[jboggan]

I'm currently building an ML-powered debugging tool for automatically correcting code based on error messages. It's actually fairly difficult but doable, and we are working towards getting our first product out in the next few months. It has been difficult supporting ourselves during this phase however since we are both from middle class backgrounds and didn't go to prestigious schools. For years I thought I was smart for turning down Princeton and taking a scholarship to a state school and not having any student loan debt. Now for the first time I see the other side of that decision and think about the connections I could have been making during college and how much easier our current road would be. That early friends-and-family money is really important in getting yourself to a state where seed funding is interested in you.

[anon_cs493]

I'm confused by this anecdote. Princeton has one of the strongest financial aid programs in the world.

Why didn't you take the offer?

Students do not have to pay tuition if their parents make less than $140K a year. Students receive a full-ride (including tuition, room & board, and a stipend for misc costs) if their parents make less than $65K

Sources:

http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/01/pf/college/stanford-financia...

https://www.princeton.edu/admission-aid/affordable-all

Personal anecdote: I recently graduated with zero debt from Princeton (in fact, with a net positive gain in capital) and I come from a upper middle class family.

[jboggan]

They certainly didn't when I was accepted in the fall of 1999. I had enough money in my college fund to pay for 1.5 years of tuition, room, and board at Princeton so getting paid to go to a good state school seemed like a no-brainer. I would mostly attribute it to a middle class mindset of education being a necessary cost to be minimized, rather than a very large investment in your future with outsized returns.

[phonon]

In 1998, they substituted grants for loans for students from families earning less than $46,500.

In 2001 they replaced all loans with grants :-(

http://www.nyu.edu/classes/jepsen/nytimesJan2801.pdf

[yazr]

Sounds super interesting.

But i keep hearing funding can be really hard for developer tools. Ironic, or something..

Which language are you finding easiest to handle? (Or rather, which compiler is most error-message friendly .. ?!_