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Show HN: Learn to code by being coached by an experienced developer for free
- thebenedict 12y agoI'm skeptical because it sounds too good to be true. How can this be a free service?
- gtirloni 12y agoIf you go to the About page, you'll they seem to be trying to tap into the community for this ("I can spare 30 minutes" option).
- ab_thomas 12y agoThere's plenty of developers who will happily offer their time for free. We're bring them into one space we're we can connect them with students.
- josephschmoe 12y agoI would think the number of people who want to learn to code outnumber the people who know how to code and can teach it 10:1. Without pricing to reduce the first number to manageable levels, how would you plan to succeed?
- bengali3 12y agogood point, but i guess they could differentiate between want to know how to code (9/10 individuals) willing to learn how to code (1/10 individuals) I like the idea of some simple 'can you follow instructions' coding examples to get the basics out of the way (parenthesis, braces, int x = 1; etc). Make this test be the gate to taking up a humans time, and alter the difficulty of the test as you need to throttle.
- ab_thomas 12y agoInteresting idea. We brand new and were not expecting the several hundred signups. Right now we're 1:2(students:mentors) with signups.
- sikhnerd 12y agoDoesn't appear that you can actually sign up to learn, keep getting error that I have not selected a language tag
- ab_thomas 12y agoCan you still not sign up? Please email us with the address you use at info@askadev.com.
- DarkTree 12y agoI know that many experienced developers are willing to forgo their free time in order to answer questions for beginners, hence, stackoverflow, but I am curious how the psychological difference of committing 30 minutes to a single person in a one-on-one experience will play out. Very cool idea if it has enough liquidity.
- lbotos 12y agoAs a Python dev trying to learn C++ and leveraging various IRC channels, it's been near impossible to get anyone to commit to even looking at anything bigger than a single error line. It's one of those things that I understand because you can't guage who's on the other end. (Complete newbie vs. I'm not sure the best way to structure this in <insert new lang>)
- IanCal 12y agoOne of the nice things when solving things on SO or IRC is that your work is available for many others to benefit from. Also, since it's public, I can expect to be corrected if I'm wrong. I'd see this as being the same as saying "Oh, you commit to open source projects, so you'd be happy to work on this private project for free!".
- cruise02 12y agoI think we already know that it won't scale well. This is akin to emailing a problem to one person and them emailing you back a solution. This only helps one person at a time. We can help a lot more people if you post your question on Stack Overflow instead.
- shire 12y agoThis is actually a real cool Idea. very nice.
- malditojavi 12y agoGood intentions, difficult scalibility for being free. Stackoverflow works because users who give answers earn reputation - something that they can include in their CVs. If there is not something that you can offer (material or inmaterial) to the ones who are going to make great your service - devs willing to teach - this will be just a good intentionated initiative, badly executed. Not trying to be negative, just what I see imho.
- shijie 12y agoI've encountered a flow error on your site. I successfully registered to "pair with a developer" and listed a few languages I don't know and would love to discuss with someone. Then, I saw the option to become a pairing developer and so I tried to sign up for that, but my email address was (obviously) already taken. Should there be an option to be both, or is each role, learner and teacher, mutually exclusive on your site?
- ab_thomas 12y agoYou'll be able to do both in 48hrs. Email me your address at info@askadev.com and I'll add you as a teacher and student.
- myang 12y agounable to register, keeps saying the email has been used.
- r109 12y agoI remember when IRC was cool
- rhizome 12y agoStill is, but shhhh.
- joeframbach 12y agoSo, codementor?
- dethstar 12y agocommunity codementor
- cdnsteve 12y agoI like the idea, however I don't like that there's no transparency. Where's the privacy policy, what are you using my data for? Why is this free? Where's an example of how this works before I give you my info? Why should devs give up their time (as others mentioned), with examples.
- codygman 12y agoI also can't sign up and get the "empty language" form error even though I put a tag in there.
- alttab 12y agoI had this same problem. The error message was: Oops, sorry an error occurred! Either you left the languages field empty or <EMAIL> might be already registered. Please contact us if you require further assistance.
- ab_thomas 12y agoCan you still not sign up? Please email us with the address you use at info@askadev.com.
- jordanlev 12y agoI'm an experienced developer who would be interested in helping others. But I have no idea who it is I'm helping here, and also I'm not sure what the company's role is or how they benefit, etc. I'm happy to volunteer my time in some situations, but not if I feel others are profiting off it in some non-explicit way. Would love to see more info about who exactly you are, what your plans with this thing are, what your financial motivations are, how my contact info is to be used, etc. before I commit to offering help.
- Fede_V 12y agoExcellent questions. I'd also like to see this answered.
- cruise02 12y agoCheck local colleges to see if they offer tutoring to students in CS courses. Many universities offer the service free to students, but they still pay tutors.
- nmrm 12y agoIt's worth noting that at most colleges, the pay is quite low and most of the tutors are older students. Also, it's less "I'm motivated to learn something on my own and quite intelligent, but don't know how to code" and a lot more "tell me how to do this project so I can drink this weekend."
- cruise02 12y agoYes, the pay is low if you're still a student. It goes up if you've already got a degree, and even more for a graduate degree. If students ask you to do their projects for them, you can always refuse.
- Derbasti 12y agoIn some colleges, you can even lecture. That's what I did for a few semesters. However, be warned that preparing a lecture is a LOT of work, and pay is usually not that great. Its a great experience though,
- jpdlla 12y agoThis is similar to http://hackhands.com/ http://hackhands.com/
- stanzheng 12y agoalso similar to hackerhours. http://www.meetup.com/hackerhours/ http://www.meetup.com/hackerhours/ hard to connect mentor to mentee efficiently for people of different levels from beginner to expert or domain specific problems.
- stevenhubertron 12y agoI got a rails error when trying to to submit for a coach.
- ab_thomas 12y agoCan you still not sign up? Please email us with the address you used at info@askadev.com.
- scopendo 12y agoRather than direct learning assistance, I'd be interested in a review service as most of the time I can get stuff to work just fine, but there is likely a better or more idiomatic way. Particularly relevant in a new dev space and unfamiliar with respected frameworks and libraries already out there.
- ab_thomas 12y agoYou mean like code review on stack exchange?
- scopendo 12y agoPossibly (I wasn't aware of that), however I'd prefer something a bit larger in scope, taking in the larger application and even the architecture.
- Thiz 12y agoI like that business idea too. This is such an unserviced area in business it may be a huge hit.
- buckbova 12y agoI like it, crowd sourced code reviews. And I'd definitely contribute. I have over a decade of experience and I think the likelihood of solving someone's likely domain specific problem in 30 minutes seems unreasonable.
- daimyoyo 12y agoInteresting idea, but how will it scale? How many people can one competent developer mentor?
- colordrops 12y agoSounds great, but too bad their site is broken. I tried to sign up and got the following error message, which is inaccurate: "Oops, sorry an error occurred! Either you left the languages field empty or <email address> might be already registered. Please contact us if you require further assistance."
- ab_thomas 12y agoHmmm... first error like we've had. Please try it again and if you still can't sign email us at info@askadev.com.
- Thiz 12y agoI like this idea a lot. I really like it. But not for free. Charge $5 for 20 mins and give $4 to the dev, take $1 for the biz. I guarantee you there are plenty, millions of people in this world interested in a solution like that.
- Thiz 12y agoOh, and make it tiered. $5 seasoned international developer (cheap third world expert like me) $20 seasoned american developer $50 expert developer $500 Patio11's godly level Allow ratings so people can attest the expertise of the developer according to their rate.
- romanovcode 12y agoWhy you're implying that American developers are better than, let's say European developers? Or even cheap third world experts like you? If you're expert - you're expert, country does not matter.
- Thiz 12y agoI am not implying they are better, just they know english better than the rest of the non-anglo world. And great communication skills is a preferred trait in solving problems. Btw, I can code fluently in over 10 programming languages, but my fluency in english is subpar. See? That's why I rather take a cut in the rate as long as they accept my deficiency in english.
- ab_thomas 12y agoThere's several services with money per hour/mins rates and we don't want money involved.
- jing 12y agoThe pairing idea isn't new although it does seem to be very successful - there's a company called Thinkful (http://www.thinkful.com http://www.thinkful.com) that does online learning by pairing a mentor who gets paid with every student who signs up and pays for a course. They apparently have a very good amount of traction with thousands of paying students. Should be interesting to see how askadev's free model compares.
- ZanderEarth32 12y agoI used Thinkful for a while, and the mentor who they paired me up with was top-notch. Extremely helpful guy, who helped me tremendously in the short time I was with the program.
- nickgrosvenor 12y agoThe team has great facial hair
- nickgrosvenor 12y agoThe team has great facial hair
- ilaksh 12y agoMy guess is that the idea is you volunteer to help people for free for 30 minutes with the hope that some of them will give up and want to hire you. Or they will let you do the "hard" part. Or maybe they will get stuck and need you to bail them out. Anyway I think the angle is this is a way to get leads for new clients. The part I am not sure about is, how does 'askadev' get paid? I am guessing they charge the coaches a small amount ahead of time for access to the noob programmers (leads). Or maybe its simpler. After 30 minutes you have to pay.