randomsong describes at least 15 successes and zero failures, which is certainly not what I would have predicted in advance. If we take this at face value, either they have a pretty strong filter for who they teach[1] or it’s pretty decent evidence that “anybody” can learn programming, at least for colloquial definitions of “anyone”.
[1] Which is the opposite of what they’re trying to have, though of course that doesn’t rule out that they have one anyway.
Yes, my immediate assumption was that they have a strong filter on who they teach. I don’t find it terribly implausible that someone would know 15 people who are smart enough to code. But I think they’re going to be unpleasantly surprised if they start teaching strangers from the public library.
Perhaps so. If I fail I will write about it. One thing I can confidently say is that teaching is very difficult, so failure is a real possibility. I sure hope this works out though.
10 / 15 original students were random people who raised their hand on a facebook group when I posted a potential pilot program. I think this prepared me well for the coding bootcamp at our local public library that was launched last week. I hope to keep this going throughout 2020 and see what happens.
I don’t think your experiment gives much evidence that “anybody” can learn coding, just that it isn’t very strongly correlated with social status.
randomsong describes at least 15 successes and zero failures, which is certainly not what I would have predicted in advance. If we take this at face value, either they have a pretty strong filter for who they teach[1] or it’s pretty decent evidence that “anybody” can learn programming, at least for colloquial definitions of “anyone”.
[1] Which is the opposite of what they’re trying to have, though of course that doesn’t rule out that they have one anyway.
Yes, my immediate assumption was that they have a strong filter on who they teach. I don’t find it terribly implausible that someone would know 15 people who are smart enough to code. But I think they’re going to be unpleasantly surprised if they start teaching strangers from the public library.
Perhaps so. If I fail I will write about it. One thing I can confidently say is that teaching is very difficult, so failure is a real possibility. I sure hope this works out though.
10 / 15 original students were random people who raised their hand on a facebook group when I posted a potential pilot program. I think this prepared me well for the coding bootcamp at our local public library that was launched last week. I hope to keep this going throughout 2020 and see what happens.
Here’s the meetup group, if you are around the area come say hi! https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3/
I’m fascinated to hear how this went. Well done, Randomsong, and please let us know what happened!