What I don't know is whether or not the person in that email is equipped with what he or she needs to actually be able to figure out how to incorporate Stripe.

Are you at all confident that you have taught people how to research and understand what they are looking at?

I've known plenty of people who can follow patterns and regurgitate what they have seen, but have little to no ability to actually create. If what they want to do deviates just a little, they are toast.

People aren't stuck just copying.

At first, it might be copying. But having something workable that you can tweak can give you a good idea of how something works. After enough time tweaking, you can start building new things based on those best practices/examples.

Yeah, so we definitely teach how to find gems, read through documentation and troubleshoot errors. There's a little bit of API knowledge that may be lacking (which we're definitely working on as a module - we've gotten a lot of requests).

Students who have taken the class have definitely figured out way more complicated stuff afterwards using some of the techniques we teach. Whether this person in particular will be able to figure out how to incorporate Stripe, I'm not sure.

Hey Mattan,

I understand that this comment probably wasn't what you wanted to hear, and I apologize for that. Like I mentioned in the comment, it was not made out to be an intent to insult you, and I did acknowledge that I think you are a great guy, and it's obviously a successful product (but that has nothing to do with my criticism). I'm not here to troll, I'm here to push you to be better.

I think you haven't interpreted the word "scam" correctly. I believe that you have good intentions, but regardless of that, this product is dishonest. It says it will teach you how to be a rails developer, and it doesn't do that. It implies that you will be ready for six figure salaries after taking the course, and you won't. I know that you would call this "marketing", and sure it has worked. But what are you after in building this company? Money slash success, or the core reasons that you set out to build this company? You know - you mission: to really teach people how to code.

I think what you might be missing is that you don't learn how to code by cloning popular websites, and copy-pasting code someone else hands you. You learn to code by understanding how things work. Understanding how computers work sure helps. Understanding how the ruby language works helps too. Understanding how the web works, how databases work... all the things I mentioned in my previous comment. Then you take this general knowledge of how things work to build what you want, whatever that is -- whether it's a clone of a popular app (which it never is) or something entirely new and custom that nobody else has done (which is always the case).

I'm sure you are familiar with the flatiron school in NYC. They have a similar mission, but are actually doing it right (to be fair, also charging a hell of a lot more). You guys both approach the same problem, but get vastly different results. In the flatiron school, you spend full time for months learning and understanding how things work, and when you come out of it, you get a full-time job as a developer. In one month rails, you spend a couple weeks on and off watching online videos that skip all the underlying theory and come out with a low-quality pinterest clone and not even close to enough skills to land an internship.

What is your goal for one month rails? To make money, or to add real value to peoples lives? To have techcrunch articles written about you, or to actually promote the incredible mindset and skills that are building, creating, writing code? I think we both know that you are aimed after the wrong thing, and that's why I'm pushing you to do it right.

While I admire the work of Avi and the guys at the Flatiron School greatly, I disagree with some of their basic principles. In particular, they perpetuate this myth that only some people are cut out to be developers by working very hard to qualify people in advance of accepting them. This makes them a lot like an intensive computer science program. By making sure you only have people who are likely to be able to sit for months learning the very basics of syntax before ever moving on to the applicable stuff, you're alienating so many people who could potentially be building something very valuable just because they didn't happen to have an intrinsic interest in something like where a comma goes (not that that's not important, there's just no reason we have to teach it FIRST instead of second, or third, etc.).

I'm making a bet here (and all startups are bets after all) that there are some people who can become good developers but learn differently from everyone else. Let's please at least try to diversify the way we teach things, at least in the interest of testing a hypothesis, instead of just accepting the standard dogma?

So the idea is this: get people genuinely interested in code by showing them what it can do. Isn't that how great teachers teach at the end of the day? Inspire in them a yearning to learn more.

Plus I think it's a real shame that people learning coding totally out of context from its application. People finish Codecademy not understanding how the hell anything they learned actually fits into a web application.

My goal is to give people a broad understanding of the various parts of a web application: the view, the model, the controller, routing, deployment, version control, gems, StackOverflow, etc. How many other online resources are there than cover all that for beginners in one place? Not many.

>they perpetuate this myth that only some people are cut out to be developers

Yeah, that's not a myth.

Every single thing you said in the first paragraph that you don't agree with is how every professional field works. There are no shortcuts, you can't bullshit your way into a profession and be successful. If you are not genuinely interested in writing code and building things, it really isn't the right career for you. In addition, as far as I know flatiron school people deploy on the first day there - it's not a dry syntax run with no application of knowledge. The truth is that a career as a developer is not for everyone - some people really like it, and others try it and don't.

In addition, if you don't have interest in things like where commas go, it's pretty likely that you don't have an interest in writing code, since that's what code is all about, once you are on your own at least.

I think defining the theory of learning through understanding and aptitude as a 'dogma' is a little bit of a far reach. But what you are saying about the experiment does hold value. It would be easy to figure out the output of an experiment like this - take the flatiron school as all the way off the understanding and commitment end, and take your course as the option all the way off the other end, low commitment, little understanding. Then compare the outputs between the two -- how many graduates does each approach have into jobs in development?

Now as you go down the response here, you are getting more and more reasonable with your claims, which is good. Next, you are saying that the real purpose of your course is to inspire students. And that's totally fair - I can see that. Obviously you have done will with this: look at your reviews and the number of students you have had. You are a smart and passionate guy, and you can inspire your students.

BUT this is exactly my issue with the course. You claim to teach students to code, but you are not teaching them to code. You are exposing them to code and trying to get them motivated, with minimal real learning. You are, as you say in the last paragraph, giving them a broad, high-level overview of what it would be like to code, if they were to learn. If this is what your course does, this is what you should say it does.

As you get to the bottom of your comment, you further and further solidify the real purpose of your course. I like this, and where you have gone with it. I don't think you are going down a bad road. I do think though, that you need to be clear and honest about the goals of your course. And if you do, it will likely mean sacrificing some money, because what you're selling right now is an impossible dream, and lots of people buy into that stuff - that's marketing. But trust me, honesty and good work will come back and repay you, and the opposite will come back and bite... whether it's now or later, it is bound to happen.

Mattan, I wish you luck with this company. I wouldn't spend so much time here anonymously writing to you if I didn't care, at least a little. If there's anything you take away from this discussion, let it be that you should always be clear, honest, and transparent with your work. I promise that if you do, things will turn out better.

> how many graduates does each approach have into jobs in development?

To be fair, students at the flatiron school would be more likely to obtain a job simply because of the resources they have put in. Months of their lives and $12,000 per student. But to level the playing field I believe that for every $12,000 spent on one month rails by students (245 students) will produce more people who will go on to develop at a professional level than $12,000 spent at the flatiron school (One student). I believe this is what Mattan is after with the course, the ability to show people it isn't impossible to learn to code while exposing them to working examples and a plethora of resources that are not common knowledge outside of the tech industry. On another note, I also wouldn't be surprised to see more than 1 out of 244 go on to attend a dev boot camp like the flatiron school after finishing one month rails.