Inmates at California’s San Quentin prison learn to code
arstechnica.com
arstechnica.com
Of course it will make a meaningful difference for inmates (if only because in terms of all things one could do in jail, this is probably in the top 1% in terms of intellectual stimulation), and of course they could become high quality professionals after this. Especially given the fact that the training seems more intense to me than any of the bootcamps from which a lot of today's web devs come from ("four-day-per-week, eight-hour-per-day, six-month course" - most bootcamps are a few weeks, or a few months at the maximum).
This sort of line of thought is so harmful. There's nothing magical about programming that makes it different from any other industry. You don't need to have been immersed in it your whole life to be an outstanding professional. It's not the case for chemical engineering, it's not the case for mechanical engineering, it's not the case for electrical engineering, why would it be true for computer engineering?
Especially given the fact that of all the subfields in computer engineering, there's nothing deeply complex about HTML/CSS/JS because it relies on so few prerequisites (if you're writing low level assembly, it requires a deep understanding of the machine's architecture; if you're writing graphics code, it requires a solid knowledge of linear algebra. But there are no such foundations for web development).
The tech industry fancies itself a meritocracy/progressive -- programs like this will show just how much of that perception is real.
This also flips the other way: I've interviewed PhDs with little ability to operate in an engineering environment. The industry is definitely more meritocratic than, say, the banking, consulting, and business world.
On the other hand I've seen plenty of evidence that in certain geographic regions there is a particularly heavy (and, in my opinion, amusingly misplaced) emphasis on categorical errors, equivocation, and conflation of purely academic CS knowledge with practical ability (as you yourself allude to). These are all the CS-world equivalent of the supposedly very un-meritocratic things many who've never been outside of CS (professionally) assume occur in, oh, "banking, consulting, and [the] business world" as a matter of daily routine.
However, we are more inclined towards hype investing, leading to useless companies (snapchat) getting insane valuations, and people utterly without merit becoming rich overnight.
And definitely, tech is arguably the most meritocratic high-paying field out there. Just the ability to build something on your own with your skills without anyone's permissions is not common (i.e. you can't just open a bank).
The curriculum is created by Hack Reactor, which is a 13 week, 66 hour/week curriculum. So the time commitment is the same, and it seems to go less in depth than the standard Hack Reactor program.
This is according to http://www.meetup.com/hackreactorx/events/218681201/ , where it says "Hack Reactor is TLM's primary partner in this endeavor, and will be creating the curriculum (basic front-end web developer skills, so a bit of a shift from HR's curriculum)"
That said, I am a big proponent to giving job training to those in prison, and am hopeful for the results!
Convicted felons would probably find it harder to find a job just because they have to put that fact on their job applications, but they have to deal with that whatever line of work they go into.
Even if the argument you mention is wrong, it's only harmful in a sort of fluffy world where good things die when looked at critically.
There's nothing magical about programming that makes it different from any other industry.
These days there's immense competition in every industry. If anything, your argument seems to be that programming is different from other industries and that just skills can get you anywhere even if there appear to be many others who also have skills and better looking resumes. I hope that's true but let's at least look critically.
I saw this in freshman year. People either struggled mightily, or nearly not at all. Hence, the huge weed-out factor for the major.
All these folks need is exposure.
OTOH, as a tutor back in my CS days, I witnessed the difference between those who just needed an occasional nudge and those who really just constantly beat their heads against the wall. It really wasn't that they were unwilling to try. It was more that their minds weren't wired to conceptualize and approach CS-style problem-solving. Sure, I could walk them through a problem, but next time around it was like starting over.
It reminds me of geometry proofs. Some could learn to stumble their way through, while others just glided through almost effortlessly.
So, the stick-to-itness attitude that you mentioned is certainly a requirement that all of us have had to wield at times, but I'm speaking more of the ability to make progress while wielding that attitude.
And, it's not necessarily a matter of intelligence as much as thinking styles. That's the "click" I'm talking about. So, this is not some superiority trip.
In fact, in the context of this discussion, I was actually being optimistic. Some were suggesting that the prisoners couldn't learn to be viable if they were so far behind those who had been doing it since childhood. My take is that if a person has aptitude for it, they can make up a lot of lost ground. Simple exposure might activate them in ways that others who work for years in the field might never achieve.
One day shortly after he started at RocketSpace, he asked how I was doing and I said "eh, surviving". Not knowing his background, I was caught a bit off-guard when he told me he had recently got out of San Quentin after 19 years, and gently reminded me that I was doing a bit better than just surviving. He's a great, great guy.
He did a Tedx talk about his experience that is well worth watching. http://www.tedxmarin.org/2014-speakers/chrisfino-kenyatta-le...
Totally coincidentally (though thanks to Kenyatta for being such a great ambassador for the program) we are interviewing a Last Mile member for an operations position at our company, ePantry, later today.
I think projects like this are great but we also need to address the problem of being able to find a job for these guys after they get out.
Or, you know; get rid of the drug laws that put him there in the first place.
Amen. This is a huge problem and probably a huge part of why recidivism rates are so high. If you can't get a job out of prison and you're low on money it's really easy to get your old drug/weed guy to front goods for you to sell. Instant cash, work on your own time, no background checks, work that is probably more exciting and interesting.
Huge sentencing reform is needed and I encourage everyone to get active or at least put your ear to the ground about it. A great source of info is the Sentencing Project[0]. They send out e-mails regarding the status of reform in different states and other general current events and information.
Cash incentives (e.g. state pays 50% of the income of the employee for a year or two) for employers can be a much better starting point. Or educating prisoners e.g. to become licensed electricians, plumbers, ... like in Germany and then helping them to start their own business when out of jail.
But the US system seems like focused 100% on punishment and generating revenue for private prisons, so I highly doubt this will ever be introduced - there's simply too much money at stake when former inmates actually rehabilitate.
Not that it's bad to have civilized prisons, but I'm curious how a private prison operates.
Numbers from here:
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/ascii/p13.txt
There are some other problems with perverse incentives in the US incarceration system (businesses are allowed to employ prisoners at low wages), but the "it's all about private prisons" narrative isn't really backed up by the numbers.
If you look at the sort of crimes that people end up getting put into prison for, at least statistically, they aren't Myspace comments.
Mostly drug-related stuff, especially victimless crimes such as pure possession without intent to distribute... while Myspace or other cyberbullying can certainly be jail-worthy, a shitload of US prisoners are in for drugs.
imho, the US and every other country in this world should end the "War on Drugs". It has undeniably failed, and costs taxpayers everywhere billions of dollars, in addition to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost alone in Mexico...
http://isb.ussc.gov/content/pentaho-cdf/RenderXCDF?solution=...
The typical federal marijuana trafficking prosecution involves possession of 10 kilos (the small number of cases involving less than that averaged 4 kilos). The numbers for crack and meth are smaller, but there is still a pretty clear line at 'dozens of doses'.
I'm not sure I understand it correctly, but this graph seems to say that the majority of people sentenced under drug guidelines are convicted of some other crime. So apparently they are committing other crimes while in possession of drugs:
http://isb.ussc.gov/content/pentaho-cdf/RenderXCDF?solution=...
And then the majority of "pure drug cases" actually do involve trafficking, which the data above indicates usually involves substantial quantities.
Nothing I've said is an argument in favor of the war on drugs.
Of course, this system is very easy to game - in one scandal, judges were bribed by prison operators in order to send kids to jail for stuff like "mocking a principal on myspace". See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kids_for_cash_scandal for one of these.
Of course, putting kids in jail for stupid myspace comments will make them responsible adults cough...
Indeed. Good work you're doing there.
Now, if we can make schools schools by default, then maybe we can skip the prison step altogether.
That's the best quote on HN I've read in a year.
People noting the difficulty of finding employment having a prison/felony record should consider that there is an ever growing body of computer freelance work that only looks at bids and results. That domain is absolutely ideal for those with records for all kinds of reasons.
It seems like providing the inmates access to something like http://kapeli.com/dash or mdn locally would be a godsend.
We have local copies of MDN installed and are adding a dash equivalent over xmas. (Dash is osx only -- I forget the equivalent for linux, which is all the institution could afford.)
Online/demo version of the app here: http://dochub.io/ but that's not loading for me at the moment.
(I believe there's a meetup like this once a month or so.)
>Of course, as the class is taught inside a prison, it has an extra obstacle—inmates don't have access to the Internet at all, and their only time spent with a computer is inside the classroom.
My favorite story to relay is an Indian woman whose husband came to the U.S. on an H1B visa. She came here on an unskilled visa. In her spare time at home while she was working as a maid, she taught herself programming. A year later she was making $60,000 per year. A few years later, making $80,000 per year.
Every time I relay a story like this - the person I'm trying to convince has an excuse as to why it won't work for them. "Oh, but that was a different time! There are no jobs today!"
I can't wait to hear the excuse as to why they can't learn to code even though prison inmates are now doing it.
As a counterpoint, have you thought that it might not be the "ability to code," but rather the "drive to learn" that causes these people to be successful? I think that even if everyone could code, they wouldn't necessarily be successful, whereas someone who had that drive to go out, learn, expose themselves to new ideas, etc. presumably also has the drive to sell themselves and keep pushing.
He's now Lead Developer at Launch Podium: https://launchpodium.com/company/
And his side project is looking pretty good now compared to the last time I looked at it: http://collaborativebenefit.org/about-us/from-our-founder/
Society gets to continue punishing them for whatever they did, and the inmates gets something meaningful and productive to do.
I know, the US/Californian prison system has many things to criticize and rant about (and people should!), but here is a great project to face some of those problems. It's really great, but I hope people keep pushing such projects. Prisons will probably never be empty, but setting that goal is always better than surrendering, cause huge costs, both financial and social ones.
I hope such projects set an example for other states and countries.
We still have a lot of work to do, but this is a very, very good sign.