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Comment by sizzle | Hacker News Reader

I sincerely hope the students that went on to become full time developers paid you back handsomely to pay it forward to future students, otherwise you have nothing to retire with if you sacrificed your life savings. I hope your altruism is rewarded because you are such a good person for doing this. Maybe take donations and create a fund from wealthy tech enthusiasts?

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Thanks, but I've come to realize that I'm not altruistic so I want to clarify so you don't leave with the wrong message.

I'm using my wealth to build a learning environment and remove obstacles so I can observe what the true barriers to learning are. I essentially created my own lab because it was too much work to convince others to create it for me.

So, I'm not the good person that my story seems to convey, just curious.

Well I for one am happy that your deep seated curiosity is so aligned with an altruistic cause that despite my typical trait of believing people when they describe their motivations I still have some doubt about your true motivations. I've taught a number of people software or data science for free. And yes, teaching is its own reward and seeing people that you've taught land gigs as data scientists at companies like Shopify is gratifying, but ultimately it would be dishonest of me to say that my teaching others was purely for selfish reasons. It wasn't. I like helping people and I wish more people did too.

Thanks for doing what you're doing and please keep pushing forward to make the world a better place.

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