
Coding School General Assembly Raises $70M - earlyadapter
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/09/30/boom-time-bet-tech-school-general-assembly-raises-70-million/
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EC1
Are these types of schools worth the cost for people? I'd love to hear from a
student. I took a couple months off work to learn new skills and it cost me
nothing (except rent and no income), just a lot of Googling and frustration.
What's different about this? Is it the class setting + mentor structure that
makes it worth it?

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qq66
In most cases, you learn more with a great teacher than you do by yourself,
and teaching is a different skill than performing. Even Tom Brady has a
quarterbacks coach, who couldn't throw the ball like he can, but can still
offer constructive guidance.

This is especially true for complete beginners. If I sat down in front of a
piano and practiced an hour every day for six months, I would probably not do
very well, since I wouldn't know where to start, I wouldn't know good
technique, and I'd probably learn a lot of bad habits. If I took just a few
weeks of lessons and then practiced an hour a day for six months, I'd make a
lot more progress since I'd have a better idea of how to learn piano.

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gavazzy
The question is not merely "Does GA provide benefit?", but rather, "Does GA
provide greater benefit than the cost (financial, time, and otherwise)?"

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rgovind
I have a gripe with all these online courses. They only target beginners or
they target advanced users. I have done hours of googling to find a stuctured
course which teaches "intermediate" CSS...I am not a CSS newbie but I am also
not an expert who is interested in animations, etc

I can may be use bootstrap and make grid based layouts that are non
responsive. I am yet to find a course which will help me make, lets say, a
hacker news UI or reddit UI. I can guarantee you that all these courses fall
short of that.

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rwhitman
I've been kind of knocking around the idea of drafting up online courses in
that area. Shrugged it off as potentially not having enough demand, but your
comment is interesting. Love to learn more about the courses you're hunting
for, can you elaborate?

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rgovind
So, Bit background about me. I am a compiler developer who has over the years
picked up HTML/JS & CSS by reading/doing various tutorials. Now, I am good
with HTML & JS but I am not able to make good looking websites. I know the
very basics of CSS, have done various online tutorials, bought a bunch of
books etc. Because of all this, I consider myself to be "intermediate" level
CSS person (not advanced, not beginner). Now, 90% of courses on udemy,
coursera start with teaching how to use HTML &(gasp) editor. Then they teach
CSS tags, selectors etc. I am past the basics but cannot make Airbnb or
Hipmunk quality. The projects they make you is basic portfolio. There are no
courses (or they are very hard to google for)...

I am ready to pay 200-300$ for someone who will teach to make me quality,
complex UIs(like Hipmunk).

So courses I am looking for 1) CSS for backend engineers 2) Advanced bootstrap
(or other frontend foundations) 3 At this point, I am able to think of any
course I would be interested in. Feel free to email me. Address in my profile.

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misiti3780
I dont want to sound like a dick - but how many coding schools equates to too
many coding schools. I would love to see some stats on how many people are
trying to attend these sort of things. At some point, supply is going out
strip demand and its not going to be financially viable.

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finance-geek
So true. I was particularly humored by Bloc's comparison chart where they
failed to compare themselves against other online cram-sites but instead
listed full-cost options like GA and University of Phoenix tuition! LOL!

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hackerperson
Free/cheap online options often won't take you past basic syntax or building a
simple, static web page, while programs likes Bloc have students work on
complex web apps under a senior engineer (simulating on the job experience).
The outcomes are more comparable to those of on-site bootcamps, as opposed to
Udemy, Codecademy, etc.

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ogreveins
There's a reason that in order to become an actual engineer you're required to
pass a professional engineering exam. In many states you're literally breaking
the law if you put PE on your business card[1].

Putting it mildly, with all of the asshats that can barely create CRUD apps
calling themselves software engineers and making an amazing salary when
compared to their pathetic skills its a wonder the median salary hasn't
plummeted like a rock.

I honestly think having someone legally responsible is necessary for proper
programming and security practices to be put into place. It works with HIPAA
and the real engineering profession. The people going through these classes
are no more than weekend woodshop students and the spaghetti they string
together will show them to be.

[1][http://sce.uhcl.edu/helm/SWEBOK_IEEE/papers/10%20reprint%205...](http://sce.uhcl.edu/helm/SWEBOK_IEEE/papers/10%20reprint%205.pdf)

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jpittis
I would guess that there are lot of qualified "engineers" (not certified) with
just cs, math or other non engineering degrees. How could we keep
certification from excluding all these bright people?

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throw42
General assembly mints genius'es. I went to MIT and can't get admitted to
their program.

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dntrkv
The fact that you went to MIT is probably the reason you aren't getting
admitted.

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santaclaus
Why would that matter? They have your money either way, and op has an
additional MIT degree, which I would imagine would only help one during a job
search, likely boosting GA's placement rate stats.

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strmpnk
It's actually quite hard for instructors to deal with classrooms with very
uneven advantages between students. Given that these courses try to get the
most of such short time periods, I'd imagine you'd either be unhappy with the
pace or perhaps lead other students to feel like they're lost.

