Lambda School Education with Andrew Madsen

Programmers are in high demand, and software engineering is a career path that is fun, creative, and lucrative. There are many people who want to transition into a career in software and are looking for the right path toward writing code.

The traditional college computer science curriculum teaches some software engineering skills, but the time and financial cost of attending a university is prohibitive for many people who want to learn to code.

Over the past decade, there have been several new models for software education. 

Online video platforms such as Udacity and Coursera put computer science courses online to be watched at the viewer’s convenience. Online schools such as Free Code Camp allow someone to learn how to program without any experience, and with no financial payment. Boot camps with income-sharing agreements such as App Academy create an in-person education environment that mimics a university, but with better cost structure and incentive alignment.

Lambda School is an education system that takes elements of other software education models and combines them with newer SaaS technologies such as Slack and Zoom videoconferencing. Lambda School is an online software engineering curriculum with an income sharing agreement.

“Income sharing agreement” means that the student does not pay for their education until they get a job. With this model, the student can pay back Lambda School after their software engineering education gets them a high-paying software engineering job.

Andrew Madsen works at Lambda School, and he joins the show to describe the path that a student takes through Lambda School, the school’s curriculum for software education, and how Lambda School differs from the other options for coding education.

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Transcript

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