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<i>OLPC Alum Mel Chua returns to teach NYC's FREE
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://HackerSchool.com">http://HackerSchool.com</a> this </i><em>Summer</em><i>
(early June to late August). </i><i>Location is Manhattan or
Brooklyn.</i><i> Consider!</i><br>
<br>
<br>
<h2>What Hacker School Is</h2>
<p><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://HackerSchool.com">http://HackerSchool.com</a> is a [FREE AS IN BEER] three-month,
immersive school for becoming a better programmer. It's like a
writers retreat for hackers. We (Nick, Dave, Sonali, Tom, Alan,
Allison, Zach and Mary) run the program every four months in New
York and meet Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from
10:30am to 6:30pm. We provide space, time to focus, and a friendly
community dedicated to self-improvement.</p>
<h2>Structure</h2>
<p>Unlike most schools, there are no grades, teachers, or formal
curricula. Instead, Hacker School is entirely project-based and
self-directed.</p>
<p>We have a morning check-in at the start of each day. During this
time we close our laptops and share what we worked on the previous
day, what we plan to do that day, and where we're stuck or need
help. This social pressure keeps everyone focused and
accomplishing what they say they will. It also fights scope creep,
because someone in the group will surely notice when your
spell-checker starts turning into an OS.</p>
<p>There are no formal instructors at Hacker School. Rather,
everyone is a de facto teacher, which works because everyone
enters Hacker School at different levels of development. Some
people are much more advanced than others, but everyone has
something to share. The primary expectations are that people start
with at least a general programming proficiency and finish much
better than they started.</p>
<p>Students have written Ruby gems, Python web frameworks,
JavaScript libraries, and code in everything from Erlang to
Haskell. We highly recommend you take the opportunity to code in
multiple languages, because we think it helps you grow as a
hacker. Learning multiple languages lets you experience
trade-offs, appreciate idiomatic code, and understand everything
from type systems to scoping.</p>
<p>Everyone writes free and open source software, because it would
be antithetical to Hacker School to write code that couldn't be
read, used, and improved by others. Code you write in traditional
schools is characterized by being both useless and destined for
/dev/null. Code written at Hacker School is the opposite:
Genuinely useful and written to be maintained and improved over
time.</p>
<p>While most of Hacker School is spent working on your own
projects, we occasionally work in groups on existing open source
software. The idea is to focus the entirety of the group's energy
on a handful of projects and contribute as much as we can in a
four-day period. We pair program and fix bugs, write documentation
and contribute new features. It's an opportunity to collaborate
with other Hacker Schoolers and to experience working on (and
giving back to) established OSS communities.</p>
<p>We invite other hackers to code with us on Thursdays. These are
typically either alumni or experienced programmers we think will
have a lot to share. Sometimes they give formal talks, and
sometimes they just answer questions and hack with the group.</p>
<p>We all go out to dinner together every Monday. We also have movie
nights, because movies are great.</p>
<h2>What we look for</h2>
<p>You should genuinely enjoy programming. That's most important. We
spend our time talking about technical problems and writing code,
not working on startups and products. If you care more about
startups than coding, you won't enjoy Hacker School.</p>
<p>We look for curiosity, passion, raw intelligence and a desire to
build things. The best way to show us this is to have a track
record of writing code and learning new things. If you're a smart,
curious person who loves coding, it will come out naturally. Don't
try to trick us. It probably won't work and it won't get you what
you want anyway.</p>
<h2>Expectations</h2>
<p>Because there is no certification or grading, the only reason to
come to Hacker School is to become a better programmer. As such,
you will find kindred spirits and tremendous energy. (A side
benefit is you'll meet new friends. It's common to grab drinks or
coffee with each other in the evenings or on weekends.)</p>
<p>You should treat Hacker School like a job, not in the negative
sense of something you have to do, but in that it's a serious
commitment you don't blow off. When you agree to do Hacker School,
you commit to coming four full days a week for three months, and
taking your time here seriously. Please don't do Hacker School
unless you can make this level of commitment.</p>
<p>Hacker School is not startup school: Our focus is helping people
become better programmers, not building prototypes or doing
product design. If your primary interest is starting a company,
you should apply to <a href="http://ycombinator.com">Y Combinator</a>.</p>
<h2>How we make money</h2>
<p>Hacker School is free as in beer. This is possible because
startups pay us to recruit. If after Hacker School you want a job,
we will help you however we can. If you don't want one, or you'd
prefer to search on your own, that's fine too.</p>
<p>Keep in mind that we accept people to Hacker School based on how
much we think they would get out of and contribute to Hacker
School. We don't take employability into consideration when making
admissions decisions.</p>
<p>We ask that if you or a company you work for hire someone you
meet at Hacker School, the company pays us. Our standard fee is
25% of first-year salary (excluding bonus), paid only if the
person stays at least three months. This is honor-based, so you
don't have to sign anything, and it doesn't apply if you co-found
a company with Hacker School friends or simply continue working on
projects together.</p>
<h2 title="We're Starfox!">Who are you guys?</h2>
<ul class="team">
<li>
<img alt="David_albert_75"
src="cid:part2.06030505.08030900@laptop.org">
<p>
<strong>David Albert.</strong>
Dave spent his youth installing different distributions of
Linux over and over again. On the way he picked up a bit of C,
spent college coding in Java and then discovered Ruby. He's
interested in concurrency, spends a lot of time yak shaving,
and is going to learn Erlang one of these days.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<img alt="Zach_allaun_75"
src="cid:part3.08080002.02070302@laptop.org">
<p>
<strong>Zach Allaun.</strong>
Zach went to college expecting to study political science, but
quickly found computer science much more to his liking. After
exhausting most of the CS classes his university offered, he
left and came to Hacker School. Zach is particularly enamored
with Clojure and spends at least some of his time implementing
<a href="https://github.com/zachallaun/secd">abstract machines</a>.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<img alt="Thomas_ballinger_75"
src="cid:part5.07000308.01010608@laptop.org">
<p>
<strong>Thomas Ballinger.</strong>
Tom studied physics and then worked in a neuroimaging lab,
where he did image processing and made people play frustrating
video games in MRI scanners. He was in the third batch of
Hacker School, and is looking forward to continuing with SICP
and learning either Go or Erlang in the next batch.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<img alt="Nick_bergson-shilcock_75"
src="cid:part6.07030303.09000608@laptop.org">
<p>
<strong>Nicholas Bergson-Shilcock.</strong>
Nick fell in love with programming writing BASIC on an Apple
IIe and making silly adventure games in HyperCard. He quickly
moved on to C and now works mostly in JavaScript and Ruby.
He's determined to finish SICP and is currently reliving his
youth by building an Apple II emulator in JavaScript.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<img alt="Mary_rose_cook_75"
src="cid:part7.08090403.06050700@laptop.org">
<p>
<strong>Mary Rose Cook.</strong>
Mary programs and makes music. She has released a <a
href="http://islalanguage.org/">programming language</a> for
young children, <a
href="https://github.com/maryrosecook/androjs">some</a> <a
href="https://github.com/maryrosecook/machinejs">JavaScript</a>
<a href="https://github.com/maryrosecook/glazz">libraries</a>
and <a href="https://github.com/maryrosecook/pistolslut">two</a>
<a href="http://emptyblack.com/">games</a>. She was in the
summer 2012 batch of Hacker School.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<img alt="Allison_kaptur_75"
src="cid:part14.06060003.01060404@laptop.org">
<p>
<strong>Allison Kaptur.</strong>
Allison studied astrophysics at Yale, and then went to Wall
St., where she built bank models and tried to wrangle Excel
into doing large-scale time series analysis. Thankfully for
us, she later fell in love with programming, and has since
ditched finance to spend her days coding Python and C.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<img alt="Alan_odonnell_75"
src="cid:part15.06000509.07090006@laptop.org">
<p>
<strong>Alan O'Donnell.</strong>
Alan studied physics and then supported himself by playing
poker online. He didn't start coding until after college, when
he fell in love with Haskell and never looked back. He's a
polyglot and loves learning new languages. He's currently
exploring Coq. He was in the first batch of Hacker School.
</p>
</li>
<li>
<img alt="Sonali_sridhar_75"
src="cid:part16.05040306.07090708@laptop.org">
<p>
<strong>Sonali Sridhar.</strong>
Sonali's an interaction designer who went to art school and
likes to play with circuits. She's now rolling up her sleeves
and learning how to code for real at Hacker School.
</p>
</li>
</ul>
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