Hacker News Reader

Comment by glaugh | Hacker News Reader

It was an intentional choice, based on my (incorrect) impression that it was exclusively more advanced folks. Though now I'll act like vitno's logic was mine, too :)

I think if I were to do it over I might include it, but at this point I'd rather not change anything and risk messing something up in the survey data. Thanks for bringing it up.

View on HN

Oops - apparently Hacker School no longer really encourages that sort of person. I can't edit my post to say that, unfortunately. That's a shame; they trained our guy far better than most of the candidates I see coming out of "bootcamps"....

From their FAQ:

>>I don't know how to program. Can I do Hacker School? No, sorry. Hacker School is currently only for people who already know how to code. Think of it like a writers workshop. We're here to help people become great novelists, but you have to already know English and be comfortable writing essays.

They don't accept people who's never coded before, but you don't need to have coded a lot. (I was surprised at this news of someone who'd never coded at all -- I'd still guess it's just a slight exaggeration.)

I just asked the guy. He had self-taught himself programming on his own for a few months prior to attending the program, but attended in part to make a career change (had done startup biz dev / operations / whatnot prior.) Maybe that counted, or maybe they just tightened the restriction since then.

That said, this was spring of 2012. I'm sure Hacker School has changed a lot since then! Suffice it to say he's a fabulous programmer now. :)

That's in line with my experience (fall '12). I just don't want anyone reading this to be discouraged from applying because they're not 'advanced' -- there was a Hacker School blog post on that pretty recently.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com