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These are all fair criticisms that I'm happy to respond to, but let's please be careful when throwing around the word "scam". A scam is something dishonest and

These are all fair criticisms that I'm happy to respond to, but let's please be careful when throwing around the word "scam". A scam is something dishonest and I promise that I have good intentions. We often forget that products can evolve. I'm not pretending that I've come up with the best version of what this product could eventually be. But I've validated the need for a product, released a version of it that has a modicum of value, and an overwhelming majority of the people who have completed the class are incredibly excited and thankful. I just got this email today (completely unsolicited): "Subj: $100K in wasted programming costs. OMR liberated me! Hi Mattan, I followed your Rails course and created Shruffle.com. It's a simple way for businesses to do text marketing. Nothing too fancy, but I'm marketing it to local restaurants and barber shops around where I live, and have been getting good responses. Just wanted to say a big THANK YOU for making a kick-ass course. I wasted so much time hiring wack ass programmers in the past who never understood what I wanted to do half the time. Over the course of 5-6 years I must have spent at least $100K in wasted programming costs for various projects that never went anywhere. Your course liberated me....now I can build anything that I dream of without spending a penny. Most of the other courses were a big freaking waste of time. I was looking for something that showed me how to do basic things quickly (login/logout, validations, etc etc), and your course did just that. Next step is to incorporate Stripe for payments." Now I'll admit that I'm not happy with what % of people finish the course (it's higher than average for an online class but still relatively low) and I'm not happy that I don't teach enough to give people the flexibility to build more than just a fairly simple CRUD app, but rest assured that as the creator of this product, I'm more critical than anyone else of its flaws. The first version was 3 hours, I took a lot of feedback and completely redid the lessons to turn it into a much longer class. The course has been redone 3 time so far and I'm currently in the process of expanding it out into a much larger one that teaches people the various concepts of web applications within the contexts of different kinds of applications (an about me, a wordpress, a yelp, a pinterest) which will give people more of that understanding that we're both looking for. Anyway, as I'm sure you can imagine, it hurts when someone takes a product you've spent a lot of time on and calls it a "scam".

rrouse 13y ago
What I don't know is whether or not the person in that email is equipped with what he or she needs to actually be able to figure out how to incorporate Stripe. Are you at all confident that you have taught people how to research and understand what they are looking at? I've known plenty of people who can follow patterns and regurgitate what they have seen, but have little to no ability to actually create. If what they want to do deviates just a little, they are toast.
- mattangriffel 13y ago
  Yeah, so we definitely teach how to find gems, read through documentation and troubleshoot errors. There's a little bit of API knowledge that may be lacking (which we're definitely working on as a module - we've gotten a lot of requests). Students who have taken the class have definitely figured out way more complicated stuff afterwards using some of the techniques we teach. Whether this person in particular will be able to figure out how to incorporate Stripe, I'm not sure.
- skndr 13y ago
  People aren't stuck just copying. At first, it might be copying. But having something workable that you can tweak can give you a good idea of how something works. After enough time tweaking, you can start building new things based on those best practices/examples.
throwaway7989 13y ago
Hey Mattan, I understand that this comment probably wasn't what you wanted to hear, and I apologize for that. Like I mentioned in the comment, it was not made out to be an intent to insult you, and I did acknowledge that I think you are a great guy, and it's obviously a successful product (but that has nothing to do with my criticism). I'm not here to troll, I'm here to push you to be better. I think you haven't interpreted the word "scam" correctly. I believe that you have good intentions, but regardless of that, this product is dishonest. It says it will teach you how to be a rails developer, and it doesn't do that. It implies that you will be ready for six figure salaries after taking the course, and you won't. I know that you would call this "marketing", and sure it has worked. But what are you after in building this company? Money slash success, or the core reasons that you set out to build this company? You know - you mission: to really teach people how to code. I think what you might be missing is that you don't learn how to code by cloning popular websites, and copy-pasting code someone else hands you. You learn to code by understanding how things work. Understanding how computers work sure helps. Understanding how the ruby language works helps too. Understanding how the web works, how databases work... all the things I mentioned in my previous comment. Then you take this general knowledge of how things work to build what you want, whatever that is -- whether it's a clone of a popular app (which it never is) or something entirely new and custom that nobody else has done (which is always the case). I'm sure you are familiar with the flatiron school in NYC. They have a similar mission, but are actually doing it right (to be fair, also charging a hell of a lot more). You guys both approach the same problem, but get vastly different results. In the flatiron school, you spend full time for months learning and understanding how things work, and when you come out of it, you get a full-time job as a developer. In one month rails, you spend a couple weeks on and off watching online videos that skip all the underlying theory and come out with a low-quality pinterest clone and not even close to enough skills to land an internship. What is your goal for one month rails? To make money, or to add real value to peoples lives? To have techcrunch articles written about you, or to actually promote the incredible mindset and skills that are building, creating, writing code? I think we both know that you are aimed after the wrong thing, and that's why I'm pushing you to do it right.

rrouse 13y ago

What I don't know is whether or not the person in that email is equipped with what he or she needs to actually be able to figure out how to incorporate Stripe. Are you at all confident that you have taught people how to research and understand what they are looking at? I've known plenty of people who can follow patterns and regurgitate what they have seen, but have little to no ability to actually create. If what they want to do deviates just a little, they are toast.

mattangriffel 13y ago
Yeah, so we definitely teach how to find gems, read through documentation and troubleshoot errors. There's a little bit of API knowledge that may be lacking (which we're definitely working on as a module - we've gotten a lot of requests). Students who have taken the class have definitely figured out way more complicated stuff afterwards using some of the techniques we teach. Whether this person in particular will be able to figure out how to incorporate Stripe, I'm not sure.
skndr 13y ago
People aren't stuck just copying. At first, it might be copying. But having something workable that you can tweak can give you a good idea of how something works. After enough time tweaking, you can start building new things based on those best practices/examples.

throwaway7989 13y ago

Hey Mattan, I understand that this comment probably wasn't what you wanted to hear, and I apologize for that. Like I mentioned in the comment, it was not made out to be an intent to insult you, and I did acknowledge that I think you are a great guy, and it's obviously a successful product (but that has nothing to do with my criticism). I'm not here to troll, I'm here to push you to be better. I think you haven't interpreted the word "scam" correctly. I believe that you have good intentions, but regardless of that, this product is dishonest. It says it will teach you how to be a rails developer, and it doesn't do that. It implies that you will be ready for six figure salaries after taking the course, and you won't. I know that you would call this "marketing", and sure it has worked. But what are you after in building this company? Money slash success, or the core reasons that you set out to build this company? You know - you mission: to really teach people how to code. I think what you might be missing is that you don't learn how to code by cloning popular websites, and copy-pasting code someone else hands you. You learn to code by understanding how things work. Understanding how computers work sure helps. Understanding how the ruby language works helps too. Understanding how the web works, how databases work... all the things I mentioned in my previous comment. Then you take this general knowledge of how things work to build what you want, whatever that is -- whether it's a clone of a popular app (which it never is) or something entirely new and custom that nobody else has done (which is always the case). I'm sure you are familiar with the flatiron school in NYC. They have a similar mission, but are actually doing it right (to be fair, also charging a hell of a lot more). You guys both approach the same problem, but get vastly different results. In the flatiron school, you spend full time for months learning and understanding how things work, and when you come out of it, you get a full-time job as a developer. In one month rails, you spend a couple weeks on and off watching online videos that skip all the underlying theory and come out with a low-quality pinterest clone and not even close to enough skills to land an internship. What is your goal for one month rails? To make money, or to add real value to peoples lives? To have techcrunch articles written about you, or to actually promote the incredible mindset and skills that are building, creating, writing code? I think we both know that you are aimed after the wrong thing, and that's why I'm pushing you to do it right.