Prince Quietly Helped Launch a Coding Program For Inner City Youth (qz.com) 172
An anonymous reader writes: Though many would say Prince changed the world through his music, the artist also took a hands-on approach to changing the world beyond music. The global superstar was the inspiration behind YesWeCode, an Oakland nonprofit, which works to help young people from minority backgrounds enter the tech world. The idea for the program came from a conversation between Prince and his friend Van Jones, who heads Rebuild the Dream charity, following the 2012 shooting of teenager Travoyn Martin. "Prince said, 'A black kid wearing a hoodie might be seen as a thug. A white kid wearing a hoodie might be seen as a Silicon Valley genius. Let's teach the black kids how to be like Mark Zuckerberg.'" Jones told CNN. The program is aiming to teach 100,000 low-income non-white teenagers how to write code, and was launched at the 20th Anniversary Essence Festival in New Orleans in 2014.
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Only if you're not white. We have enough rich white bastards, we need more diversity among the rich bastards.
Beats me why, but I keep hearing good things 'bout it.
Re: Let's teach the black kids how to be like Mark (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: Let's teach the black kids how to be like Mar (Score:4, Informative)
You need Harvard to help with crawling into upper class, but you do not need tit to become a normal middle class coder.
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You need Harvard to help with crawling into upper class, but you do not need tit to become a normal middle class coder.
Eh...not really. I know a lot of people with >120k/yr salaries who have nothing more than community college degrees. Hell, at the rate I'm going, I'll be there soon-ish, and that's all I have. (I'm at about $80k only two years out of community college.)
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>. I know a lot of people with >120k/yr salaries who have nothing more than community college degrees
That's not upper class. Not at all. Trust me.
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Teach all those Ivy League/Government Intelligence/Google interpersonal networking connections that one is typically born into?
Aka "the old boy's network". Yeah, good point. Apart from that, we don't actually need more huge internet services - that train has already arrived - and left again. What we really need is people who understand bio-technology, bio-medicine, advanced genetics and genomics, advanced materials (like graphene, phosphene, meta-materials etc), and a long list of other, advanced technologies; plus the fundamental research that goes before all of this, which must be independent of industry ties. We have enough, blo
Eh, bad example (Score:1)
"Let's teach the black kids how to be like Mark Zuckerberg"
So, thugs?
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"Let's teach the black kids how to be like Mark Zuckerberg"
So, thugs?
I figured it meant teach them how to make huge piles of imaginary money while pushing the productivity of this nation off a cliff and convincing people that they should give up for free private information that companies will make money off of.
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A thug who walks up to you on a dark street, sticks a gun in your back and says "give me all your personal information".
The victim says nervously "Or... or... what?"
"I'll make something that you and all your stupid friends can't resist spending a lot of time on, and then I'll take it away."
"OK Sir".
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Sounds about right.
Teach kids to be like Mark Z (Score:2, Funny)
Because the tech industry doesn't have enough self-absorbed dousche bags as it is.
And he made them pancakes afterwards! (Score:2)
He was amazing!
Re:How the F*** (Score:4, Informative)
But if it's only for non-white teens, that is the definition of racism.
You're absolutely right. White minority students in California (a minority-majority state) wouldn't qualify for this program.
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So convince some shit-kicking country superstar to fund a program in low-income white communities. Maybe you can convince Kid Rock if you can wake him.
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Because, certain groups are incapable of bigotry.
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Misleading deflection.
Correcting structural racism is not itself prejudiced.
What would be prejudiced is fighting or arguing to maintain that structural racism and keep it intact.
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But stating that some groups are eligible for something and others are not is not correcting structural racism, it's merely switching the target of it. As long as "correcting" something involves putting somebody else at a disadvantage, there can never be hope of eliminating it.
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It is NOT misleading deflection. I've been told on MANY occasions, that any bigotry by special classes is in fact "earned" and thus "not bigotry". When people of that protected minority can say, do and be expressly anti white, and get a pass on virtually all of it (encourage it in music etc), it is also evidence that is not just a few people believing it, but a large part.
Look, I realize there are bigots out there. And color of skin doesn't stop bigotry, there are white bigots, black bigots, Hispanic bigots
Fighting fire with fire (Score:2)
Fight bigotry, you must fight ALL forms of it, just not the kinds you don't like.
Firefighters who fight forest fires by consuming their fuel in small controlled fires might disagree with the analogy: "Fight fire, you must fight ALL forms of it, just not the kinds you don't like."
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Because fire and bigotry are the same things? Or even closely related? You just making an excuse for hate simply because you dislike the hate on the other side more?
Unlike fire, hatred isn't controlled by using hate. And I dare say, have you never seen a controlled fire get out of control? Trying that with Hate is equally dangerous, maybe more so. Further, hate isn't rational, and doesn't follow rational flow, unlike fire, which is well understood.
The purpose of controlled fires is to burn the fuel up, prev
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Hate begets hate. Let me know when bigotry leads to love. You are excusing hate on one side, not realizing hate begets hate. The only answer is to denounce hate and bigotry for everyone, equally, starting now. Not supporting bigotry because of some past wrongs.
Or, as my daddy used to say, "Two wrongs don't make it right" My addition is "Two wrongs is worse the one".
I hate bigots, and I don't give a shit what their color, creed or sexuality is. Bigotry is nasty and evil. All of it.
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This is what happens when society gets itself some bad habits. In order to redress the balance, things like this are necessary. Remember this isn't about making non-white people better than white people, but providing them some strong support to attempt to level the playing field.
If you can't see that there is a modicum of logic and need behind this, then I feel sorry for you.
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But you're also the one excusing the soft bigotry of low (or non-existent) expectations. Lets raise the bar, instead of just moving it to a new location.
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No. Yours is merely another form of the argument that granting equal rights to minority groups deprived of those rights is somehow actually granting that minority special rights, because now the non-minority group is no longer advantaged over the minority.
Structural racism exists and severely disadvantages these minority students.
Correcting that distortion, undoing that structural racism, is not then racist itself.
Aftermath of 20th c. apartheid; War on Some Drugs (Score:2)
Cite the laws which discriminate against minorities.
One set of laws was an apartheid regime called Jim Crow [wikipedia.org], which was in place in several U.S. states in the early to mid twentieth century. Though apartheid became unenforceable in the United States in 1965, their effects continue because of other laws, such as property law and inheritance law. Parents who had been impoverished by apartheid had less wealth to hand down to their children. Having to work harder to make ends meet caused families to sacrifice education in favor of survival.
Drug prohibition is ano
Socioeconomic status is still heritable (Score:2)
Though apartheid became unenforceable in the United States in 1965, their effects continue because of other laws, such as property law and inheritance law.
It's 2016 get the fuck over it.
Said other laws make it difficult for families to "get [...] over it." Even if all genetic causes of prejudice were eliminated, socioeconomic status is still heritable despite not being genetic.
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So any program that aims to get women into math and science is sexist because its not helping men get in?
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So any program that aims to get men into math and science is sexist because its not helping women get in?
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next needed: "from poor backgrounds" (Score:5, Interesting)
The whole "special access due to skin color/gender" bit is getting a bit old, when what's really probably needed is "special access to people from impoverished backgrounds." When you've never seen anyone in your family working in a corporate office, it's a little hard to see understand what a career in IT/legal/other-cushy-white-collar-job could be, and there are plenty of "non-minority" kids stuck in that world too.
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"Separate but equal" then?
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"Separate but equal" then?
That's a government concept in the law. Doesn't apply to private citizens donating money to charity to help a segment of society.
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See also: Allen v. Wright - In 1984 the Internal Revenue Service denied tax-exempt status to racially discriminatory private schools (charities?) and established guidelines for determining whether par
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I agree. Right after desegregation things were so dire and discrimination so prevalent that color of the skin was a rather efficient and good proxy for "person who has suffered untold amounts of discrimination". Today an impoverished background is a much better proxy for the group of people we are trying to reach. In the end blacks would still be the main beneficiaries since they are over-represented among the lower classes, but at least this way we no longer need to classify people by the color of their sk
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I agree we should focus more on economic class, but black people do still face a variety of discrimination. Insofar as this holds them back economically then class oriented programs will benefit them disproportionately, but this doesn't mean a program which targets blacks is necessarily bad.
When minorities begin to raise their status, they set their sights on the kinds of high status, high paying jobs you see in the media; doctors, lawyers, and so on. This means they remain under-represented longer in pr
Re:next needed: "from poor backgrounds" (Score:4, Insightful)
That's exactly the assumption I'm challenging. I think this association cleaves closer to economic lines than racial ones. In the boonies you're likely to find a lot of "white anglo" family groups without a single college education. If you ignore them long enough, you end up with Trump voters, or worse.
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"but this doesn't mean a program which targets blacks is necessarily bad." - The problem is that any form of discrimination will lead to class inequality in the long run. It has already happened here in India where many Brahmins a caste who were once on top of the pile are now living in poverty as they have no access to government grants, cushy seats and reserved educations that is given to almost everyone else. Only economic criteria is truly race and gender bias free and hence is the only one that ensures
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People like you never see any other alternatives than "piss off".
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The whole "special access due to skin color/gender" bit is getting a bit old, when what's really probably needed is "special access to people from impoverished backgrounds."
What's so bad about "special access due to aptitude"?
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A Guide to White Privilege For White People Who Think They’ve Never Had Any
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
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A Guide to White Privilege For White People Who Think They’ve Never Had Any http://www.huffingtonpost.com/... [huffingtonpost.com]
Sorry but
1. It is from the the Huffingtonpost
2. It is essentially a book review from a biased author.
3. White privilege implies that it is something bestowed on someone by other people. If you want to treat people equally then stop separating people based on ethnicity.
4. I am not an American. I am a Canadian and a first generation immigrant who happens to be "white" but I experienced discrimination from the "English" when I was in my early grades in school. I also did not grow up with a silver spoon
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Nobody cares, brah. You come from a place that would be speaking German right now if it wasn't for Americans. Shut the fuck up.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonialism
It's a good thing you went to Canada instead of the US. Up there, it's sparsely populated enough that maybe nobody w
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...and what is America mostly comprised of? Europeans who colonized America. Don't feel bad though, Canada is pretty much the same in that regard.
But really, colonization and white privilege are not the same thing, so your pseudo-intellectualism falls on its face. "White Privilege" hasn't been an actual problem in Canada or the US for decades but a few special interest groups want to keep it alive because it grants them privileges most of us don't have.
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Really? They are exactly the same thing.
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No, they are not. Try to keep up. Colonialism is when one political power establishes itself in another country that is not its own. This process may include inequality towards one or more indigenous peoples but it doesn't need to, that's just historically the by-product. Colonialism does not specifically imply "white privilege".
In fact you see the same thing happening all over with non-whites. East Indians do it all the time. So do the Chinese. They move to a country in large numbers, congregate in
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If you want to treat people equally then stop separating people based on ethnicity.
Tell that to white police officers who disproportionately arrest people of color for nonviolent offenses.
Strange wording (Score:1, Funny)
The program is aiming to teach 100,000 low-income non-white teenagers how to write code,
I guess poor white people don't matter? What if we changed that from "non-white" to non-black? Non-Mexican? Or non-gay? That would suddenly make this program racist or homophobic.
The way we've been treating each other in the US or on the planet, for that matter, has been embarrassing for most of my life as far as I can tell. But the recent trends do not give me much hope. It's a step in a different direction, but I'm not entirely sure it's a good one, just different.
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Oh, you can be sure it's not a good one. The people perpetrating this garbage don't want to be equal - they want to be superior.
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Any kind of racism is about some faction of a society defined by real or imagined racial characteristics feeling inherently superior, universally without any factual basis.
To be fair, the article says it is about supporting minorities, so they may have actually non-racist goals, and the Prince-quote is likely taken out of context.
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I like Prince but. (Score:3, Interesting)
1. A white kid walking around at night in a hoodie looks like a thug also. He does not look like a tech billionaire.
2. All low income kids need help regardless of race.
3. Sure programing and tech can be a good way to make a living but studies have shown that people that go to vocational schools leave school with jobs and little debt.
Re:I like Prince but. (Score:5, Insightful)
2.There is a significant wage gap between white and black people. A larger percentage of black people live in poverty. That is not something in dispute. African-American culture is a subset or even a distinct American culture on its own. What may very well prove successful with one group of low income people may not work as well with another. Trying to help one group of people doesn't stop anyone from helping another group.
3. Teaching valuable skills is a good thing whether it's in a vocational or college setting.
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Yes, for black students to succeed they very much need courses that are separate from, but equal to the courses that white students take.
Rob
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https://i.imgur.com/PKaUWZu.jp... [imgur.com]
And Prince used his own money to help a certain group of those kids. You got a problem with that?
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If someone did the same thing but excluded african-americans would you have a problem with that?
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Nobody's being "excluded". These are programs for the inner city, which happen to be predominantly minority.
If you haven't noticed, the white suburbs already have programs that are designed to help them succeed. They are called, "good schools with big budgets".
White men who complain about programs targeted at minorities, crying, "Where's MINE??" don't seem to realize that they've had theirs all along. It's rea
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"Nobody's being "excluded". These are programs for the inner city, which happen to be predominantly minority."
Funny but this is from the summary.
"Jones told CNN. The program is aiming to teach 100,000 low-income non-white teenagers how to write code, and was launched at the 20th Anniversary Essence Festival in New Orleans in 2014."
Sounds like it is excluding people to me. Maybe the person that was being interviewed meant inner-city teens but the statement seems to exclude white low income teens.
I actually t
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Don't believe you. I'm not sure you can even understand how racism works. There is no such thing as racism against white people. If there should ever be racism against white people, then we have something to discuss.
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Really? Do you think that nobody hates a white person just because they are white?
Hating someone because of their race is racism.
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No, and no.
As I said, you don't understand how racism works.
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Is english not your first language?
First you said, "Nobody's being "excluded". These are programs for the inner city, which happen to be predominantly minority."
And then I showed you where it did say that low income white kids were being excluded here, "Jones told CNN. The program is aiming to teach 100,000 low-income non-white teenagers how to write code, and was launched at the 20th Anniversary Essence Festival in New Orleans in 2014."
Then you said, " There is no such thing as racism against white people"
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"Aiming at" minorities is not the same as excluding whites.
Yes, it's not necessarily racism. Racism implies a power structure. Oppressor/oppressed and all that. I
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No that is not the definition of racism. .
http://www.merriam-webster.com... [merriam-webster.com]
and here
http://www.oxforddictionaries.... [oxforddictionaries.com]
Really aiming at is not the same as excluding? So a college aiming at recruiting white people is not racist?
If you exchange the word non-white for non-black, non-hispanic, and or non-asian it is without a doubt that it would be seen as a racist statement so it is racist.
You're are making up your own definition that fits your worldview, show me a definition from a reputable source aka a diction
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1. A white kid walking around at night in a hoodie looks like a thug also. He does not look like a tech billionaire.
Yeah but a White kid in a hoodie has Zuck as a role model (And I managed to say that with a straight face) or any number of tech startups. .. so there is a difference there.
A Black kid in a hoodie does not have similar role models
2. All low income kids need help regardless of race.
3. Sure programing and tech can be a good way to make a living but studies have shown that people that go to vocational schools leave school with jobs and little debt.
I agree with you on those points, however Blacks are proportionally in poverty at a much higher rate than whites (on average 2 1/2 times across the entire US) so it will require extra effort to balance that out.
Finally you have to give Prince props for doing something he cared abou
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1. Most kids walking around in hoodies have no idea who Zuckerberg is.
2. "I agree with you on those points, however Blacks are proportionally in poverty at a much higher rate than whites (on average 2 1/2 times across the entire US) so it will require extra effort to balance that out."
So if you help all kids in poverty more of help will go to people of African descent than white kids because more of them need help.
"Finally you have to give Prince props for doing something he cared about and not maki
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1. A white kid walking around at night in a hoodie looks like a thug also. He does not look like a tech billionaire. 2. All low income kids need help regardless of race.
We've been hearing for years that blacks need to take responsibility to uplift themselves and not depend on others to help out. So a prominent black millionaire takes it upon himself to uplift other blacks and the response is basically "hey, why isn't he helping other people"? Sigh.
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Quietly? (Score:2)
Doesn't seem so quiet if it makes the news.
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That's normal. I remember an artist that managed to gain international fame but was eventually all but forgotten around here who said in one of his songs "do I have to die to live?"
Yes he did. Not even a month after his death his records topped the charts again and there were roads and places named after him.
People are odd. It seems we like our role models dead.
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Well, Schindler did this for the first time and under extreme risk and pressure. He had to figure it out as he went, and if he had overdone it or seriously mis-stepped, he could also have saved a lot less people. It is understandable that his first go at the problem was probably non-optimal.
Editor! (Score:2)
I don't expect a high level of editing on Slashdot, but you could at least give Trayvon Martin the respect of spelling his name correctly.
Please stop this (Score:2)
Coding jobs are not the factory jobs of the modern age. They are highly specialized, need a lot of talent and dedication and coding above a very low difficulty and quality level can most decidedly not be taught to everybody. Please stop teaching these already disadvantaged youth something most of them will never be good at and where the available jobs on the lower levels are in a fast downwards spiral with regards to pay, job security and upwards mobility. You are just screwing them over.
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Sorry, but people that have failed to use the opportunities to learn these skills before will _not_ pick them up in a coding camp either. And there were plenty of such opportunities before. Ever debugged your solution to a math problem? Ever had any kind of group-work in school? Ever had any kind of home-work that required planning? See what I mean? "Coding" is not the magical subject that will make people learn things they were not prepared or willing to learn before and certainly not in a short-term progr
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Not at all. But the idea to fix that by teaching them to code on a low skill level is not going to work at all. Instead it wastes their time and will just turn out to be another false hope and demotivate them further. I am not against teaching kids valuable skills that they actually have a good chance of learning, but "coding" is not that skill for a number of reasons.
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I fully agree. Some people manage to do it without support from their parents, but they are rare. Parents that are not invested in their children are a blight and should never have had any. It is the ultimate form of irresponsibility. Well meaning parents that are limited themselves are much less of a problem, I think, I had several fellow students with such a background at university and they did not do worse than others.
Incidentally, my main issue with these "teach coding" initiatives is exactly the same
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Well. this is a difficult question. What would certainly be beneficial to have a lot of people that can do some coding (say on the level of math you learn in school as opposed to what a STEM graduate can do), and that know they are not experts at it. On the other side, we have far too many people that have "coding" as core skill and most of them are bad at it. That is probably more harmful than anything else, because it drives salaries to the bottom and causes bad working conditions. Smart people that are i
Re:This is stupid (Score:4, Informative)
How is this program supposed to actually work?
Teaching students how to think logically rather than impulsively is a useful skill in life.
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From experience teaching coding, most students cannot generalize what they learn in coding, hence that is not what is happening. Incidentally, if your argument were true, math in school would have already accomplished that.
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Incidentally, if your argument were true, math in school would have already accomplished that.
The public schools taught me nothing. I had a college-level reading comprehension in the eighth grade because I wanted to learn more than what I could get at school. I had to go to college to get a real education.
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Same here. But this is not the norm and a "coding camp" would probably just bore you out of your wits.
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Just don't pretend like these kids are going to get jobs writing code without jumping through a very expensive college degree hoop.
Or, if they're interested in computer programming, go to a community college and get a part-time job. As a poor white boy from a blue-collar family, I spent my first year in college picking up recyclables on campus to pay for my classes and books.
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Or, if they're interested in computer programming, go to a community college and get a part-time job. As a poor white boy from a blue-collar family, I spent my first year in college picking up recyclables on campus to pay for my classes and books.
I suppose I could have done the same if "recyclables" included gold bullion and diamonds. You're being very insensitive to those of us who attended expensive private schools. These microaggressions are just killing me!
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I have never known anyone that made more than maybe 15$ for an 8-hour day collecting cans.
This was in the early 1990's. I typically spent an hour a day after classes to pick up recyclables from the trash receptacles around campus to fill up a burlap bag, five days a week during the 18-week semester. I made $300 to $400 per semester (about $3 to $4 per hour), which was enough to get through me a semester at school while living with my parents. The only support I got from my parents for college was a ride to the recycling center. I did that for two semesters before I got a job at the campus bookst
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Maybe I'm just an extra-capable nice guy with a long memory and experience in many different walks of life.
In short, you need to learn how to be an asshole. Eli the Computer Guy can help you with that problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_YaNGzplbE [youtube.com]
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Sounds like you never learned to say "no". It is a critical survival skill in the IT industry, as so many people are so incompetent that they spend a lot of time looking for somebody that can do their work for them.
It does not need to be a blunt "no". It can be, "sure, I will be delighted, what cost object do I book this on?" or "sure, we will be happy to do that for you under an additional contract" or the like. That way, you can fend of people that just want your time and expertise for free and if they ar