Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit? | Hacker News Reader

Learn programming in 12 Weeks from my couch? Legit?

makersacademy.com

22 pointsJimJamMasterJ18 comments

Take this one instead: "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years". The quickies can teach basics needed to make calculators or some utility scripts even in one week. That's ok, if you only need to do some simple stuff every now and then, but to learn how thing really work, where to optimize and how to design programs structure, you have to code for years with different languages, types of programs and environments.

Having met the instructors (and some of the students), they're an incredibly bright bunch of people. They would have put a lot of time and effort into arranging this course. This is probably an excellent way to kick-start your programming skills, let alone "legit".

Do note that entry requirements are strict i.e. you need to show some aptitude for programming before they even let you start the course.

Might be legit, but is that tuition justified?

As an "external", not having a job in coding but with coding skills, the only way I see worth paying that kind of money is if "graduating" gives very high chances to land a position (high= >80%).

For our London course, we have a variety of hiring partners and graduates are getting full-time jr developer positions. The reason we aren't promising to actively do this for the Global course is that it would be impossible for us to have relationships with hiring partners across the globe. That being said, we do have relationships with a variety of global recruiters and we'll do everything we can.

From a technical perspective - our graduates are well prepared for these types of positions.

Thanks for the reply. I was away so I could not say this before. Thanks.

I sat in on a graduation ceremony at Maker's Academy. I was extremely sceptical at first. The quality of the projects they'd produced in just a week (after having only spent 11 weeks learning to code) was surprisingly high. Having talked to the graduates and the instructors it's pretty obvious they're teaching people to code rather than teaching people rails.

If we were looking for junior developers I'd definitely be looking at the guys that come out of this.

Absolutely legit! Having met the guys at Makers Academy I have seen first-hand their sincerity, ability, and passion to truly deliver what they set out to do. I'd encourage anyone with a desire to learn programming to check them out and see for yourself!

If you're going to learn digitally, there are a lot of great free resources out there.

Check out Startup Engineering on coursera. There is a session going on now.

But, to answer the question, yes you can learn in 12 weeks from your couch.

I know a few of the guys that run Makers and to give them credit, they do a fantastic job.

They are one of very few initiatives in the UK that are actively trying to bridge the skills gap in tech that's currently crippling the industry.

Thanks for the kind words - we really do want to change the way that people learn how to code.

The world is becoming more digital. We need more programmers. Makers Acadmeny have one of the leanest and most effective coding courses in the world. Check them out.

It's not that cheap. Maybe it's easier (and free as well) just to learn those things by yourself.

I think the fundamental question is whether you have the self discipline to do the work by yourself. If you are highly self disciplined, and a self starter, then there are a lot of good quality, free options, like Coursera, Udacity, MIT's OpenCourseware, etc.

If you need an external push, like knowing that you've spent a lot of money on a course, then this may be for you, although it seems like a lot of money to me.

Completely agree with that.

Some of the best coders in the world have taught themselves - but just as many (if not more) have failed because of the inefficiency of trying to learn something you know absolutely nothing about. Should beginners start with Objective-C? If they're completely new, there's no way to know where to start.

I can't disagree with that, but being from the self-taught category myself, I would probably recommend to try learning stuff by yourself at first. A good coder has to be a fast and independent learner anyways. So, if one can't master something alone maybe programming is just not for him/her.

Agreed, I'm in the same boat as you and I think it's good that there's a bit of natural selection with developers.

That said, the UK definitely needs more people who can code.

Legit! Great stuff!!

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