Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by GFK_of_xmaspast 4204 days ago
One thing I'm a little uncertain of is the ideology behind these kinds of things, it seems like the primary purpose here is to keep people out of the field.

Also I think those are some pretty weak quantitative results, and good exhibits for argument against p-values.
3 comments
mgirdley 4204 days ago
Codeup CEO here: For our purposes we want to only take students we know we can help and will eventually succeed. If we bring in people who fail during and after class, it's bad for business.

It may be controversial but running this place has shown me that not everyone can program competently or is cut out to be a professional programmer. Anyone who says "everyone can code" is mistaken.

link
eof 4204 days ago
That might be overly cynical. IF it's true that there is some fundamental way-of-thinking or personality trait that is both in a large minority of people, and necessary to be a proficient programmer; it is extremely valuable to know about it.

A lot of people in the field, myself included, get a hint of intuition that some people either have it or they don't.

If we could get at (or closer to) some basic principle, we could both help people focus on their strengths (by identifying those who show this trait, and being transparent with ones who don't).. and hopefully learn how to cultivate the underlying trait itself.

Wouldn't it be funny/cute/useful if just practicing a bunch of algebra word problems made proficient programmers even better?

link
jcfrei 4204 days ago
Why do you think the results are quantitatively weak? My first critique is just the small sample size with ~60 students and the tests, which appear to be different between the students.
link
lomnakkus 4204 days ago
The OP alluded to p-values, and I think this may be relevant:

   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OL1RqHrZQ8
(In short: p-values are pretty much useless as an indicator of "this experiment can be reproduced".)

Not that this necessarily refutes the original article, I just thought it might be relevant to discussion.

link
rhiever 4204 days ago
If you look in the methods, the experiment has been successfully reproduced twice after the initial trial with distinct cohorts of students.
link