We changed our apply page to no longer allow students from windows(higher.team)
higher.team
We changed our apply page to no longer allow students from windows
https://higher.team/images/windows.png
53 comments
gregjor, sir, I ask you, if you had 100's of people applying to your school and you could filter it by a simple regex to remove all the non-serious students from the list so you could pay attention to the serious students wouldn't you use that filter? I'm not saying I won't help people on windows machines. I'm saying their 1st assignment in our school would be to install linux on that pc.
Perhaps, if I thought anything in the browser headers indicated a serious or non-serious student. I don't think user-agent meets that criteria.
If I had hundreds of people applying to my school I'd have a standard development environment set up for them so they could connect to it remotely, regardless of what brand of laptop they own or which OS they happen to have. That way they could start learning to program -- what they are paying for -- rather than spending a frustrating hour or two trying to install Linux, or in the case of MacOS trying to deal with the versions of Apache and PHP and MySQL Apple installs.
I've been to classes that start with "install Linux" and what happens is the first day is wasted while one or two people struggle getting wi-fi or their mouse to work, or don't have enough disk space, or whatever. It's a waste of my time. That's why public and private schools are adopting Chromebooks.
If you look around you'll see quite a few developers using a Surface Pro these days, since it's lighter than a Mac and can run Windows apps, which is a requirement for a lot of jobs and some schools. Two of my kids must use Windows for their college classes and job. Should they (or I) have to buy a Mac just to go to your school?
If I had hundreds of people applying to my school I'd have a standard development environment set up for them so they could connect to it remotely, regardless of what brand of laptop they own or which OS they happen to have. That way they could start learning to program -- what they are paying for -- rather than spending a frustrating hour or two trying to install Linux, or in the case of MacOS trying to deal with the versions of Apache and PHP and MySQL Apple installs.
I've been to classes that start with "install Linux" and what happens is the first day is wasted while one or two people struggle getting wi-fi or their mouse to work, or don't have enough disk space, or whatever. It's a waste of my time. That's why public and private schools are adopting Chromebooks.
If you look around you'll see quite a few developers using a Surface Pro these days, since it's lighter than a Mac and can run Windows apps, which is a requirement for a lot of jobs and some schools. Two of my kids must use Windows for their college classes and job. Should they (or I) have to buy a Mac just to go to your school?
If you can't google how to install https://www.virtualbox.org on your windows machine and get a linux VM up that'a okay. But that's step 1. And I will help the student do this. But stop pretending like it's bad teaching to make this step 1. This is great teaching. Getting a degree from HDT means when you graduate you will be a linux expert. You can't become a linux expert without taking that 1st baby step of leaving windows.
Did you post on HN to get comments and criticism from other professionals? To drum up business for a $50K programming course? Or to troll?
If anyone wants to sit next to me for two years learning Linux, PHP, MySQL, HTML, Javascript, etc. I'll teach you all that for less than $50K, and you can live in a fun exotic city that costs 1/5th LA prices. You'll get to work on REAL applications for REAL companies and even learn how to freelance and get customers. I'll even make an (unaccredited) degree for you.
If anyone wants to sit next to me for two years learning Linux, PHP, MySQL, HTML, Javascript, etc. I'll teach you all that for less than $50K, and you can live in a fun exotic city that costs 1/5th LA prices. You'll get to work on REAL applications for REAL companies and even learn how to freelance and get customers. I'll even make an (unaccredited) degree for you.
go for it! I'll be happy to list your school on https://higher.team/tier1-tier2-tier3-code-schools
and that linux is headless.
servers are where the code runs. desktop is a different place. people can remote. all they need is putty. i dont are if the devs run their locally or not. it has to run on dev/staging/live servers. no?
devs can use any os they like. matters not one bit.
but if you are trying to learn code and goto code school and the url higher.team/apply looks at your user-agent for the word "windows" and gives you a task, surely the student needs to be able to find a way around this?
Surely... or find a different school that doesn't slam the door in their face. It might be cool to have a driving school exclusively for Tesla owners but you'd be losing a lot of potential customers.
you do realize Windows costs money and linux is free right?
maybe its different in the usa. here in singapore, essentially all desktops at work are windows. essentially all laptops are sold with windows preinstalled. and not just that, if its "office" it has to be ms office not open/libreoffice..outlook not tbird not anything else.. there's just no profit in it for linux users. but yes, virtualbox and anything with a gui would work if they were interested enough.
As a blind person I'm glad I have no need for your course since I already know how to program. Linux accessibility is a giant pain for most blind people. While the Mac is accessible your looking at a $1000 entry price compared to $500 for a Windows laptop with a free screen reader. Never assume you know best, people like me have good reasons for using Windows.
"Never assume you know best" well I'm sorry but I'm not trying to make a school that caters to every single person's personal issues. I'm trying to create a leading silicon valley / silicon beach code school where the best of the best go. Being blind has lots of limitations I'm afraid. I would tell my own son this if he was blind too. And I do know the best about _this_ issue. I've taught 100's of people coding and trying to do it on a Mac is much more efficient. I have not had a single blind student yet.
Please list the limitations you know so much about? Your sample size is far to small to make any generalizations about what blind people can and can not do just because you have not taught any blind students. Also read up on WSL, it's pretty good.
As an educator, your lack of empathy for your (potential) students would greatly concern me regarding your ability to teach people from where they are, instead of what's easy for you. But that's fine, I'd be happy to teach folks who simply want to learn, regardless of what their hardware situation is.
I aded this to page: BTW This is not saying we will not teach you. We still want you to apply. And installing linux on your pc is a great first assignment. Seriously, our teaching style is we through you into a working web company as an intern. If you were to show up for your first day with a windows laptop, your very first assignment would be put linux on it. You will learn a lot doing this. But this thread on hackernews makes it seem like I hate windows people and don't want to teach them. This is not true. Just complete assignment 1 and you can apply.
This is the height of arrogance. I cannot express how offensive it seems.
Nice.
I'd change it, though, so it would disallow both Windows and OSX.
I'd change it, though, so it would disallow both Windows and OSX.
I do believe this is the first positive comments on this thread! 3 points here we come.
Developer, and long time BSD user who has dabbled in linux. I keep trying to get away from Windows, but it keeps being something I have to use for work. So many businesses use C# and Microsoft SQL Server for their back ends, and IE 11 support is the bane of my existence for web development. Maybe it's different in southern California, but everywhere else Windows is still king.
anyone who gets VC funding from a major Silicon Valley fund, uses linux and mysql, and no ms sql server or IIS or any of that _legacy_ stuff. I want to teach people coding so they are ready to go for work major Silicon Valley companies, not legacy it departments.
With all that funding they might as well afford a proper PostgreSQL license.
It's your site, do what you want.
Wamp.
I don't dual-boot or open a VM to browse HN.
Wamp.
I don't dual-boot or open a VM to browse HN.
it's just the /apply url that does the windows check. the rest of the site can be viewed from any os.
You should probably change that to the entire site, so people know about this idiocy immediately and don't waste time with you.
I think you are missing the point. 100s of people are applying. When they get into the school 10% have a pc not a Mac. It's not worth that 10%. I'm going to teach the other 90% that have Macs already. That's plenty of students. Why would it be wasting time with me? I'm a great teacher and coder.
Pretty hardcore.
it's just not worth it. if they are serious about learning to code, step 1 is linux or Mac not windows, am I rite?
"learning to code"
I didn't know specific OSes were required to learn to code.
"am I rite?"
No. Clearly you need a source and I have a feeling you're not going to find one.
Your childish tone may prove to gain you favor with other myopic people, but you sound like the people I wouldn't want as a teammate, don't worry, you'll get some interested people, but they'll be just like you, but maybe you won't notice.
I didn't know specific OSes were required to learn to code.
"am I rite?"
No. Clearly you need a source and I have a feeling you're not going to find one.
Your childish tone may prove to gain you favor with other myopic people, but you sound like the people I wouldn't want as a teammate, don't worry, you'll get some interested people, but they'll be just like you, but maybe you won't notice.
dude, wtf? I've worked all over the industry and hating on windows is just normal. Like everyone uses Macs and a few geeks use linux but no serious programer uses windows. this is just fact. Our biggest competitor https://www.turing.io sells students new macs.
> Like everyone uses Macs and a few geeks use linux but no serious programer uses windows.
This statement is false, you might need to take a look outside of your bubble - it is a big wide world out there.
> dude, wtf? I've worked all over the industry and hating on windows is just normal.
And this makes it ok how?
I haven't 'worked all over the industry' but I have been building web applications for over 15 years using various technologies and on different OS. They all have their warts and they all shine in different ways.
This statement is false, you might need to take a look outside of your bubble - it is a big wide world out there.
> dude, wtf? I've worked all over the industry and hating on windows is just normal.
And this makes it ok how?
I haven't 'worked all over the industry' but I have been building web applications for over 15 years using various technologies and on different OS. They all have their warts and they all shine in different ways.
anyone who gets VC funding from a major Silicon Valley fund, uses linux and mysql, and no ms sql server or IIS or any of that _legacy_ stuff. I want to teach people coding so they are ready to go for work major Silicon Valley companies, not legacy it departments. it makes it ok because this is what students needs to be taught to the right jobs. I cannot tell a student it's a good idea to learn C# or MS SQL Server when I fundamentally don't believe it is.
Andrew, nothing to do with windows or the article. But your attitude in the comments.. You seem to have a very close minded and insular view, it disturbs me that someone with such a view is in a position to teach. Perhaps try and think outside of the silicon valley VC startup web-app bubble, otherwise when it pops (which it has in the past) you will be in for quite a shock.
I added this to the page: BTW This is not saying we will not teach you. We still want you to apply. And installing linux on your pc is a great first assignment. Seriously, our teaching style is we through you into a working web company as an intern. If you were to show up for your first day with a windows laptop, your very first assignment would be put linux on it. You will learn a lot doing this. But <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13399445">this thread on hackernews</a> makes it seem like I hate windows people and don't want to teach them. This is not true. Just complete assignment 1 and you can apply.
I would invite you to consider that for all the deliberately antagonistic statements made about MS SQL and IIS being "legacy", many trendy startups would make the same statement about the MySQL / PHP stack you teach in.
I don't see why taking VC money is the repeatedly stated single measure of success, but I'd be interested in what VC anywhere would look positively on this sort of behaviour.
You could be here selling your product and services, but the opportunity is instead being used to marginalise people.
I don't see why taking VC money is the repeatedly stated single measure of success, but I'd be interested in what VC anywhere would look positively on this sort of behaviour.
You could be here selling your product and services, but the opportunity is instead being used to marginalise people.
PHP is legacy, but we teach it as a first server side programming language and then goto rails, then golang. MySQL is not legacy. See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12166585 it's still the database used all the time and it's very very good. Because there's no ROI on taking VC money and putting into a startup that's going to use that money on IIS servers. I am selling my product here. Do you want you apply? Free this year.
You must not have worked in VR because most developers I work with are using these legacy windows machines to build stuff with Unity and Unreal.
Sounds like you have just worked in web dev in the US. If I'm wrong apologies and please elucidate me.
I don't see it. What part of Windows makes it hard to learn the languages you offer? MySQL, JS, PHP
well I'm on a Mac. I have no idea how to get past weird window specific errors. And our code when it runs in production will run in linux. so... if all serious developers in the industry use Mac/linux, why even mess with windows? I don't see the + I only see -
> am I rite
Not really.
Not really.
btw we also don't teach node.js - we think server side js is silly. We teach javascript but as a client side only language.
they think people browse to their /apply page from a webserver?
huh? we think people goto our /apply page all the time from browsers. those browsers send a field called user-agent that contains information about what operating system that browser is running on.
not that.
say my webservers run centos or rh. my desktops are mostly windows. i remote to my webservers, dev or staging or production, to do stuff. and actually they don't have desktops installed.
none of my machines can visit that /apply page then.
if someone runs windows on their desktop and uses vagrant to launch their dev/test instance it'd probably be headless too. windows desktops have ms office and can play direct x games.
unless u want to force people to choose between a linux desktop and not applying. thats ok too.
think of it like a test. Say you are on windows and goto higher.team/apply and get the windows message and really want to apply to the school. How could they quickly get around the user-agent check? https://www.virtualbox.org and https://elementary.io would work right?
Replying to an old thread of yours: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13188673
That item handles mains voltage. Do not modify it. If you really need to modify it find a competent person to cut off the 3 prong mains plug, shorten the cable, and fit a new plug. The new plug will be ugly. A competent person is anyone who repairs electrical items - washing machine repair people for example. But, mostly, don't modify it.
That item handles mains voltage. Do not modify it. If you really need to modify it find a competent person to cut off the 3 prong mains plug, shorten the cable, and fit a new plug. The new plug will be ugly. A competent person is anyone who repairs electrical items - washing machine repair people for example. But, mostly, don't modify it.
I agree I know very little about electricity and current, voltage, amps, all that stuff. I don't really grok it. But code I get. Why are you replying to an old thread of mine here?
I didn't want you to kill yourself or others by electrocution or house fire because you fiddled around with a cable designed and built to meet some important safety specifications.
thank you! it was a close one.
Since back-end web applications run on a server, not on laptops, it makes more sense to work in that environment from the beginning. A web-based IDE like Cloud 9 or CodeAnywhere with the LAMP environment (or whatever) already set up would allow your students to get right to coding, without having to jump through your phony hoops. You are imposing your idea of how "real developers" work based on a small sample of hot VC-funded companies in the valley.
I know lots of serious developers and none of them run real applications on their laptop. Few of them use desktop Linux. Web servers don't run GUI-based operating systems. Forcing everyone to try to get your idea of a programming environment running on their own laptop is just wasting time. It's the same as being forced to install Flash to use a bank or airline web site.
Dismiss "legacy IT departments" all you want but there are 1,000 times more jobs with real companies making money than there are at VC-funded startups in SV. Maybe you don't think those jobs are sexy, but you're teaching people habits and career strategies, not just programming.
I think you are already behind the curve with your Mac/Linux laptop requirement. Google engineers use Chromebooks (so do I). Chromebooks and iPads are the default in many schools. Those devices can be great for learning programming and actually writing code.
Regardless of technical arguments about operating systems or stacks or what venture capital firms fund (you really think they base those decisions on what laptops the developers use?) your "amirite" dismissive tone is off-putting. Good luck with that.