Begging is unseemly, and the whole "you can be a programmer in 3 months just give me $12k" thing is also kind of uncool.
It could be that they love programming but they learn best in the competitive interactive environment offered by a place like The Flatiron School. There is more than one way to learn programming and the ways are not hierarchical, one may work best for one person, but would fail miserably for another.
I definitely do not want to come off as begging. I am offering design services to secure some money for her tuition, and she is sewing some things to sell on Etsy to raise money as well. Donations are for those with hearts of gold.
She has heard some good things about The Flatiron School. It's actually closer to a full-time job, rather than just a class.
I laid out a self-study plan above that worked great for me, it's all common sense and its mostly free. Now if she's not skilled enough to put the pieces together with the resources I mentioned then I'm very skeptical that working super duper hard for a few months (even with great mentors) would get her up to speed. That's not how learning software development works. Your brain is not built that way. LOL "hacker schools"
Naturally, as with all things HN, there is an insinuation that anyone who is incapable of doing things the way an intellectually-advanced-but-socially-deficient 17 y/o boy would, must not be intelligent.
I didn't think I'd be able to make it to a WWDC scholarship from the UK until I went past the usual funding bureaucracy at my university and went directly to the head of dpt who was kind enough to authorise a bursary for me.
I don't think money should ever hold people back people skilled and intelligent enough from the educational resources and creative outlets they can use to the full to prosper.
It's one of the tragedies of our time.
I wish you all the best!
I agree that it is sad that money is what holds people back. It's a cruel system that I can't wait to see ripped to shreds by new & easier access to education.
I appreciate the kind words! :)
Start with Paul Hegarty's iOS class on iTunes U, it's free and it's terrific. Do all the assignments (if you get stuck you can find other people who have done them and see what they did but I really recommend doing it yourself.) Sign up for NSScreencast.com and watch 1 or 2 a day, taking notes. Go read as much Ray Wenderlich stuff as you can that's not dated (some of the stuff on his site's kinda old, but no matter.) Then build an app and put it in the app store, it can be lame but you have built so many practice ones it's good to actually get something in the App Store. Go read some stuff at objc.io, some stack overflow, whatever.
You are now an entry-level iOS developer. I just saved you $12,000 and you don't have to beg strangers on the internet for donations. Seriously, $12,000? I guess it's true: the best way to get rich in a gold rush/bubble is selling pickaxes. There are enough great resources out there that you are silly if you do this.
They don't. Skilled and intelligent people with an internet connection have all the educational resources they need at their fingertips. For free.
Have you heard of Hacker School in NY? Not only is it free, I think they offer $5k grants for female programmers who need living expenses. Generally the candidates for Hacker School and DBC/Flatiron don't overlap much, but if she's a programmer who's just moving to a new language, it might be worth looking in to.
If that happens, Catherine should -- after she's graduated and is making a nice income (which she will be, as an iOS developer) -- pass it along and give $12k back to help the community somehow. Give it to a program in NYC that's helping give underprivileged kids access to technology, for example.
That would seem fair to me. It does seem a little weird to beg for donations so someone who already seems pretty smart and well-connected can further their career a bit (in an expensive way -- see above) when there are so many ways $12k can be used to really change someone's life. Or many people's lives.
Catherine isn't asking. Her boyfriend is, and he's doing it without her knowledge (presumably).
He wants to support his girlfriend and her passion for iOS development, and he's asking for help from people who might feel some empathy.
I received some scholarships & grants to go to college, I suppose that means I'm obligated to create my own scholarship fund?
It's hard to criticize someone for asking for help (you have to do what you have to do), but if the Flatiron School is truly this successful at preparing attendees for real-world development and helping close to 100% of them find work after just four months (as opposed to four years), I think it's to be expected that some folks are going to be less empathetic.
Interestingly, despite Flatiron's $12,000 tuition, the WSJ article says "The school’s student acceptance rate is less than 8%." That suggests they're not just accepting anybody who can pay; ostensibly they are filtering for ability/accomplishment. If this is the case, and the placement figures are accurate, there's no reason Flatiron (and programs like it) couldn't make their money on the back-end. Assume that graduates are placed in entry-level positions paying $80,000 on average. A 20% placement fee would earn Flatiron $16,000, $4,000 more per student than tuition. If you assume a class size of 30, and a 98% placement rate, you're looking at an additional $116,000 in revenue per graduating class.
Yes, there's risk with this model, but if these schools are truly capable of placing nearly all of their students in in-demand development jobs after just four months, the risk seems modest. After all, when the market turns, the pool of people willing to pay $12,000 for a four month program is going to dry up anyway.
[1] http://blogs.wsj.com/venturecapital/2014/04/09/flatiron-scho...
My personal opinion is there is an issue if he is publicly doing this without her knowing. But then again. [1]
How many people would want someone to post a picture of them with their names, plans etc out in the wild for this reason.
It's not like she needs a kidney. Or is kidnapped and he needs to take immediate decisive action.
She may very well be the type of person who has previously expressed willingness to be very open of course. But from the story we have no way of knowing this.
[1] Personally again I like the initiative that he is taking. He is taking a risk obviously. But you have to to get ahead. Besides it doesn't matter if the internet doesn't like what he is doing and in fact (streisand wise) that may actually work to his benefit.
IMHO better 'gift' from the community might be an interest free loan.
That is worth some $$ (600-1200/yr) and solves a real need.
Paying it forward is still optional.
Open source projects need money (hello OpenSSL) and children are dying. Paying for someone's Objective-C/Xcode tuition isn't my number-one priority at this time. Perhaps someone else will swallow the bait.
And I'm just playing catch-up for all the things she's done with me.
(and I'm working on that wifing thing)
Now blowing 12k on a trip overseas together after a 2 year long distance relationship... that's something that I could get behind.
That said, please please make sure the class sizes are very small and the instructor ratio is like 1:5 max. You will be paying a premium and if they put you in with 30 other people or even 15 (60k/month for them btw) you are just getting ripped off.
For 12k you could hire an experienced iOS dev to teach you this stuff in a couple hours a week. Even if Catherine paid 125/hr (and I bet someone would do it for less for the hell of it) that's still almost 100 hours of 1:1 time. Just food for thought. I'll donate anyway in hopes you take a nice vacation :)
PS. My friends website of as many tech schools as he could find says the rails program @ Flatiron has 32 people to a course - http://schools.techendo.co
Kickstarter for education - perhaps it exists already?....
Good luck!
Funny story: she set up that Etsy a couple days before visiting her family in Florida, and actually lugged her sewing machine on the plane just so she was able to take any orders while away. Just to give a glimpse of how great she is, hah.
This guy (along with being boyfriend-of-the-year apparently) has the right idea.
Ignore these people. Debt === slavery! You are doing the right thing.
(Only #3 of his approach is begging. #1 & #2 are advertising) People get really angered at begging lately it seems..
p.s.. I'd say to give back to the "community", just make an app like watsi or something, and not spend your life's work finding more efficient ways to find people to f--k within a 10 mile radius..
Should be "There are four ways to help".
But I dislike stuff like "The Flatiron School" even more so. I want to help you and Catherine. I remember too well driving junk-yard cars for days straight only to spend a few hours with my long-distance[1] because plane tickets were impossibly out of reach. The others are right though: I'd sooner donate to send you guys on a cruise than essentially give money to the "Flatiron" folks.
I know that seems entirely unhelpful. Sorry.
[1] I did marry her in the end and that sweet suffering has become part of our collective mythology, now imparted to our own wide-eyed children. Succeed or fail, you're doing the awesome part right now.
1) What is the educational value of a course at Flatiron School - is there any accreditation? 2) What are the other options: graduate program at good program (Stanford, UW Seattle, Berkeley, or if NYC, why not check out the NYU digital arts program or the new Cornell initiative that Bloomberg has been touting)? Internship or entry level job into Google or another organization that has good mentorship? Granted, these may be even harder to get into, since competition is w/ CS majors from stanford/mit...
Just my thoughts musing out loud, not actually in the CS field, but it's interesting to ask - what's a good steppingstone for a young person just out of college into a CS-related job?
You may want to look into our program (http://appacademy.io). Students only pay us if they find jobs as developers after the program. In that case, the fee is 18% of your first year salary, payable over the first 6 months after you start working.
It's web focused, not iOS focused, but we do have a strong emphasis on fundamentals, and grads have often picked up iOS on the job within a few months.
People "donate" on Kickstarter when they pledge money to a project without pledging enough for a full reward, but we don't consider that begging. It's patronage. Not everything has to be black and white where if you give $5 here that means you're a bad person because there's someone less fortunate out there who could have used the money. If you think it's not worth it, then donate elsewhere.
