure the best you can do is have students to know their way around Ruby, know how to build simple apps relying on Rails, some basics about algorithms, familiarity with git, etc. That might be enough for some jobs, but I doubt that’s the kind of engineer companies like Facebook are looking to hire. Again, I’m not saying that teaching these kids how to program is bad. It’s great. But please think about the expectations that you’re setting. (I would’ve written more to express myself better, but I don’t have time!)
davidroberts 14y ago
“So when we tell them, ‘You could get a job at a company like Facebook, you could be earning $100,000 plus, they pay for your insurance, they feed you, and you can work from home and wear casual clothes.’ They’re like, ‘What are you talking about?" Indeed. What is he talking about? Teaching coding to high school kids in under-performing schools is great, and may help some of them find an excellent career path they might never have thought about. But I think Carson is raising false hopes in many of the kids by exaggerating the potential impact of the program in their lives. He seems to have totally forgotten the reality of supply and demand. It may be true that right now entry-level developers can command $40,000 a year. However, whenever it becomes well known that workers in a certain field can command high salaries, it motivates many more people to enter that field in anticipation of earning those salaries themselves. This tends to cause a glut in workers, and salaries fall as the competition for jobs increases. One sign that this is already happening is the rapid increase in enrollments to computer science undergraduate programs over the last several years.[1] Adding thousands more to the pool of available workers will only bring salaries down farther. The more high schools this program is successful in, the more this effect will come into play, especially if the program gets "rolled out to every high school in America" as mentioned in the article. Also, companies naturally seek to minimize costs by looking for cheaper sources of labor through outsourcing to other countries or by bringing workers from other countries here on H-1B visas. This is already happening.[2] As time goes on, these efforts will likely be increasingly successful, and will impact entry level jobs the most. I think it would be much fairer to the students to tell them this is one skill they might be able to base a successful career on, if they have an aptitude for it and are willing to put in the effort to get really good at it. Otherwise, he's placing unrealistic expectations that might eventually hurt the students if they don't become reality. [1] http://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/undergrad-computer-science-enrollments-rise-for-fourth-straight-year-cra-taulbee-report/ http://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/undergrad-computer-sc... [2] http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/30/visa-program-has-been-hijacked-outsourcers/VAg6o9KgS2tuoZ3WbmaqeK/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/30/visa-program-h...
- 7Figures2Commas 14y ago
  I don't think Ryan has forgotten the reality of supply and demand. I think it's more basic than that: he is totally overestimating the demand. Yes, there are entry-level developer positions that pay $40,000, and more. However I think you'll find it difficult to locate many that require just six months of participation in a high school vocational training program. And you'll find even fewer in the economically depressed regions where this program may be most appealing. Thanks to the current tech boom there is higher demand for more senior development positions, but those positions require a lot more experience and skill. Hard-to-find intangibles, not programming ability, often make these harder to fill. It's funny that Ryan mentioned Facebook. As big a name as it is, the company only employs a few thousand people and from what I have seen, most of the developers there, even in the entry-level positions, have college degrees. At many of the big tech companies where you will be most likely to find six-figure salaries post-boom, college degrees, including those from particular institutions, are favored if not required.
podperson 14y ago
The key to teaching students to program is probably teachers who know how to program and how to teach programming. Given how poorly teaching pays, especially compared to -- say -- programming, and how it requires getting special qualifications you don't need to earn more money from programming, I won't hold my breath. High school is also probably a bit late.
SurfScore 14y ago
I wonder if people would be so opposed to the monetization strategy if he wasn't targeting low-income families? If he was targeting programmer parents to teach their kids, and charging them, would it be bad? I think it's safe to say most gainfully employed programmers could afford this.
- ryancarson 14y ago
  We are not "targeting low-income families"! We have 25,000+ paying Treehouse Students and almost zero are from that group. This is a simple pilot program in one high school with kids that are at-risk. If the pilot is successful, then the school districts will decide if they want to pay for Treehouse at around $9/mo per Student.
  - SurfScore 14y ago
    Well the pilot program is what seems to be drawing the most ire, and that's the one I was referring to. I'm not debating either side of the argument and I believe in charging for a good product. I was just asking a question because I was curious about the thought process of some of the comments.
_cbdev 14y ago
I'm a bit amused that this is on the front page at the same time as Peter Norvigs "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" [http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html], with which I agree a whole lot more than the whole "Learn to code" movement.

88 points by Pasanpr 14y ago

ryancarson 14y ago

Yay yay yay! :)

BrainScraps 14y ago
I hope that at least 1/2 of this money goes to making videos that feature Jason's signature end-of-video "Creeper Smile" I've never met him, but I love that guy!
- jseifer 14y ago
  I love you, too, BrainScraps! I made this for you: http://i.imgur.com/xNOzWJz.jpg http://i.imgur.com/xNOzWJz.jpg
  - BrainScraps 14y ago
    Auuugh! Jason is creepin' on me! Best Day Evarrrr!
burningion 14y ago
Congratulations on the funding, really love the direction you guys are heading. Great to see a startup out of Florida doing so well. Are you guys interested in doing some Arduino classes? I think having software control physical things really works for kids who are kinetic learners.
- bendog24 14y ago
  We don't have anything planned for Treehouse specifically, but one of our teachers, Andrew Chalkley (achalkley) has blogged a few times about working with Arduino: http://forefront.io/a/beginners-guide-to-arduino http://forefront.io/a/beginners-guide-to-arduino and http://forefront.io/a/arduino_apple_remote_controlled_buzzer http://forefront.io/a/arduino_apple_remote_controlled_buzzer
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

SparksZilla 14y ago

I love this for so many reasons.

wesray 14y ago

This is awesome, kids need an easy way to get their feet wet in programming.

PixelPusher 14y ago

Super sweet, good luck. I personally got started in High School and would have loved more advanced classes. The issue was that they bundled people together into the same computer class. We used to have people who didn't even know how to turn on a computer, much less make a Pascal game. Good luck!

johnrob 14y ago

If this can really put high school students on track for 6 figure salaries, then we're going to see a lot less college students in the future. This could truly be a game changer.

ryancarson 14y ago
That's the plan. I think High School grads could realistically get $40,000 starting as Entry-Level Web Designers or Developers, then work up to $100,000+
- andrewljohnson 14y ago
  That's way better than starting out at -40K, and struggling to find a job with your degree.
- pekk 14y ago
  If tons of high school grads are taking already-scarce entry level developer jobs, it is unlikely that many people will be making $100,000 for it
  - jyu 14y ago
    Think you're reading it wrong. The $100,000 jobs are very different from the $40,000 (or whatever) entry level jobs. Entry level could mean something entirely different with high school vs college graduate developer jobs. In NYC the $100,000 jobs don't seem to be entry level, and there seem to be more mid/senior developer job openings than mid/senior developers looking for new jobs. It's been this way here for at least one year.

dlf 14y ago

Awesome. Maybe now high school computer courses will consist of more than how to make PPT presentations.

anthonycerra 14y ago

Bring a class to impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago where they just closed 50 public schools and the media will have a field day with your story. So many wins here: 1. Win for the community 2. Win for the kids who participate 3. Win for Treehouse in the marketing department. 4. Win for society as a whole to have more critical thinkers in the world But if you sell this company to DeVry or similar (because that's who's in trouble here, not 4 year universities), I'm going to be sorely disappointed.

mikecuesta 14y ago

Congrats Ryan - this tech has huge potential and is targeting such an important problem to solve.

just2n 14y ago

Please allow me to play devil's advocate to this story. Full disclosure: I very much dislike Jolie O'Dell (epitomized by this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ek4xXPOtlY), as well as the CEO of Treehouse, Carson (instigated by this: http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone http://ryancarson.com/post/35939367603/you-can-do-it-alone). I am in no way saying that what Treehouse is trying to do is a bad thing, nor that we shouldn't be providing much better resources for learners, though I don't think such education should be paywalled for monetization. I'm very much pro-Khan Academy, Coursera, StackOverflow, etc. I've spent SO much of my free time in IRC channels teaching people and helping people with their problems and I've never asked for a penny in return, so I have a lot of resentment towards any company that wants to charge for access to basic education (https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans https://teamtreehouse.com/subscribe/plans). I'm very much for proliferation of high quality teaching materials for learners of all ages and all levels, and so I am conflicted somewhat by this story, and I fully expect to get downvoted to hell for this, but I think it's worth considering motives here. Even the best of actions that are used to veil inconsistent or conflicting motives are questionable, and this seems like wolf in sheep's clothing. >The school I’m most excited about is in San Jose. All the kids are from at-risk homes — they have single parents who are working full time; they’re from minority groups. … Out of 12 [students], we think four or five are going to be job-ready right away. These kids have never coded before, and I’ve talked to them in person, and I’m 99 percent confident we will be able to place them in jobs. <snip> >That pilot program, Carson said, went well, and he’s looking forward to the next phase: rolling out Treehouse to many other schools around the country. The program takes six months, and the total cost is just $9 per month, per student. We jumped straight into a pivot or business expansion into virtual instruction (much the realm of things like KA/Coursera) announcement and talking about how this will help certain kids find jobs. That's great, and I hope it works out, but I'm confused. Are we trying to sell the goal instead of figuring out the logistics? I got the headline, and the summary, so why was discussion about logistics so far separated from the initial announcement of the program? How is this going to be structured? Who pays for this? We're talking about low-income families and at-risk children, so are we expecting them to opt-in to a $54 course? Is it the schools, so it's tax funded? Will it include every student at the school, or just some? If the latter, how is that selection made? If the former, what about people who don't want to pay for it? Further: as a professional in this space I'd love to review the content and provide feedback, too. Why can't we involve the community at large and reduce the costs? But the biggest question, for me, is if Coursera is doing this with the college space where education is significantly more costly, and for free, what does Treehouse offer that Coursera can't? >“This isn’t something we’re doing to get money,” Carson said as we concluded our talk. “This will change the world. And yeah, the company will make a lot of money in the process, but that’s a trailing fact.” But is it, really? Given the target audience, I don't know if this can be considered a "trailing fact." It seems to be so insistent and damaging that it's worth putting in the spotlight. You're going to take money from an audience that is primarily under-privileged in hopes of pulling them up to some glorious $100k/yr salary point in 6 months, or more realistically just set them on that path? How are they going to get the further education necessary to make that transition from High School? The article includes a few anecdotes, which is great, but it's not statistical modeling. What kind of % of these students will be interested and capable of continuing education in this space to reach that goal? Is the idea to pitch the chance at high-salary jobs at under-privileged kids saying "learn this and have your life made?" That feels like a really crappy motivation, to be honest. Making $100k at a big company is definitely achievable for anyone with an aptitude, but there's a lot of work from having never heard about programming to being there. I'm far from sold on this. I hope this is still very early in the planning stages so it can be evolved into something more workable.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

padolsey 14y ago

This is good news for an ambitious startup, but I have to say: this whole thing seems like a bit of a shame. If Carson truly is motivated by by the proliferation of knowledge to the underprivileged, then more power to him. But I still think there are better ways of contributing to such a global effort. I mean, there are better ways than attempting to monetize atop crumbling home lives and shameful education voids. For example: http://www.codeclub.org.uk/ http://www.codeclub.org.uk/ (what a cool initiative!) In an industry so blessed with the huge amount of free knowledge available online, open to both public scrutiny and moderation, like Coursera & Khan Academy, you'd think that there'd be no possible niche for Treehouse to serve. But there is. There is a niche of people who simply don't know better. They don't know of the freely available content nor the millions of hours freely spent by programmers worldwide contributing constantly. Instead of creating a private monetizable bubble of ignorance around the underprivileged, how about letting them learn through the already existing freely available content? So congrats and all, but I just, on a personal level, want more for the future of education.

lquist 14y ago

I've looked at a lot of the "learn-to-code" introductory material that's out there these days, and the Treehouse content is some of the worst there is. I could run down a list of issues, but maybe it suffices to say that I've met many people who've completed the courses and still do not have any understanding of the basics of programming. And this is the material that is going to get high schoolers jobs? I don't think so.

jmuguy 14y ago
I've been working through stuff on Treehouse trying to learn Ruby/Rails and thought the content was ok if not a little shallow. Are there better programs/methods that stand out?

mikelewis256 14y ago

It's really tough to beat the attitude that most kids have towards school in general. It's true that bringing these explicit programs will help the very few that would naturally be interested in the subject but for some reason don't know anything about it. However, the problem is that the vast majority of these kids are turned off by anything related to school. The answer lies in consumer hardware. Computers are interesting because they're either horribly closed-off, but attractive (Macbooks) or very open but with such a steep learning curve that they would have a hard time knowing where to start (Raspberry Pi). Something new needs to come out that is immediately accessible and attractive, but with layers of depth that can be readily exposed as the user wants to know more. Oh, and this new thing cannot be a consumption device - games and media will always win in the battle for a child's attention these days.

michaell2 14y ago

this has nothing to do with "underprivileged" or having any real impact on the software industry future or current. Rather it's crony capitalism pure and simple - they make shoddy merchandise and, for lack of paying customers, position themselves to sell to the government that doesn't care about quality, as long as you put the "underprivileged" and similar keywords into promotional materials. If Arlington VA managed to spend $1M of taxpayer money to buy a bus stop http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/1m-bus-stop-cool-expensive-article-1.1309688 http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/1m-bus-stop-cool-ex... then assuredly there will be no shortage of officials to purchase whatever crap Mr. Carson is or will be selling. All for the children, of course. They will all be making 100K real soon now, once you sign on the dotted line.

ipince 14y ago

I’m all in favor of teaching kids how to program, but please be careful about setting expectations. To me, it sounds as if you’re telling people “hey, learn to program in 6 months and get a six figure salary at Facebook!”. While that may be a good way to sell the program, it’s unrealistic and deceitful. Can you replace a 4-year CS program with a 6 month course? No offense, but I doubt so. I figure the best you can do is have students to know their way around Ruby, know how to build simple apps relying on Rails, some basics about algorithms, familiarity with git, etc. That might be enough for some jobs, but I doubt that’s the kind of engineer companies like Facebook are looking to hire. Again, I’m not saying that teaching these kids how to program is bad. It’s great. But please think about the expectations that you’re setting. (I would’ve written more to express myself better, but I don’t have time!)

davidroberts 14y ago

“So when we tell them, ‘You could get a job at a company like Facebook, you could be earning $100,000 plus, they pay for your insurance, they feed you, and you can work from home and wear casual clothes.’ They’re like, ‘What are you talking about?" Indeed. What is he talking about? Teaching coding to high school kids in under-performing schools is great, and may help some of them find an excellent career path they might never have thought about. But I think Carson is raising false hopes in many of the kids by exaggerating the potential impact of the program in their lives. He seems to have totally forgotten the reality of supply and demand. It may be true that right now entry-level developers can command $40,000 a year. However, whenever it becomes well known that workers in a certain field can command high salaries, it motivates many more people to enter that field in anticipation of earning those salaries themselves. This tends to cause a glut in workers, and salaries fall as the competition for jobs increases. One sign that this is already happening is the rapid increase in enrollments to computer science undergraduate programs over the last several years.[1] Adding thousands more to the pool of available workers will only bring salaries down farther. The more high schools this program is successful in, the more this effect will come into play, especially if the program gets "rolled out to every high school in America" as mentioned in the article. Also, companies naturally seek to minimize costs by looking for cheaper sources of labor through outsourcing to other countries or by bringing workers from other countries here on H-1B visas. This is already happening.[2] As time goes on, these efforts will likely be increasingly successful, and will impact entry level jobs the most. I think it would be much fairer to the students to tell them this is one skill they might be able to base a successful career on, if they have an aptitude for it and are willing to put in the effort to get really good at it. Otherwise, he's placing unrealistic expectations that might eventually hurt the students if they don't become reality. [1] http://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/undergrad-computer-science-enrollments-rise-for-fourth-straight-year-cra-taulbee-report/ http://cra.org/govaffairs/blog/2012/04/undergrad-computer-sc... [2] http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/30/visa-program-has-been-hijacked-outsourcers/VAg6o9KgS2tuoZ3WbmaqeK/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2013/03/30/visa-program-h...

7Figures2Commas 14y ago
I don't think Ryan has forgotten the reality of supply and demand. I think it's more basic than that: he is totally overestimating the demand. Yes, there are entry-level developer positions that pay $40,000, and more. However I think you'll find it difficult to locate many that require just six months of participation in a high school vocational training program. And you'll find even fewer in the economically depressed regions where this program may be most appealing. Thanks to the current tech boom there is higher demand for more senior development positions, but those positions require a lot more experience and skill. Hard-to-find intangibles, not programming ability, often make these harder to fill. It's funny that Ryan mentioned Facebook. As big a name as it is, the company only employs a few thousand people and from what I have seen, most of the developers there, even in the entry-level positions, have college degrees. At many of the big tech companies where you will be most likely to find six-figure salaries post-boom, college degrees, including those from particular institutions, are favored if not required.

podperson 14y ago

The key to teaching students to program is probably teachers who know how to program and how to teach programming. Given how poorly teaching pays, especially compared to -- say -- programming, and how it requires getting special qualifications you don't need to earn more money from programming, I won't hold my breath. High school is also probably a bit late.

SurfScore 14y ago

I wonder if people would be so opposed to the monetization strategy if he wasn't targeting low-income families? If he was targeting programmer parents to teach their kids, and charging them, would it be bad? I think it's safe to say most gainfully employed programmers could afford this.

ryancarson 14y ago
We are not "targeting low-income families"! We have 25,000+ paying Treehouse Students and almost zero are from that group. This is a simple pilot program in one high school with kids that are at-risk. If the pilot is successful, then the school districts will decide if they want to pay for Treehouse at around $9/mo per Student.
- SurfScore 14y ago
  Well the pilot program is what seems to be drawing the most ire, and that's the one I was referring to. I'm not debating either side of the argument and I believe in charging for a good product. I was just asking a question because I was curious about the thought process of some of the comments.

_cbdev 14y ago

I'm a bit amused that this is on the front page at the same time as Peter Norvigs "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" [http://norvig.com/21-days.html http://norvig.com/21-days.html], with which I agree a whole lot more than the whole "Learn to code" movement.