irrationaljared

Yes one of our background agent is tasked with this exactly. I think you could do this via CI as well. We handle it via hooks and background agents but the goal is the same.

I think both factors are important as the goal is generally to help with planning and prioritization. A straight-forward but long task is still "expensive" with regard to prioritization and will take a while even if the cognitive load is not super high. That said, I think the observation that cognitive load is a good thing to watch out for as it introduces more risk to the estimation is very valid.

I recently posted a blog post about CodeYam, which is a software simulator. It creates simulations of every aspect of a software application - basically every function, both in isolation and in the context of the app or other function that import the original function.

We've put together a brief demo demonstrating how the software simulator can benefit a pull request workflow, creating simulations of all changes and making it easy to add/edit simulations and save them as part of a test suite. Would love to hear any thoughts people have on it.

Awesome, we'll reach out soon!

This is all automated. It's a github app that tracks changes as they come in, analyzes and simulates them and creates simulations that can be accessed via the CodeYam website, integrated into a CI workflow, or, hopefully soon, leveraged in developer workflows.

In this way there's no set up or maintenance required (or very minimal). It updates simulations as changes are made so everything is always up-to-date.

It automatically generates a number of scenarios (data that is fed into the simulation), but you can define new scenarios through the website as well (or describe a scenario for the AI to generate).

My team and I have been working on a software simulator. It deconstructs software projects, creating simulations of all components (front-end and back-end) in isolation and in context, so you can easily see, test, and share any area of an application or the application as a whole. The blog post has more details.

It's starting to work pretty well and we're looking for people who might be interested in trying it out. Would also love to hear any feedback or questions people have about the concept.

If you want to try it out and don't want to register via the website you can email me at my first name (jared) at puzzleschool.com and I'll send you the zip file containing the cards and a few sample programs that can be printed out and photographed directly.

I was running an afterschool program teaching kids to code and we were looking for a way to have them code that was more social and group oriented rather than having everyone hunched over a computer more or less by themselves all the time. I was also looking for a project to explore Computer Vision and Machine Learning. This ended up being a good fit for both needs. The video on the website shows the students working on it. It's surprisingly engaging for being just paper cards you are writing on...

Also, in case it isn't obvious, you can create your own map from the website:

http://www.weddingmapper.com

and here are the links from the description in clickable format:

http://tools.weddingmapper.com/stephandtony2007

http://www.weddingmapper.com/mobile/stephandtony2007

Here's a link: http://www.makerparent.com

I've thought about it a bit. I realize the title is annoying on Hacker News, but I think the title is ok within the general context of my blog for those who read it regularly.

I'll think about another title, and I'm sorry (sort-of as I've enjoyed the debate here) for the sensationalist title on Hacker News, but I don't think it's a huge deal outside of this specific context...

Just want to point out a few things:

1) There are no requirements for students to be "involved in the process of planning their own education". They are only required to be attend school a certain number of hours per year (I'm not sure the exact number), and serve time on the judicial committee. There are no requirements at all around any educational goals.

2) Sudbury Valley School operates on less money per-pupil than neighboring public schools.

3) The only requirement for adults who work as staff members is that they are capable of treating students as equals.

What do you think the title should be?

I apologize. I don't have specific stats to share on the college success. The books published by the school have a lot of anecdotal evidence regarding the students having success in college. They don't seem to have universal success or significantly greater success then their peers from other schools, but they do seem to be able to handle and graduate from college and have gone on to a wide-range of jobs.

I should not have simplified the argument to claim that they have universal success.

Great questions. I've written a few more blog posts about my experience with the school:

http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/10/23/first-day-at-a...

http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/10/29/how-are-these-...

http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/11/04/is-socializing...

http://jaredcosulich.wordpress.com/2013/12/16/chess-minecraf...

The founders of the school have also written a number of books: http://sudburypress.com/

I'll do my best to write more posts getting in to the specifics, but my observation so far is that none of the extreme possibilities happen. There are problems. There are expulsions. Not many, but they do happen. The students don't magically learn everything on their own, but they do seem to develop in to competent, thoughtful, curious adults on their own...

I am sorry about that.

Ok, so would you predict that most of those who get accepted to college flunk out or are unable to get jobs?

I can certainly appreciate that this might not actually be "mind-blowing", but personally I think even the college-acceptance rates are a surprising result.

I don't think it's reasonable to assume that these students have any higher IQs than the neighboring public schools. I have not found any evidence to suggest that.

Yea, I know. It's tough to strike the right tone in the blog post and in the end the format was structured to be readable and get attention as I really do just want people to think about these ideas more, even if in the end they don't agree with them.

I agree. The students at Sudbury Valley and the families are not representative. That said, there is no application process outside of making sure you want to be there and your family is on board. They are not filtering out lower-performing students at all.

But it is certainly possible that this model would fail miserably when applied more generally. I don't think that can be the null hypothesis, though...

That would be more mind-blowing, I agree, but that's an enormously high bar that no one is achieving.

Sudbury Valley is a private school, but it is much less expensive ($8k vs $25k+) than many other private schools and does not attract only elite students. In fact many students turn to Sudbury Valley after struggling with public schools or even being expelled from public schools.

Unlike most private schools Sudbury Valley will accept all students as long as they want to be there and agree with the educational philosophy (e.g. adults will not force your student to do anything)...

The point of the post was not to claim that Sudbury Valley is for everyone or is better than other educational environments necessarily. It was more to observe that I'm surprised that people are not more curious about such a different environment. I would expect people to have more questions and want to learn more...

I appreciate everything you've said. Obviously not everyone will have their mind blown by these observations if they're already well informed on much of this.

My point was more toward the general public and the idea that such a radically different educational environment is preparing students for success in college and wide range of jobs should be at least inspire some curiosity...

There's a lot of literature out there from the founders of the school. Generally speaking they do engage in a lot of self-directed learning, but I think if you walked around the school you would not say that they were spending their time engaged in learning the way most of us think about it.

I'll be writing more about it. This was meant as a teaser, but I don't mean to leave it there. As I spend more time at the school I'll have more observations to share.

Generally speaking they seem to do similar activities to what I do on the weekends, with my free time. I might read a book, play a video game, learn something new, visit with friends, etc. That roughly describes what I've seen from them in the time I've spent at a Sudbury Valley school in the Bay Area.

I probably shouldn't have included that stat. The point was not to say that Sudbury Valley was sending 100% of their grads to MIT or something, but rather to note that I think people would predict far lower numbers of college-going graduates if they tried to predict the outcomes of a school that had not requirements and no curriculum at all...

Sudbury Valley does not self-select students. It is a private school, but if you can afford the relatively low tuition ($9k a year) and want to go there you can. There is no selection process other than making sure the family is on board with the educational philosophy.

I haven't yet seen any studies showing specific comparisons, but they seem to do well, enjoy college, and graduate. Again the point is not that Sudbury Valley does significantly better at preparing students for college/jobs but that it clearly is not doing a poor job of this, which I think is a significant observation given how different the environment is.

I mentioned in the blog post that it is an apples to oranges comparison for a lot of reasons. The point is that clearly the complete lack of curriculum is not placing these students at any significant disadvantage. That alone I think it a mind-blowing idea given how radically different the educational environment is compared to traditional schools.

The stats on other schools in MA with a similar socioeconomic average are around 70% - 90% going on to college: http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?measure=32

Again the point is not to show that Sudbury Valley is better, but rather just that the complete lack of curriculum is clearly not producing horrible results.