From the website: > It should be noted that this is NOT A VACATION. Participants are expected to work hard during "school hours," Monday - Thursday. > You are

From the website: > It should be noted that this is NOT A VACATION. Participants are expected to work hard during "school hours," Monday - Thursday. > You are free to choose any project you like, ideally something you think will help you improve as a programmer. Participants are encouraged to work on open-source code and 'for-fun' projects, but they are also allowed to work on commercial projects, such as freelance work or startups. We also encourage participants to spend as much time as possible pair programming and collaborating with other people. > All included, we think participants could live frugally and get by on $3,500 for the three month period. However, a participant would have more flexibility with a budget of $4,000 - $5,000. Will anything "cool" come out of this? Who knows. But $5,000 for a three month trip hardly represents an expensive excursion to the tropics, and it appears that the intent is to put in place a structure that participants are expected to adhere to. What's the problem with that? It's not like the hackathons and "schools" in the United States are consistently churning out masterful feats of engineering. On another note, since when did you have to be overweight, unshaven and overworked to be considered a legitimate programmer? I didn't get that email.