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Comment by davidbalbert | Hacker News Reader

Hi, I'm one of the founders of Hacker School. I'm happy to answer questions that anyone might have.

I'm unclear on what experience level you're looking for in applicants. I'm a fairly good programmer (phd in cs) but I'm shit compared to Norvig. I'm in NYC with time to kill this summer. Should I apply to be in hacker school? Or would I be a "Resident" instead?

We're looking for people of all experience levels. Our goal is to make Hacker School the best place to improve as a programmer no matter what level you're at.

We've had a number of Ph.D.s and postdocs in various subjects including CS go through Hacker School. We would be happy to have any of our residents as Hacker Schoolers if they wanted to.

So in short: you should apply to Hacker School :)

Any plans to put the talks/seminars the residents will give online?

I would love to vicariously live through the experience.

Not at the moment. Most of the interesting stuff that happens at Hacker School would probably not translate well to video.

This is awesome. I applied a few weeks ago...really looking forward to hear back from you guys. Any chance when that might be?

We're working through applications as quickly as we can, generally in the order that we got them. You're guaranteed an admissions decision by May 17th, so you should hear back about your application well before then.

Sounds good. Thanks.

Any thoughts on the risk of a change in "demographics"? It seems like one of the coolest things about Hacker School is the diversity of people. If the motivation for applying changes and/or it gets a lot harder to get in, there could be a big change in at least the applicant pool. Not necessarily for the worse, but still a change.

I don't know enough to say if this will change the demographics of Hacker School. We'll presumably get a higher percent of applicants who know who Peter Norvig is than we've gotten before, but I don't think that's going to be the dominant factor.

The best tool we have to affect the demographics of Hacker School is outreach to specific groups, which we do a fair amount of via mailing lists, events, meetups, etc. I have a hunch that any demographic shifts from news like this will be more than offset by any active outreach work that we do.

Why in NYC and not Seattle/SF?

Presumably because he's based there.

If he wanted help/sponsorship running SF or Seattle, I'm sure he could find it, though.

I actually think Hawaii or Thailand would work -- you could get a few cheap house rentals on the big island, with minimal distractions, and do it there.

Cost of ticket would offset cheap housing probably. Any small midwest town would work and be much easier to reach.

Yeah, but the real cost, IMO, is the cost of the "residents". I think one could convince 1-10 great people to take a working vacation in Hawaii for a while for $x. I'd expect 10x for St. Louis. (NYC, Seattle, or SF would have local people, so it would be a different thing...more part-time, but they could continue going to day job)

SF to Hawaii flights are $300 r/t. If it were in a place like Boulder or Utah, you might be able to get local companies/VCs to sponsor it, though.

An issue with small midwestern towns is that there is not usually temporary housing available, unless it's a college town.

The short answer is because we were living in New York when we started Hacker School.

As to why we were living in New York, I can only answer for myself, but here you go: I grew up here (city and suburbs), most of my family still lives in the area, my friends live here, and I love the energy of the city. It feels like home.

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