

Catalyst: a new front-end developer training program - shawndrost
http://catalystclass.com/?ref=hn

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chriszf
It's like the movie Ratatouille: Not everyone can be a good coder, but a good
coder can come from anywhere.

While they may receive an impossibly large number of candidates, in the end,
they will boil it down to roughly 15 students. That means that as long as
their application process is sane, they will have found 15 good candidates who
are going to be 'coding for the right reasons', whatever that means.

This is different from codecademy, which says that anyone and everyone should
learn to code. Instead, they're claiming that you don't need a CS degree to be
a professional programmer. That doesn't mean they're also saying you don't
need to be dedicated, and analytical. Ultimately, the people who enter these
programs are the kinds of people who would have made it on their own, albeit
on a much longer timeline. I don't see any problem with jumpstarting it with
careful curation and guidance.

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tmanderson
I shed tears for the companies that hire the "graduates" of this "start to
finish plan."

I don't care how good of an instructor you are, you cannot make a programmer
remotely efficient in HTML5 (primarily the countless APIs involved), CSS3, AND
JavaScript in only 12 weeks.

I don't know how that job placement is going to work -- but unless these
learners start as interns, I don't know how beneficial this would be for them.

There's "jumping into the deep end" and then there's "jumping into the
Atlantic." I get a sense of the latter with this program.

~~~
shawndrost
Hey there -- I'm Shawn, a cofounder at Catalyst.

I have to admit that I was also skeptical when I heard about this model, but
empirically, it works. (We're not the first program of this type -- there are
several others.) Learning goes really fast when you have a lot of smart,
dedicated people in a room, and employers see value in graduates.

Meanwhile, consider the alternatives available to our potential students. My
buddy JP is probably going to be one of our first students. He had the most
popular Harry Potter fansite in the 90s, and has run websites for most places
he's worked in the last several years. He's gone through codecademy, but his
last job was as a delivery guy. Do you really think this is going to make his
future worse?

~~~
carson
Can you share the empirical evidence that it works? There is a lot of talk
about these programs but not many resources on the outcomes that I know of.

~~~
mehulkar
Not sure if this counts as empirical evidence but I was a Dev Bootcamp
graduate. Working full time now. I recognize the deficiencies in my knowledge
and experience before anyone else does, and there are many, but I am stil
learning and loving what I do.

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jcdavison
In response to the "There is NO way a person can become a productive
programmer in 10 weeks"

Programming and software engineering are about solving complex problems. Most
of the people who get into these programs, start with the skills required to
program, ie, curiosity about solving problems with technology. Also, the goal
of the program isn't to graduate soloist-rock star programmers, it is to
graduate super smart well grounded personalities who can be super-
atmospherically-high quality apprentice's, which is totally plausible. There
is like a 10:2 engineering to all other jobs ratio that probably won't go
away. Spending a small chunk of time/money (I spent 10k for DevBootCamp)
versus getting a traditional 4year CS degree, which is in no way shape or form
proven to be a great path to becoming a solid engineer, is a no brainer.

Tony who is one of the teachers at Catalyst taught me a bunch at devbootcamp.
He is incredibly smart and patient, does an extremely good job of instilling
in people that they can themselves solve complex problems. I myself did
devbootcamp this summer, it was a great experience and forever increased my
impact as a person and technologist.

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douglascalhoun
Congratulations to Shawn and Tony for launching this new venture! I know you
guys have taken big personal and professional risks to follow this dream (you
know, quitting your jobs, putting up your life savings, professional
reputations on the line, etc). From the hard work and pure hustle I've seen so
far, I've got great confidence that you will be successful. Huzzah!

~~~
shawndrost
Thanks Doug :)

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JulianWasTaken
This is cool, but somewhat ironically your site doesn't render too well in my
browser. It (specifically the nav) flickers, and doesn't render fully when
scrolling long distances. It also could use some padding. I'm on Chrome latest
for iOS on an iPad.

Anyways, rendering aside, I love more resources, so I'll keep an eye on this.

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blauwbilgorgel
Perhaps check the source and remove/correct some things like:

    
    
      !-- janky continuation of loop -->
      <div style="background-color:transparent" id="mc_embed_signup">
      <h3>&nbsp;</h3>
      <h1 class="smallerh1" style="color:#444">
      <form method="post" action="/" onsubmit="console.log('asdf')">
      Interested? &nbsp;
      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
      &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
      <img src="http://catalystclass.com/wp-content/themes/ViewPoint/images/star.png
      style="padding-top:20px">
    

Basic stuff like adding image alt attributes and image dimensions, semantic
mark-up, descriptive page title etc.

I like the idea, but consider creating a cool front-end to present it, not
this Wordpress theme. I think it would add to your credibility.

~~~
sharksforcheap
Thanks for the suggestion, but actually I totally disagree. Spending time
coding Javascript and spending time teaching or preparing to teach Javascript
are two different things.

If I were a student, I would want a group of guys to get a wordpress theme and
reinvest all the time they saved into making the program better for me.

~~~
blauwbilgorgel
You disagree with the suggestion to clean up the code? Because teaching how to
code and writing code are two different things, I agree.

It is great you saved time by using a theme and hacking it a bit for your
purpose. Perhaps now there is some time to make your site accessible, credible
and adherent to standards, like you teach your students?

You know best where to invest your time. This shouldn't take too long though.

    
    
      <meta name='robots' content='noindex,nofollow' />
    

Is that supposed to be there? You are already indexed, but lack a snippet, due
to this. Google substituted your page title in the results with your first
<h1> ("Learn to code. Get a job.")

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eranation
This is really a great initiative, too bad most of these programs require
moving to SF for a few weeks, which puts working adults / parents / anyone who
wants to do a career change practically out of the picture. I wish there was
something like this here in Atlanta, I know many people that would have signed
up

~~~
aasarava
It's not just the move that puts this program out of the reach of people with
kids or other commitments -- it's the entire schedule. 12 weeks of 10am to
9pm, Monday through Saturday? This is basically a way of saying (whether
intentionally or not), do not bother to apply if you are not young. Do not
bother if you place too high a value on spending time with your spouse, or
your kids, or your girlfriend, or your boyfriend, or your aging grandmother.
Do not bother if you've already committed some of your waking hours to serving
your community or your church or a part time job that you use to pay the
bills.

Don't get me wrong: Tech training is incredibly valuable, and is increasingly
critical to the economy. And I believe intensive training has merit. This
program may well produce some stars. But why can't it do the same on a 9-6p
M-F schedule? What's less intensive about that?

So I hope this doesn't become a model. Because we don't gain much by
reinforcing the stereotype that technology is just for young single people who
would rather spend the night in front of their computers than with their
friends and families. If you want to broaden the appeal of Web development,
let's start training real people.

~~~
viscanti
I would guess that the major alternative for most of the applicants for this
program would be studying on their own. You can take as long as you'd like to
learn. Doing that, you can spend as much time as you'd like with
friends/family, doing community work or anything else you choose. If you're
motivated (and possibly unemployed), doing whatever it takes over a 3 month
period to learn how to do front-end development might make sense. But like any
other decision, there are tradeoffs. This "all-in" boot-camp style takes a lot
of dedication. I don't think there's much risk of it becoming the primary way
people learn to code, and even if it does, one can still learn on their own as
easily as they could before.

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jrockway
Name conflict: <http://www.catalystframework.org/>

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thezilch
I often am very sketchy on the merits of Coffeescript, but how does it have a
position on a 12wk crash-course? We can't even expect a competent non-
programmer to jQuery-programmer in that span of time; much less great
competency in JavaScript; and now another level of abstraction? Why?

~~~
shawndrost
I actually agree that there are great reasons to write plain JS, but
Coffeescript is an awesome teaching tool (to explain compilers, the difference
between syntax and programming, etc).

~~~
thezilch
OK, that sounds like a fantastic use of Coffeescript, as it is probably rather
dry with standard, "lower level" curriculum of the same subjects. Speaking of
which, is there somewhere to find "the curriculum?" I obviously made a mistake
in assuming this might be another case of pushing Coffeescript for all the
wrong reasons.

Kudos, nonetheless, as this would be a superb addition to what is really
lacking in our education with younger crowds. What is the expected out-reach
to those just out of High School or in pre College-Degree status?

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DomKM
The Phillips Bros. (Tony & Marcus) are fantastic. I can't wait to see the
front-end engineers this course produces.

If you're looking into an accelerated development training course and are
confused by the many courses similar to Dev Bootcamp, Catalyst seems like the
best option for front-end development. I'd wager that starting salaries of
Catalyst grads will confirm this.

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danielvinson
Who are you trying to market this program to? I feel like the group of people
who are willing to dedicate 3 months and have $10k-$15k sitting around is
alarmingly small.

I think I could benefit greatly from attending this, but only being a few
years out of college and still in debt means I would be crazy to attend.

~~~
shawndrost
Yeah, we're keenly aware of the catch 22 here :/ We're working on some
creative solutions, but it's very expensive to put on a program like this, and
many of our students will need to draw on help from friends and family. It
helps that this kind of program can lead directly to a high-paying job.

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deleniti_0
How is this different than Dev Bootcamp (<http://devbootcamp.com>), other than
the front-end focus?

The homepage says Tony, one of the four staff, used to work there.

~~~
shawndrost
Hey there -- I'm Shawn, a cofounder of Catalyst.

Our experience is that students and potential employers are asking for a
longer program, so ours runs for 12 weeks instead of 9.

We think class size is a big determinant of educational outcomes, so we think
students might be interested to know that we'll have 15 students in our cohort
(vs 60 in DBC's if I recall correctly).

Our hours are longer -- 10-9, six days a week. We're asking you to take time
off of your normal life, and we think it's important to provide a very
immersive environment for you to make the most of that period.

We're going to put a lot more effort into helping you with your job search
process. Our hiring day is after week 10, and weeks 11 and 12 consist of
preparation aligned with the jobs that you'd like to get, practice interviews,
etc.

Hope that helps!

~~~
jfarmer
Hey Shawn,

Jesse, here. For those just tuning in, Shawn & I know each other and I help
run Dev Bootcamp. Tony Phillips, one of Shawn's co-founders, was a teacher-in-
training at Dev Bootcamp for 5 months and before that a student in our first,
8-week cohort.

A few corrections:

1\. Our current cohort has 54 students. Starting January 28th, we'll have 48
students in the space at a given time. Although it's been challenging, we've
so far been able to increase group cohesion as we increase class size.

Below a certain size it's very easy for students to feel isolated if they
can't find at least one other student to identify with.

2\. Although our core hours are 9AM-6PM Monday-Friday, most students are here
12+ hours per day, 6-7 days per week. 75% of the class was here last weekend,
for example. We keep a tight container on core hours and give students
flexibility on off hours.

The average student is working for about ~750 hours over the course of Dev
Bootcamp.

Also, about 50% of each cohort comes from out-of-state, and about 20% have
families and children. Trust me, they're "tak[ing] time off [their] normal
life."

3\. We've worked with around ~100 companies over the course of our hiring days
and none of them are asking for a longer training period. If an employer is
skeptical, there's little difference between 9, 10, or 12 weeks.

Twitter hired one of our summer students as an intern, for example, and their
initial skepticism was more along the lines of, "How could 10 weeks compare to
a 4-year University CS education?" That's a rough paraphrase from a
conversation I had with a head of their head of college recruiting in April.

On the flip side, virtually all employers return for future hiring days and
about half send employees to become mentors for students in the following DBC
class. I'll grant you that we might be talking to different employers.

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jrvarela56
I don't think the issue here is whether this works or not. The point is that
there aren't enough devs. That several programs like these are starting, and
that companies are willing to hire, gives you a glimpse of the demand for
developers these days.

I believe this trend will continue in the near future, and people with the
capacity to become hireable programmers will transfer from other professions.

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hoytie
Jeez, 11 hours a day, 6 days a week? I guess a masochistic streak is an asset
in web development, but this borders on unhealthy.

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davj
Awesome, congrats to Tony and Shawn for launching. Wishing you the best! Feel
free to check out <http://www.hackbrightacademy.com> for a software dev
training program for women.

~~~
sharksforcheap
Thanks a bunch. I've been reading good things about the new class in blogs.
Keep up the good work!

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lquist
I notice that you don't have a client-side framework (e.g., backbone) listed
under "The Program". Is this just an omission or something that you have
consciously done?

Good luck with your course!

~~~
sharksforcheap
Thanks so much for the kind wishes. We haven't decided on a client-side
framework yet (though I do like backbone), so we were holding off until we had
decided what we wanted to include in the curriculum.

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smit
This looks very interesting but why is the start date november? Its a little
inconvenient. Why not make it January to start at the beginning of the year?

~~~
datalus
They also mention there's a new class starting every month. What I was curious
about and didn't see mentioned specifically was the cost of tuition if any?

EDIT: Well I need to read more closely as well, I found the answer: _Tuition:
We’re still deciding on the total price, the payment plan options, and
scholarship details._

~~~
sharksforcheap
We are still figuring out the details of our pricing scheme, but one thing we
are committed to is not letting finance problems stop us from accepting a good
applicant. If you are at all worried about the price, I would suggest applying
and we will try our best to find a way to make it possible to attend.

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mikecane
Oh man... come to NYC. Dying here. (If anyone knows of anything in NYC, let me
know. I'm out of the loop and search stinks these days...)

~~~
shawndrost
Hey Mike! We'd love to, sounds like fun. In the meantime, try our buddies at
<http://flatironschool.com/>

~~~
mikecane
It seems to diverge from my goal, which is to really learn JavaScript
(learning HTML5 and CSS are bonuses). Seems to focus on Ruby on Rails and
hardcore web development.

