From: "Avi F." Date: 2012-12-18T00:33:39+09:00 Subject: Re: Wondering About Flatiron School Hi Everyone, So I'm Avi, the founder and main instructor at the Flatiron School. I guess I just want to address why I started the school and give you a sense of what our program is about. Our program is geared to people with no technical experience and our goal is first and foremost to help them fall madly in love with code. Once someone loves this, I know they'll never give up on learning it and will value being great at their craft. Being a programmer, we take so much for granted when we think of beginners. One of the first assumptions we make is that a layman will connect in the same deep way we have to code. It's important to show them what we take for granted. That programmers change the world more on a daily basis then any other profession. That technology now influences every aspect of our lives, culture, economics, and politics. Just look at the US elections and how better software helped Obama rally a vote where Romney's platform is largely cited as having failed. That as a programmer we have the wealth of human wisdom at our finger tips, able to bend it to our whim like branches in the wind. That code presents a larger design pattern behind all systems of massive complexity, of composition of synthesis, of building up a system from smaller units of itself, like notes in a song and atoms in a compound. So ya, that's Flatiron's first job, to help people connect to the wonder of code. Second, the mechanics and syntax of code are the easy parts. In fact, we don't even teach that stuff, we expect you to learn it on your own through our prework curriculum (which is open sourced http://prework.flatironschool.com ). What we focus on isn't the science of programming but the art of expression. Knowing how to define a method isn't as important as understanding when methods are needed, what they really mean, how they represent behavior. Programming is about articulating an idea clearly, not to a machine, but to ourselves. I try to show them how to break problems down, how to use the vocabulary they have learnt to solve a problem, how to work in teams, how to come up with effective plans, how to actually build. There is just so much more to programming then the gestures of a particular language. We try to teach all those other things. Third, it's about seeing this as a career. We do our best to provide you with the best leg up on a fruitful and long career as a developer. This is not a program for people with great ideas that would make a billion dollars if they could just learn to code. This is a program for people wanting to spend the rest of their lives writing. We help find you jobs that will continue to mentor you, teach you how to promote yourself by writing blogs on technology and code, by presenting at meetups and conferences, by contributing to open source, and by actually shipping software. Okay, this rant has gotten super long. But anyway, I hope that answers some questions about our program and what we value. If it isn't for you, that's fine. If you would never hire one of our students, that's fine too. We aren't doing this for you. We are doing it because it makes us happy. Avi Flombaum -- Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.