Lambda School's Misleading Promises - <AUTHOR> https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/02/lambda-schools-job-placement-rate-is-lower-than-claimed.html <comment><USER2> I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on making money than actually helping people who need help.

Last year I decided to take action and started a free coding group at our local library: [https://www.meetup.com/San- Jose-C0D3](https://www.meetup.com/San-Jose-C0D3)

I show up before work every day (M-F at 8am) to help students who are learning how to code. So far no students have gotten a job yet, but our group consistently gets 4-8 students who show up promptly at 8am. I answer their questions, give them guidance, and teach them best practices I follow as a software engineer with 10 years of work experience. I ask for nothing in return except the joy of students going "ahhh" when something clicked for them.

Things are still early for us, but my dream is to inspire other software engineers to help create a free and open learning center at their local libraries so people have an alternative to coding bootcamps.

<comment><USER3> > I'm not a fan of bootcamps because I think a lot of them are more focused on > making money than actually helping people

This idea doesn't pass a common sense test to me - I'm sure bootcamps can be profitable, but the people running them are used to building things that scale. Bootcamps definitely don't scale. If these tech people were looking to get-rich-quick they surely wouldn't be running a school, of all things, even a profitable one.

<comment><USER4> I did some back-of-the-envelope numbers on the one I came into contact with previously (also keep in mind this was 6 years ago now too!):

20-30x students per cohort who paid ~$20K upfront for a 12 week program. 20% signing fee (based on 1st year comp) from employer on placement.

We definitely were not paying top of market as some of these students ended up at Uber and Facebook. That said the all in 1st year cost between base + signing bonus + equity wasn't much short of $200K. So:

30 * $20K + 28 * $200K * 20% = $1.72M/cohort

As for outgoings, all of the mentors were volunteers. As were most of the instructors. The content is mostly a one-time sunk cost to produce and is redelivered across cohorts. The largest overhead would have been a building lease. The biggest constraint on growth is how large you can make a cohort or how many cohorts you run (either multiple per year, or opening new locations).

Really felt like a bit of a racket that had found what was almost an arbitrage: between the inability of Bay Area companies to find local talent, the huge costs and risk associated trying to relocate people via H1B, and the desire for people to re-skill at any cost because tech jobs/salaries were distorting everything else in their city.

Sure it's not a $1B outcome. It's a pretty profitable and repeatable business, and especially given the limited downside risk (mostly carried by the students, who've already paid).

<comment><USER5> I've had a look at the books at a few different types of training style companies and the economics are always grim. It's one of those businesses where to the outsider, it's impossible to believe they're not spinning off unbelievable amounts of cash but they are always pretty marginal.

As additional evidence for this, the number of 1B+ exits in this space can be counted on one hand. General Assembly, for example, was acquired for ~$400M and it was one of the largest players. There was a player from Utah whose name eludes me now that had a, I think, ~$2B exit but that might be the only one.

<comment><USER6> > There was a player from Utah whose name eludes me now that had a, I think, > ~$2B exit but that might be the only one.

Are you thinking of Instructure? They're based in Salt Lake City, and Marketwatch gives their current market cap as $1.86B

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was the one, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I'm a current student at Lambda School. It's a pretty stressful time at the moment - I don't have any loyalty to Lambda, but the recent string of damaging stories about the quality of teaching and average graduates is concerning.

It's true that Lambda is incredibly disorganised and the build weeks etc are chaotic. Equally true that they don't do a good enough job of ensuring we have something to show for ourselves on our portfolio.

It's also true that their admission standards are seemingly incredibly lax. About 40% of my cohort struggle to code at a fundamental level - I don't mean that harshly, it's Lambda's fault

With that said, I've really enjoyed my time at Lambda overall and it saddens me to see it fail like this. The atmosphere and internal culture that they cultivated is second to none and I have enjoyed my time there a lot.

As with many people at Lambda, I joined them at a difficult time of my life, when I was suffering from pretty severe depression. I knew I loved coding but barely spent any time doing it and struggled with impostor syndrome, etc.

While at Lambda I benefitted hugely from the daily structure and discipline, and from having a community of people in the same position as me. I've made some great friends, and met some very smart and talented people.

What pains me is the embarrassment of appearing like some clueless fool who got caught up in some get-rich-quick scheme. I love programming, and I just wanted a structured curriculum to train as a professional.

<comment><USER8> > What pains me is the embarrassment of appearing like some clueless fool who > got caught up in some get-rich-quick scheme. I love programming, and I just > wanted a structured curriculum to train as a professional.

Don't let this stop you. The world needs more good engineers, and if you practice your craft you will always find a home. There are plenty of industry professionals who now look a bit silly for their choice of company (Uber, WeWork) but ultimately it's all just a job and if you have the raw skills you can find a new gig.

</comment></comment><comment><USER9> Having friends in the program, I can tell you it's run like a circus.

Expecting 10 people who don't have any experience programming to cooperate on a project without any support or oversight is just asking for student failures.

Of course they'll say that the students have supports through their PMs, EMs or TLs (depending on the mood, they change the role title), but they're never available and miss meetings constantly. Also, they've reogranized the curriculum multiple times during the tenure of my friends, and don't wait till the next batch like a sane school would.

I feel really bad for the excellent teachers they brought on board. They ended up with a lot more than they bargained for.

Half or more of the program is composed of the crappy group projects.

The people who succeed after lambda school is in spite of the program, not because of it.

<comment><USER10> I agree with almost everything you say. However all the college projects I was part of, there was no supervision whatsoever. We were all children learning to be adults. Some of us were already there before others. I'm guessing lambda students are more adults than kids. Bottom line, TA support is golden. Supervision, not so much.

<comment><USER11> This is a golden example of where in person beats online. It's so much easier to weed out the people who will not show up when you do things in person (and there are plenty of those in College). But even diligent people are more likely to flake when things are online. There's simply less commitment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I've had a fair amount of experience with coding boot camps having have helped several friends and coworkers apply, get accepted, attend, and complete bootcamps across various cities and institutions.

The idea of bootcamps is fantastic, they allow people that may have not been exposed to computer science to get up to speed on technology and transition careers.

However, there are several problems. First and foremost, while 3-6-9 months are great when you are going from zero knowledge, the challenge is that isn't enough time to really be a junior developer unless you have prior experience. So you will need to continue to augment your education after graduation to ensure that you get a well paying job.

Most people attending bootcamps are doing so after college and later in life, which means even though some bootcamps are cheaper than attending a semester or a full year of college they are still quite expensive because the students are not "students" in that they are usually adults and need to figure out how to pay for school, attend classes, while effectively receiving zero income.

And applying for loans is much more complex because this isn't the same as taking out student debt for college.

The second issue is that all of these bootcamps say that they are for beginners with zero knowledge, but looking over their curriculums that simply isn't the case. Software engineering has gotten much more complex over the past decade. When I first started fumbling around with it myself I could just write some PHP or Perl code, and get up and running quickly. Today you need to know about github, javascript libraries, frameworks, and the typical "Hello World" application isn't a direct route.

Most of these schools don't realize that their first students are already exposed to these concepts, but later students aren't so they don't really adjust their curriculum.

With lambda in particular it also is a bit confusing because the school is online. Which should mean that you are able to provide the service for a lower cost, but they are charging the same amount as in person physically attended schools.

There are a lot of deceptive practices in the industry, lambda isn't alone, such as taking recent grads and giving them low paying jobs as TA (teacher assistants) so that they can provide help to students at a lower cost while also allowing the school to claim that they have higher placement.

The curriculums are really dependent on a per school basis, but I have seen a bunch of stuff that simply doesn't make sense and makes it more challenging for students.

One school had students do a group project, which wouldn't count as part of their final for the first "mod" of the school. However they continued to teach things that you need for the final which would be a personal project. If you got assigned to a bad team you would be working much slower and not able to keep up and then your final which has nothing to do with a group determines whether you proceed or repeat the course (they charge you to repeat). Also it's important to note that 50% of the students didn't pass the first mod, which means you have a 50% chance of being on a slow team that would hamper your learning. Their advice was that it is important to learn to pair, and I agree, but when you get to your first job you are pairing with people that have experience, not where your partner has a 50% chance of failing out.

I firmly believe that bootcamps and providing secondary education choices are essential and if done correctly can really begin to combat the monopoly that colleges hold over education, but it's a challenging mission.

With education there are student loans that you can take out and I think that is essential to get this going in the US because it is simply impossible for most people to not have any income and still pay for schooling for even 6 months, much less a longer period of time.

The other challenge is that you really need to have 3 terms. Beginner, intermediate, advanced. Each student can then apply based on skill set to determine where they place and students can move from one to the next, with each section being 4-5 months. If you did 15 months of education you would be much better off than what the school provides. It's great to get from zero to one in terms of knowledge, but students are still left far from having skills that are immediately beneficial to employers.

There's definitely more work that needs to be done.

As for Lambda itself, when you look at how other coding bootcamps have fared financially it doesn't paint a rosy picture. It's a challenging space to operate and the VC style returns simply aren't there. If you want to offer an online only education that is fantastic but you have places like codecademy that do that and also do not charge you $30k for the privilege of basically accessing information that is online for free.

The challenge with coding is that it really is much easier to get going when you have someone you can ask questions from, so helping to improve that aspect of it while providing it online at a low cost is really the challenge.

<comment><USER13> Just curious, what's wrong with a community college? It's cheap. It's flexible. Its admission rate is practically 100%. Its courses are not worse than a code camp's. My relative went to a CC, and I reviewed his course work. CCs does not spend much time teaching all the fundamentals, but they do teach some. In their data structure course, they don't teach student why two pivots are not better than a single pivot in quicksort nor do they cover discrete probability or classic complexity analysis extensively, but they do teach (and practice!) asymptotic complexity and why vanilla quick-sort may perform badly. They don't teach students how to prove the boundary conditions of ODE, but they do teach intuition and how to solve and apply a wide variety of ODEs. The examples can go on. They also hire teachers from industry to teach courses on data processing, frontend engineering, and etc.

With the belief that education is all about laying solid foundation for life- long learning, for job or not, I don't really see any need for coding camps. I'm not denying there are success stories, but I don't see coding camps make statistical sense.

<comment><USER12> I think community colleges are great, and if you can get one on one instruction anywhere it is fantastic. The challenge is that bootcamps are really designed for people who are changing careers. Which means they have already gone through college or actively working. So it becomes an issue because they are reliant on income to survive and they aren't living with their parents.

Basically it's unplanned and so much harder to able to commit two years.

Certainly do-able, but challenging when you are thinking of it from a consumer perspective. Spend two years working towards a career shift or get it done in 6 months.

Maybe community colleges can do a better job of marketing themselves.

But ultimately I think the fact that computer science isn't a requirement in all education is criminal. We study "Math" and "English" in school. "Computer Science" is the equivalent of math 100 years ago, it needs to be a mandated requirement.

<comment><USER14> "" Computer Science" is the equivalent of math 100 years ago..."

Would mind expanding on that?

<comment><USER12> You can't live in the modern world today without understanding math.

You also can't live in the modern world without language and the ability to communicate.

To me math is a language. Different than our verbal languages, but it is still a language none the less and essential.

Programming to me is also a language. And it is as essential today as math was originally. There was a long period of history where lower economic classes were prevented from learning and educating themselves and the fact that we have education that is subsidized by the government to various levels in all major countries is something that we take for granted, but it wasn't a right that our ancestors had.

The way schools force all kids to learn math, I feel is how schools today should force all kids to learn programming and computer science.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> > Whether or not this counts as "selling" strikes me as a meaningless semantic > distinction: Either way, the school receives some money up front and an > investor shoulders some of the risk of the ISA not paying out. And either > way, Lambda School students don't know that the school isn't as incentive- > aligned with them as the school's marketing indicates.

It is certainly not meaningless! Selling an ISA means that Lambda no longer has any financial interest in its outcome. Borrowing against an ISA is completely different; if the ISA doesn't pay out then Lambda goes bankrupt, which is precisely the incentive alignment they claim to have.

<comment><USER12> It is selling, because the loan is backed by the ISA. Which means if Lambda can not repay the loan, the loaning company now owns the ISA and can use any sort of aggressive tactics to get the student to repay their ISA.

Just like if you take out a mortgage on a house and fail to pay the loan back, then the bank owns the house.

In this case since the ISA is used as collateral, the company that originated the loan now owns a lien on the ISA, effectively giving it ownership.

Similar to when you lease a car, there is a company that provides the finances for the lease, and has a lien on the car, which means you do not own it. Otherwise you could lease a car for $250/mo, then sell it the next day for $30k, but you can't because there is a lien on the title.

So in this case, while the loan is outstanding, the originating loan company effectively owns the asset used for collateral. Ownership means you have 100% control over the asset, and in this case, Lambda has given away 100% control over the ISA.

It also means that they are not aligned anymore, since they have received financial compensation for the ISA up front, they can default on their repayment of the loan as it doesn't matter because the collateral aren't shares in their company, but just the ISA itself.

<comment><USER15> You seem to think that this "loan" that the investor makes to Lambda School only has to be paid back when the ISAs pay out, and if they never pay out then Lambda School's debt is just forgiven. That would indeed be similar to just selling the ISAs to the investors, but I don't think that's what is described in the article (as Lambda School's current practice). Rather the article says that Lambda School gets a "loan that is secured by students' ISAs" which implies that Lambda School has to pay it back with or without the income from the ISAs.

<comment><USER12> Secured by the is the part I focused on. When a loan is secured by something, the underlying asset is what the loan originating company retains after you fail to pay for the loan.

So if I take out a mortgage, and fail to pay for it, the bank gets the house, I am not still obligated to pay the remaining loan amount. Sure there are a few other items that occur in that process, but ultimately the loan is forgiven, of course with some credit penalties and future ability to take out loans. But I am not responsible to continue repaying the loan.

If the loan is secured by the ISA the same thing applies here. Sure there could be other stipulations and without reviewing the contracts there is no way to know, but stands to reason that the more likely situation is that they get the ISA and then can use aggressive tactics to go after the students for collections such as garnishing wages and also potentially charging them an interest for failure to repay. Though the original ISA believe has no interest, that's not to say that late penalties or other fees can't be added in later potentially.

<comment><USER15> Ah, I think you have a misunderstanding about what collateral is. Collateral is not generally a limitation on the lender's ability to collect the debt. In some specific cases (like certain home loans in certain states) the law adds this limitation but generally collateral is just something the lender can take in the event of default.

To bring up the car loan example you mentioned earlier, if you decide after a year that you don't want your car anymore you can't just drive it to your bank and drop it off instead of paying off the rest of the loan. If you stop paying it they can repossess it but you will still owe whatever is left on your loan balance after they auction it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Hi, I'm the author of the piece, perhaps better known here as founder of CoderPad. Feel free to ask me anything but things are a bit crazy right now!

<comment><USER17> I don't think you mentioned that the student doesn't have to pay back Lambda after 60 months of deferred payments. That seems important. From the Lambda site:

"The income share agreement has no interest. It's a flat percentage that goes away once you've reached the $30k payment cap, you've made 24 payments, or after 60 months of deferred payments (even if you haven't paid us anything)."

But you wrote in the article:

"Students with no safety nets experience real financial pain from the nine- month hiatus from work, in addition to the looming dread of possibly having to pay Lambda $30K one day."

<comment><USER16> Yeah, got cut for brevity, but students definitely experience serious anxiety about even the five year horizon.

<comment><USER17> That seems really disingenuous. Can't you update the article with this important detail?

<comment><USER16> It's not disingenuous; I think an earlier draft had it. This came down from 4000 words. I'll try to ask my editor to add this as a correction but things are pretty hectic. It's a fairly minor omission in my opinion, but I understand disagreeing.

<comment><USER18> It's hardly a "fairly minor omission" in a country where the conventional tertiary education saddles the average student with a debt that is often far bigger than $30k, doesn't expire, and cannot be escaped even through bankruptcy, meaning that even retirement benefits can be garnished above a meagre $750/month.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> I learned to code from scratch using freeCodeCamp.org, tutorials and official documentation. Got a good job after 8 months studying full-time. Almost 3 years now and everything is good (more details on my experience here: [https://rodrigohgpontes.github.io](https://rodrigohgpontes.github.io)).

As a totally outsider (not even from the US), Lambda School seemed too good to be true, in a good way, and I said so here in HN. 9 months of serious commitment, no upfront payment, ISA, all of it seemed good to me.

These days, I don't think the same way. Lambda School and it's founder seem more worried about being a billion dollar company than doing the right thing for its students. Personally, that's strategically stupid and counter- productive. They won't be a billion dollar company because they don't care about their students. But it looks like the direction they took. This mistake is not inherent to VC ventured companies or Silicon Valley, so I think the ones to blame are Lambda leaders, not the system.

So, I still recommend freeCodeCamp.org as the best thing that exists for people that want to learn to code and get a job. I wish some of these effective philanthropy multi millionaire would give them generous money to pursue their mission.

It changed my life.

</comment><comment><USER20> While I find Lambda's incessant twitter evangelizing as annoying as the next guy, I'm not sure any article I've seen is painting a realistic picture about Lambda.

Media outlets have incentives to either paint you as the second coming of Christ or as Satan. It appears Lambda, for a while, actually succeeded at convincing journalists they were the former.

After a while, people get bored with that though. The incentives that drive clicks flip. Suddenly Lambda is now Satan. Burn it down! Downvote all sympathizers!

Here's the reality: all models for education can work for certain people in certain instances. Lambda is definitely the best choice for some people. But no single company is going to solve something like "education" or "healthcare" because they are political institutions tied to the power dynamics that determine how society is arranged. You cannot brute force this without gaining influence over government itself.

This is not as simple as disrupting where people buy their shampoo or where they see ads.

<comment><USER12> There are always two sides to every story, but when you have outright fraudulent claims I don't think you can say that the article is simply painting the school as "Satan"

If you stated that you have an 86% placement record and in reality it is 50%, that is a pretty large discrepancy. If the original 86% placement was from the first 70-ish students and now you are over 2500 students, that seems a bit fraudulent.

If placement rates aren't critical to you getting students, then you can say it is 50% publicly and see if that affects your enrollment numbers or not. Otherwise, it would stand to reason that stating a higher placement rate gets you more students.

Also, this isn't run a a non-profit organization, its a for-profit enterprise. So they have a financial incentive to get more students because that equates to more value for them.

<comment><USER20> Cherry picking a strong cohort and using it to create a narrative is the same thing as cherry picking a weak cohort and doing the opposite.

This is my point. Journalists are picking a narrative first, then seeking out facts to justify that position.

When they thought lambda was going to fix education they were more than happy to report the 86% number without any research. Now that lambda is "evil" they look for the lowest number they can find.

I'm sure the truth is somewhere in the middle.

<comment><USER12> The other wasn't a weak cohort. It was the most recent data.

Also if you were an institution interested in disclosing information fairly you would simply list all cohorts and let the consumer decide.

But they aren't doing that and instead claim a single number.

By the way, having had recent experiences with a number of bootcamps through friends I would say that the 50% number anecdotally is accurate. That's also not taking in to account the drop out rate. If you look at people starting the bootcamp to placement it would be even lower.

If you have 465,000 customers and you want to round that up to 500k - ok, not exactly true, but whether you have 465k or 500k isn't going to change my decision about using your product.

Telling me you place 80% of your students and actually placing 50% is a big deal. 80% means I have a 4 out of 5 chance of being successful. 50% means I have a 1 out of 2 chance of being successful. Those odds are very different and certainly part of the marketing push to get people to sign up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Doesn't surprise me. Culture starts at the top. Austen has repeatedly proven to be a liar (this article has a few examples and you can find others in Verge's reporting) and that culture has been normalized at Lambda.

</comment><comment><USER22> From seeing this guy's (Allred's) tweets pop up on twitter a few time, I always got the feeling that he was a scammer or con artist. This article provides a lot of evidence that seems to confirm my hunch.

I've seen people have success in startups using similar tactics throughout my career, and one realization I've had about this is that sometimes perception matters more than the actual numbers. It's especially true when it comes to investing and VC fueled businesses where success tends to follow the funding (i.e., if you get enough money you can buy your way to success).

Eventually, however, everything comes out in the wash. At some point lying about the numbers won't work anymore, and maybe for Allred this is an example of that. As a founder, if you don't eventually deliver on what you've promised, it will all unwind and you'll be left with nothing.

<comment><USER11> Taking a more benign view, I don't know if Austen is a scammer, but he seems like a smart guy, who's a bit over his head, with a smart team, who are in over their heads. The kind of students they've targeted need more help, not less, which makes this a bit of a messy situation.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> Mildly interesting how this story has gotten 130 points in two hours but is still placed beneath numerous other HN front page stories with less points in more time. Not least since the incentives of YC would be to want this story dead. In the 5 mins it took me to login on mobile it dropped from 15 to 25.

<comment><USER24> The submission hit some software penalties, like HN's flamewar detector. Moderators didn't touch it or even see it until a few minutes ago (I'm getting a late start this "morning"), when I saw it and turned off that penalty. This placed the article back on the HN front page.

We moderate HN less, not more, when YC or YC-funded startups are in a story. That's literally the first principle of HN moderation, in the sense that it's the first thing PG told me when he was training me to do this in 2012. I didn't even have time to grab a chair before he blurted it out.

It's natural for people to question this, so such questions will always come up. We're scrupulous about following this rule for two reasons. The first is that we need to be able to answer the questions in good conscience; the second is that moderating any other way would be dumb. The community's trust is the most valuable asset HN has. In fact, if you think about it, it's the only asset HN has.

[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&query=by%3Adang%20moderate%20less%20not%20more%20yc&sort=byDate&type=comment)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> The author also posted a 50-minute audio clip of his interview with Austen Allred: [https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1230162120701964289](https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1230162120701964289)

<comment><USER26> This is exceptionally good. Fantastic journalism.

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> Interestingly, Lambda School has just announced a new "ISA Financing Blueprint" [0] and "Better Data Transparency" [1] which address some of the concerns from the article.

[0] [https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/announcing-our-new- isa-...](https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/announcing-our-new-isa- financing-blueprint-and-100m-in-new-financing)

[1] [https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/building-better-data- tr...](https://lambdaschool.com/the-commons/building-better-data-transparency- at-lambda-school)

</comment><comment><USER27> It's interesting how learning to code is so challenging. Especially because it's something humans make. Over the past few years, coders have been abstracting the complexity away, but man there's a lot of it.

On a more meta level, it feels like we've barely touched the margins of how humans learn best. That's always struck me as odd.

Like nobody has quite cracked the nut for how to do it. Not with programming, not with language, not with cooking. It's always so much effort. As if the lessons people have learned are forgotten as soon as a few years pass.

We know a little bit. Spaced repetition helps. Not doing anything after studying intensely helps (as in literally just doing nothing after studying improves retention).

Going for long walks helps. So does transforming concepts into something you can see (I suspect because we have a lot of "machinery" for visual computations).

Engaging more of your muscles during an activity (writing as opposed to typing) helps too.

Engaging extra senses (like smell) seems to help.

But that's about it. There's no common modality, no library of how humans learn, retain, and transfer knowledge.

It's been like what? 200,000 years since we've been on this planet.

We've barely touched the surface of what we're capable of doing because we keep forgetting.

<comment><USER28> > _On a more meta level, it feels like we've barely touched the margins of how > humans learn best. That's always struck me as odd._

It's very well studied. I'd start by reading a cognitive science textbook and go from there. I have _Cognition_ by Reisberg[0], it was well-written and well-structured.

Alternatively, an entertaining and informative popular account is _Make It Stick_ by Brown, Roediger and McDaniel[1].

I do agree that the research findings are greatly underapplied, though.

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Exploring-Science-Mind- Seve...](https://www.amazon.com/Cognition-Exploring-Science-Mind- Seventh/dp/0393624137/)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful- Learnin...](https://www.amazon.com/Make-Stick-Science-Successful- Learning/dp/0674729013)

<comment><USER27> I enjoyed the second book recommendation. Looks promising.

Thank you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> I could be wrong but isn't Lamdba School a perfect example of destroying a noble idea due to the venture capitalish returns expected from the company ? If there wasn't so much pressure to grow that fast, perhaps they would have done a better job focussing on the quality and outcomes instead of growth at any cost ?

<comment><USER9> Reading history about the founder, I think he had his eyes set on massive growth from the outset over the actual experience.

He got starry-eyed working in growth at LendUp and wanted to build his own rocket ship. I don't think he ever put the students above running a trendy fast-growing startup.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Since the original HN post[0] is about 2.5 years old now, one would expect there to be more data released by LS regarding job placement/salaries before a potential student would sign a $30,000 ISA. I've been a fan of the idea of up- skilling at a bootcamp for those who either don't want to spend 4 years getting a CS degree or being unable to finance its associated costs which can be in excess of $75,000. In an increasingly tight labor market, there's fewer jobs available in the 'middle' where companies seem to be either wanting an experienced SME in a specific domain or less-experienced programmers to do testing rather than development.

I think the bundling and selling of student CDOs works for a company in its early stages, since the costs for recovering unpaid tuition can range from high to being declared a total loss. Some of the anecdotes make it seem like the company doesn't receive enough feedback from employers in order to strengthen parts of their curriculum that make interviewees fail at some stages during the interview process. Creating a complete curriculum takes more than bundling together Leetcode and Hackerrank problems, where the actual teaching reflects that bootcamps and a CS education aren't in direct parity with one another. [1]

Regarding the finances, student loan debt through an established institution can't be removed through filing for bankruptcy. This allows access to federal loans and underwriters that give better rates and agreements for all the business parties invloved. I've been denied refinancing my loans from multiple companies for a combination of those effects including not graduating and having too low of an income. The business seems like a good idea but too fixated on higher short-term valuations in order to attract VC capital; rather than fixing its underlying structural problems.

[0] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011033](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15011033)

[1] [https://hackernoon.com/bootcamps-vs- college-11dd76a4d127](https://hackernoon.com/bootcamps-vs- college-11dd76a4d127)

</comment><comment><USER31> Lambda grad with a job, who also worked as a PM/TL.

Overall I think they're trying.

The problem with the PM/TL program is the people who are normally the best at it tend to be the best at finding jobs. The TLs that stick around forever tend to be ones that aren't the best or the worst who are normally replaced when someone complains. Instead it's the okay people who are just cruising.

One thing that seems to be overlooked about Lambda is the fact that they are remote. An applicant from the middle of nowhere who lives hours from the nearest city has as much chance of getting in as anyone. It can be harder to find a job there and they won't relocate. Remote work is much harder to get in as a junior dev.

Overall though, I wouldn't be in the position I'm currently in without them though. Maybe I just made it in before the line, maybe they're just undergoing growing pains as expand to a profitable size.

</comment><comment><USER32> I co-started LS before it was in YC. Here's the original course I taught [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnUp9BNCQZM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XnUp9BNCQZM) Weird seeing stories about it now.

<comment><USER33> Are the other videos in this series publicly available? You are great at explaining things.

<comment><USER32> Thanks! I'm not sure where the other videos are (I don't see them on my Youtube). I'll see if I can dig them up.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> I don't have an informed opinion on Lambda School, but it seems as though most of the concerns raised in this article are true of universities as well, and in some cases, worse in universities:

Lambda makes money through some financial engineering : Ivy league schools are essentially hedge funds with their multibillion-dollar endowments

Lambda's curriculum is lacking : Most CS students are taught theory, but learn very few of the skills they'll actually need on the job ( e.g. application deployment, source code management, etc.)

Lambda inflates its job placement stats : This is never defensible, but also highly prevalent in both non-profit and for-profit higher education institutions.

I commend Austen for at least attempting to better align students' and educators' financial incentives.

<comment><USER35> Lambda School didn't invent the ISA.

</comment></comment><comment><USER36> There are inherent limitations to edu that go unacknowledged.

\- There are a relatively fixed number of high skill jobs.

\- More people with the same skills/portfolio reduces the value of that skill/portfolio.

\- While people can learn new skills, people have different learning rates and integrating that knowledge deeply often takes much longer than teachers/bootcamps want to believe.

\- Most edu info exists for free online, what school/bootcamps uniquely provide is feedback. Quality feedback is HARD to scale.

\- How much does pre-application screening find people who don't really need that much help vs trying to help every applicant and getting unmotivated people in your bootcamp. I have seen very few examples of a bootcamp fundamentally changing someones motivation/work ethic.

ISAs will be the big winner in the ed tech space and providers of education will likely come and go unless someone cracks all the issues above. Perhaps the current distribution of students to universities (having plurality) is actually more suited to serving this function than a typical tech world power law distribution where one or two companies would provide 80% of the edu.

</comment><comment><USER37> The more I think about bootcamps, the more they appear to be a rather insulting business proposition. Did they genuinely believe that one can take someone off the street, albeit someone relatively intelligent and motivated, and teach them enough to be a professional programmer in 9 months? Imagine that we replaced programmer with mechanical engineer. Or with marketing executive. Would that sound believable?

What is it about programming that makes people believe that they can learn it in a hilariously short amount of time? Sure, we programmers may be harboring some imposter syndrome and secretly believe that programming is super easy. Sure, programming doesn't require lots of math. But it's still hard! It's still a craft that requires problem solving ability, lots of semi-arcane knowledge and a detail oriented mind.

<comment><USER38> I don't think we could pump out the well rounded developers like 4 years of undergrad can, but I don't see how we couldn't pump out SQL technicians, front-end developers, or otherwise specialized workers that could alleviate the supposed shortage of developers.

I also helped a person go from zero knowledge of programming to pumping out android games in a month of self study. So I know that smart, motivated people can get pretty far pretty fast. In regards to your point, I don't think this person knows UML or ever learned big O notation, but this person was able to gain the skills required to do what they wanted, plus some pro-programmer friends and stackoverflow to fill in the "semi-arcane knowledge" when required.

<comment><USER37> I think we can pump out good _apprentices_. After 9 months of study, the person could definitely have enough skills to write semi-valid code and work on some small projects with supervision from a developer. However I would not call this person after 9 months a developer. A developer should be able to look at a codebase, learn it, learn the relevant technologies and start contributing. I doubt a bootcamp graduate will be able to do that. Or worse, they'll do that and wreak havoc on the codebase.

> front-end developers

I suspect this is part of the issue. Plenty of people believe that front-end is easier or lesser than back-end, and therefore can be learned quickly. Lots and lots of terrible front-end code has taught me that this is not true. Good front-end developers are really hard to find and subpar ones can lead to horrible user interfaces and direct impact to the bottom line. Even if we're talking the most minimal of front-end stacks, i.e. HTML, CSS and JS, which, I'm not even sure people hire for anyways, there's a lot of subtle issues with accessibility, responsive UI, writing halfway decent JS, etc. If we add on the various libraries (a sign of a good developer is also knowing when to use these libs and when to avoid them), then the amount of knowledge required is far far more than 9 months can provide.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Austen has totally disappeared from twitter. He used to tweet all the time about their _AMAZING_ success rate.

<comment><USER40> He was also quick in the past to post about LS on HN but no comment in this thread at all. Might be responding in blog form and outlining a few changes they're making to address the concerns?

</comment></comment><comment><USER41> There are plenty of red flags in the article but the part about Lambda selling the ISAs removing their incentive is BS - their long term incentives are clearly still aligned because they won't be able to continue selling ISAs if they don't deliver. Selling the ISAs presumably just helps with cash flow. That said it makes one wonder why a company that's raised 9 figures needs to worry about cash flow.

</comment><comment><USER42> This anecdote is particularly damning for Lambda School, like a hedge fund choosing not to update their investment return numbers year after year because they were so great in year 1:

> So where does that 86 percent figure come from? Lambda has reported > graduate-outcome statistics at the Council on Integrity in Results Reporting > (CIRR), a voluntary trade organization of coding boot camps whose purpose is > to ensure that participating schools publish truthful information about > student outcomes. Allred has often used this report to defend his company > online. But where other boot camps have multiple reports spanning many > student cohorts, Lambda has only reported statistics for its first 71 > graduates — 86 percent of who, the school claims, found jobs. Sheree > Speakman, the CEO of CIRR, told me that Lambda has not undergone the > standard independent auditing for the sole report it has submitted, and that > her communications to Lambda School regarding further reporting and auditing > have gone unanswered.

</comment><comment><USER43> relatedly, it's so nice to see zed shaw tilting at a windmill that deserves it for once: [https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212284566431576069?lang=e...](https://twitter.com/lzsthw/status/1212284566431576069?lang=en)

<comment><USER44> "If you are contemplating joining a coding bootcamp in 2020...", his tweet starts.

I wonder whether the quality of education at coding bootcamps has gone downhill. From what I know of the Web Development Immersive program at General Assembly in 2014, or the software engineer program at Hack Reactor in 2015, they both were very decent.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> The lambda school struck me as odd due to its very long 18 month duration. Most successful bootcamps I've seen have been focused on 2-4 month programs. They also try to get students that have already taught themselves some coding (at least be able to code up a hang-man game in a terminal), and focus on teaching effective abstraction and how to use git. Basically, they don't seek to take people who don't know how to code and turn out engineers more than a year later. They take people who know how to code, and refine their skills to the point that they are employable.

<comment><USER31> 18 months is the part time. 9 is the full time. It used to be six, but they raised it because people would expect a job on graduation, nine is more realistic for that.

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> All the haters seem to be piling onto Lambda and its CEO, but looking at actual reviews by students it is clear that most students are very happy with Lambda: [https://www.switchup.org/bootcamps/lambda- school](https://www.switchup.org/bootcamps/lambda-school)

And the problems mentioned in the article are straightforward to fix:

(a) Be honest and transparent about the job placement rate for each batch

(b) Don't sell the ISA or borrow against it

(c) Improve the quality of teaching and accept a lower growth rate

<comment><USER47> Take a look at the other coding bootcamps on that site. They all seem to have very positive reviews.

The problem is that switchup uses the affiliate links of the bootcamps, so it has a financial incentive to sell the bootcamps it features to its viewers. That's how it makes its money.

Now Amazon does the same thing, you'll say. And you'd be right, but with Amazon, it has a reputation to maintain. If Amazon reviews are unreliable, people will stop shopping at Amazon.

With Switchup, it's different. Most people will only buy one coding bootcamp in their lifetime. So withchup doesn't have the same incentive to make its reviews super accurate. It mostly has the incentive to sell as many coding bootcamps as it can.

</comment></comment><comment><USER48> About these ISAs: do they require any kind of good faith effort to find a tech job after completing the boot camp? If someone was just interested in tech, but worked in an unrelated field with no intention to switch, how would Lambda protect themselves? Obviously they could probably sue if there was bad faith on the student's part, but do these agreements address this scenario? Do they focus on screening students to avoid this?

<comment><USER15> My understanding is that Lambda school is very focused on teaching you what you need to get a job, so if you were just "interested in tech" you would probably be better served by Udacity, other free or nearly-free online courses, or just reading books.

<comment><USER48> Right, there are certainly better options. I'm not necessarily interested from a practical standpoint, more of a theoretical one, being relatively unfamiliar with how these agreements work beyond a one-sentence description.

<comment><USER15> You can read what Lambda School describes as the "template" for their ISA contracts:

[https://leif.org/api/products/5b5b8bd0e59b743f9a086ed9/pdf](https://leif.org/api/products/5b5b8bd0e59b743f9a086ed9/pdf)

It says that you agree that you "are entering into this Agreement in good faith and with the intention to pay us" and will "make reasonable and good faith efforts to seek employment" as long as you are not paying them.

I don't see any specific provisions describing how that would be enforced and I bet in practice it is not a major issue for the reason I mentioned above: there isn't much reason to go through with Lambda School if you don't actually want a job in tech, so it probably doesn't happen much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> On the authors Twitter, he comes across as having an axe to grind:

"lmao I woke my boy up" [1]

Sounds like he's keeping score of something, which isn't a quality I necessarily want from my "journalists".

[1] [https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1230251533951889409](https://twitter.com/fulligin/status/1230251533951889409)

</comment><comment><USER50> Is this the same, or does it stem from, Lambda School that started with a kickstarter in 2016?

</comment><comment><USER51> >Lambda School is free, but with an asterisk: To attend, you sign a contract that says that if you get a tech job paying $50K or more, you have to pay 17 percent of your pre-tax income to Lambda School for two years, or until you pay back $30K, whichever comes first.

30k? Seriously? my trade tech certification was only $2900 for _two years_. Is Lambda School a 4 year program or a college of some sort? Is room and board of some kind included? I mean I get that STEM pays a lot...but the cost here seems a little steep.

There are only 4 STEM related courses on the site. my trade-tech school had nearly 20 by the time I graduated.

<comment><USER52> Was it an 8 hour a day 5 days a week program for two years?

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> The problem with Lambda School is the model and vision that suggests a general college education isn't worthwhile. That college should focus on a marketable skill directly leading to some job. That's optimal, but that leaves out the social aspects, the critical thinking aspects, and the safe space to have an open mind and absorb and share ideas.

I would argue those other aspects of higher education are far more critical than the bootcamp model and vision.

And eventually, it boils down to a waste of time for some subset of students, which is not helpful to our higher education interests.

</comment><comment><USER35> I found his constant Twitter boasting distasteful and cringeworthy. It always came off like an infomercial.

Coding bootcamps are not all bad, though, it's just that I think if you are going to do one then 1) you really need a solid financial cushion (either parental or own savings) and 2) you should really do a top rated in person one. I can't imagine doing this through a Zoom for 9 months in my apartment alone. The value of having social support you get from instructors and being around other students in the same boat as you can't be understated.

</comment><comment><USER54> Good to see this finally get called out. Basically Lambda is using CDO's & subprime mortgages as a revenue source.. Even if it hekps some of the students some of the time, we know how this show ends.

</comment><comment><USER55> Lambda's marketing is deceptive and should rightly be stopped. But what is so bad about a bootcamp with no up front cost that gets 50% of its graduates a job? [https://chrisyeh.com/2020/02/the-cost-of- cynicism.html](https://chrisyeh.com/2020/02/the-cost-of-cynicism.html)

</comment><comment><USER54> Found this blog from last year comparing Lambda to AppAcademy, confirms many of the details and adds some.. no involvement with them. [https://blog.appacademy.io/app-academy-versus-lambda- school-...](https://blog.appacademy.io/app-academy-versus-lambda-school-which- one-is-better/)

</comment><comment><USER56> Fascinating story. I think there is value in the service provided by Lambda School but the questionable revenue tactics like selling ISAs or using ISAs to secure loans means students can't really trust them with placements.

</comment><comment><USER57> I mean, it's still a vastly, vastly better deal than college or other boot camps. It has no up front monetary investment, and you only pay for it if i works for you.

<comment><USER58> > it's still a vastly, vastly better deal than college or other boot camps

I'd like to see ten-year outcomes before claiming this. That said, it's also hard to control for different student backgrounds.

<comment><USER59> I would be more interested in the ten-year outcomes of something like the Lambda School versus self-teaching or using cheap online resources and entering the job market. Either way you're going to have to start with a very junior and entry-level position in order to crack the job market. But at least you're not on the hook for a huge chunk of your paycheck.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> As a working developer you will spend a sizeable portion of your time learning new things, so if you are not good at teaching yourself programming, maybe it's not a suitable career choice? Especially with amazing MOOCs like Stanford's Swift course?

At least in the context of something like Lambda school, that does not teach computer science, as I understand it.

</comment><comment><USER61> There's no point to doing coding bootcamps. I know plenty of individuals who were non-CS majors, not even STEM, switch to software developers after self- study and building up a portfolio.

if you decide you want an accredited university degree, then you can get FAFSA to fund community college, then transfer an online university such as Florida

<comment><USER52> Strongly disagree with this. I know 50 people that think they can learn to do Data or something with an Udemy class and end up doing nothing.

I think the negative picture painted by the author masks that the company is placing 50% of graduates which mostly _paid nothing_ for the education they received. Lambda is not high quality education, but its super cheap and higher quality than just reading a Knuth Book, or Skenna's algo book which has no completion rate.

<comment><USER61> Sounds like you know unsuccessful people. I know plenty of developers who became front-end or dev ops from their own studies. It's not too hard to learn SQL or data visualization. The majority of questions can be answered via stackoverflow or slack communities. You don't need to know everything to land a entry-level job, you just need to prove you know how to problem solve.

Either way, you are not becoming a true machine learning researcher via self- study nor a bootcamp. You will need at least a master's in CS/Math/Stats to land those roles. A bootcamp is neither the lowest cost to a softwaredev career nor is it the a career effective maximizing choice.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This seems more like job training than education - something that should be directly done by the companies that end up recruiting these people instead.

</comment><comment><USER63> A skill of knowing how to use React in a particular way to create simple views is something that will be redundant in a few years. These people will unfortunately be out of jobs. The mundane work of converting sketch files to react views will be automated soon

</comment><comment><USER64> These courses should be free.

If government agencies really had their acts together, then these courses, as well as many others would be free, as part of 'extended learning' programs.

For all the crazy amount of grant money being thrown around by so many governments, and given the need for certain disciplines, it's odd that this doesn't happen.

</comment><comment><USER65> I had a sinking feeling when the inventor of the CDO appeared in this article.

The housing bubble occurred, in part, because there was optimism that acquiring a certain tangible asset - a house - was a sure path to prosperity for the buyer. And the buyers of mortgage-backed securities had decades of data showing that these were solid investments.

What about intangible assets like knowing how to code? Is this what Lambda School is really doing?

And like the housing bubble, once the originator can sell the debt, they have some incentives to inflate expectations on both sides.

Perhaps Lambda School's ISA-selling isn't vulnerable to this flaw. Maybe the ISA-buyers are doing due diligence. But you would have thought the same was true in 2008 too.

Like everyone with a Twitter account I've interacted with Austen. And I had a mildly positive impression, or at least I thought he deserved more credit. Not sure about that any more. I would like to see his response.

</comment><comment><USER66> I'm wondering why it is that two hit pieces came out at the same time [1]? Is it just a coincidence?

[https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/11/21131848/lambda-school- co...](https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/11/21131848/lambda-school-coding- bootcamp-isa-tuition-cost-free)

<comment><USER44> I've seen discontent with Lambda brewing on twitters for quite some time:

[https://twitter.com/KeziyahL/status/1155154616281178114](https://twitter.com/KeziyahL/status/1155154616281178114)

<comment><USER67> Any program teaching CS or software with relatively open admissions will have its discontented students, because there are simply people who don't have the cognitive ability to handle it, and their inability to do the homework is always the teacher's fault.</comment></comment></comment>


Railroad Tycoon - <AUTHOR> http://www.filfre.net/2017/03/railroad-tycoon/ <comment><USER2> RT2 is one of the coolest "business simulations" of all time - the goal was to make profits. The simplification was the "business" was achieved by setting the game near the dawn of the industrial age - when there was more of a relation between work vs output. The goal was to connect cities/companies so economic activity could take place. The big obstacles were set at random (i.e. train breakdowns) that added the element of fun. The game took the player through "macro" settings like recession and booms.

My deep appreciation of the game also comes from the fact that the settings were largely historically accurate. The big industrial centers (Albany, Denver (for lumber)) were accurately depicted. An extremely engaging way to learn a lot of early U.S. history, regarding how cities came into existence (answer: based on commodities trade). Also fascinating to learn about tech evolution (engines!)

Customary hyperbole: One of the best "business simulations" ever made! :)

<comment><USER3> RT3 did the series one better IMHO, since its economic model was more comprehensive and calculated the costs of everything based on alternative transport methods - building a line through the mountains could reap big rewards, and buying up the businesses you were going to expand towards even more so.

<comment><USER4> I found RT3 a bit of a miss... there was too much 'blank space' and I thought 2 really outdid it in terms of the economic model

<comment><USER5> I've never played RT2, but my understanding was that RT3 was rather difficult because they added the ability for goods to move independent of the railroad. So a lot of goods that you would have been able to make money on in the past moved down rivers, and away from rail lines, rather than sitting around waiting to be collected.

That being said, I had a lot of fun playing RT3.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> Somewhat of a competitor, but any Sim Tower fans here? I was obsessed with everything Sim* but especially loved Sim Tower. Maxis was an amazing gaming company and actually my first entry into Macs. My friends dad had a Macintosh II, then classic, then LC, and I would spend hours playing games on them.

<comment><USER7> I loved SimTower, although there were times it felt more like Elevator Simulator.

(Also, tip for those starting a new game: 2x3 grid of fast food in the basement at the start of the game. You're welcome.)

<comment><USER8> I read somewhere that it was originally an elevator simulator that they built the game around.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Railroad Tycoon and SimCity had a huge influence on Factorio, the vast scope of which I can't begin to describe, but its trailer does it justice. [1]

About the game: Factorio is a game in which you build and maintain factories.

You will be mining resources, researching technologies, building infrastructure, automating production and fighting enemies. Use your imagination to design your factory, combine simple elements into ingenious structures, apply management skills to keep it working and finally protect it from the creatures who don't really like you.

[1] [https://www.factorio.com/](https://www.factorio.com/)

"This game is like crack for programmers." -kentonv [2]

[2] [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266471](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11266471)

<comment><USER10> > _Factorio_

Is there a good* technological civilization bootstrapping handbook? (For a real person stranded on some random Earth-like planet.)

*intentionally ambiguous

<comment><USER11> Closest thing I can think of is this mostly silly poster: [http://rebuildingcivilization.com/sites/default/files/travel...](http://rebuildingcivilization.com/sites/default/files/travel_back_in_time.jpg)

<comment><USER10> Meh. How does knowing atomic theory while neglecting basic ore --> refined product chemistries useful?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> Railroad Tycoon was amazing because as a kid I had access to higher quality, more timely metrics of my simulated company than many real life companies do.

<comment><USER13> To be fair, real life companies also aren't wholly contained in one computers RAM :)

<comment><USER14> That's only true if user [meta] data is a key asset or if one had one too many SAP-koolaids. In reality, most real life companies can be wholly contained in any $20 printer's memory.

<comment><USER15> Real life companies deal with ambiguous contracts, negotiations, networking, quality control, delayed payments, brand perception, employee satisfaction, trust, law and many other facets which are not easily simulated.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> (Disclaimer: Developer on the project)

We recently release SimAirport via Steam's Early Access program. The game was initially riddled with bugs, probably released about 2+ weeks or so too early, but after >= daily patching over the last 2 weeks it's finally yielding pretty solid gameplay.

If you enjoyed the old Bullfrog games, the Roller Coaster Tycoon series, or Prison Architect in modern times (huge inspiration), then you'd probably SimAirport too.

We're in Early Access, so go easy on us! You'll still hit bugs for sure, but we [hopefully] don't have any major game stoppers at this point. There's no tutorial, some so experience with similar games is helpful, but we've got a lot of players with 20, 30, and way upwards of 40 hours in just the short <2 weeks since we initially released.

[http://store.steampowered.com/app/598330](http://store.steampowered.com/app/598330)

<comment><USER17> £19 for a probably bug-ridden, no documentation or tutorials game, where I am largely acting as a bug-finder for the game seems excessively expensive.

<comment><USER18> I, personally, don't mind paying to support indie devs who try to get their title off the ground.

<comment><USER17> Agreed, I have bought probably a dozen games in beta, but usually in the £5-15 range and more than likely, further in the release cycle. Usually the more raw the game, the cheaper the price - I would have expected a game like this that has been subject to recent, major bugs to be closer to the £5-10 level.

I will be keeping an eye on this one in any case.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Interesting story - love reading more of the stories behind some of the games I loved growing up, especially the people behind them.

Railroad Tycoon II is still one of my favorite games - the economic simulation side of it was a lot of fun, and you could sort of decide how much of it you wanted to bite off. I haven't really found anything quite like it since.

In some ways, it is kind of a shame - tablets/phones would make great platforms for economic sim games, but every single one I've tried has been disappointing for the same reason - the mechanism they use to funnel you into buying things makes the game really un-fun and repetitive very quickly. I wouldn't mind paying $10-$20 for a good economic sim that didn't act like this, but I guess not enough other people would.

<comment><USER20> Have you tried OpenTTD?

[https://www.openttd.org/](https://www.openttd.org/)

<comment><USER21> Transport Tycoon (that this was based on) was also published by MicroPose. I don't know if Meier had any influence on the game though. Pretty interesting how much graphics improved in 3 years.

<comment><USER22> IIRC - Chris had been promoting the project that became TT for a while. He main work at the time was as a truly awesome 68k to PC porter. I remember a colleague telling me something along the lines of 'Chris should stick to doing ports, that is what he is good at. If he shows you some wierd thing with numbers and simulation, just ignore it'

Um.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Soren Johnson's Designer Notes podcast[1] mentioned in the article is excellent and I've learned quite a lot from the long interviews, especially Bruce Shelley's, Louis Castle's and Amy Hennig's. Currently he's releasing his interview with Sid Meier, which looks like it'll end up being 5-6 hours in length and is great so far. I really enjoy when in-depth discussions of niche topics give me ideas about other things and that's happened many times while listening to this show.

Those interested in the market/economic simulations in Railroad Tycoon might enjoy playing Soren's game, Offworld Trading Company[2]. I'll just mention that entire games rarely take more than 30 minutes, they are almost always interesting ones, and it is fun without triggering compulsive play (for me.)

[1] [https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes](https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes)

[2] [http://www.offworldgame.com](http://www.offworldgame.com)

</comment><comment><USER24> My favourite Sid's game of all time is still the original Colonization. So much depth, replayability, and overall fun. To me it's always been superior to Civ because it's a clear road to independence.

<comment><AUTHOR> Credit where it's due: while the original _Colonization_ (which I agree was brilliant) was sold under the "Sid Meier's" label, its lead designer was actually a colleague of Meier who would go on to become a celebrated designer in his own right, Brian Reynolds ([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reynolds_(game_designe...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Reynolds_\(game_designer\))).

<comment><USER25> Brian Reynolds doesn't seem to quite get the credit for the impact he had on the PC gaming scene. He was the lead designer of Civ 2 (in my opinion, the best one), created Alpha Centauri, and later made Rise of Nations. I wish he stuck to deep, strategic computer games instead of working for Zynga after he left Big Huge Games (Mark Pincus was such a big fan of Rise of Nations he hired Reynolds as Chief Game Designer).

<comment><USER26> Really love the guy's work, he has a lot of credits. What really saddens me is that Rise of Nations had such a bad follow-up that they never continued the series. RTS games always seem to have a tough time it seems, but I'm really loving that turn-based strategy games have made a huge comeback in recent years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> By the way, filfre is probably the highest quality VG and possibly computer history writer I've read. His archives are gold. He mostly focuses on interactive storytelling, but that was most of gaming in the early days of computing, so his histories amount to histories of computing.

<comment><USER28> Could you recommend some specific articles of theirs worth reading?

<comment><USER27> Yes!

Though it's not his domain and is a one-off like Railroad Tycoon, I love the article on Sim City: [http://www.filfre.net/2016/06/simcity-part-1-will- wrights-ci...](http://www.filfre.net/2016/06/simcity-part-1-will-wrights-city- in-a-box/)

The history of the TRS-80, whose place in PC history I did not appreciate before reading: [http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the- trash-80-part-1/](http://www.filfre.net/2011/06/the-trash-80-part-1/)

There are many more interesting articles he lists on his own best-of list: [http://www.filfre.net/hall-of-fame/](http://www.filfre.net/hall-of-fame/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> If you're looking to learn the basics of the stock market, play Railroad Tycoon 2 -- I can't speak for the original (didn't play it), but the sequel at least can teach you quite a bit.

<comment><USER30> The stock market aspects of the Railroad Tycoon franchise were what set it apart from all the other "Tycoon" games to follow. It allowed you to play the game on a variety of different levels. You could just focus on building a railroad network. You could focus on building a successful business. Or my person favorite, you could focus on building a personal fortune without any regard for the other two objectives. I spent many an hour as a kid trying to build a fortune be strategically destroying my virtual businesses.

<comment><USER31> It's a great illustration of why insider trading can be so damaging. There were so many ways to be extremely destructive overall, but which you could turn into huge amounts of money for yourself by trading your own stock appropriately.

<comment><USER32> Can you give an example? Would you do something like, short your stock and then tank your business?

<comment><USER31> Exactly like that. And you could usually arrange it so the tanking was temporary, so you could then cover your short, buy a bunch of extra stock, and then bring the business back to life. For example, you could stop all your trains for a while, let the lack of revenue cause massive losses, then once your stock price was sufficiently low, restart the trains and resume business.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER33> I'm astounded by the amount of content on this site: [http://www.filfre.net/sitemap/](http://www.filfre.net/sitemap/)

<comment><USER34> If your into retro gaming or even just gaming history its well worth investing time in it. He's done an amazing job and I find myself looking at the blog notes for magazines and articles to do further reading on.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> it's great, and lovingly being recreated: [http://www.openttd.org/](http://www.openttd.org/)

<comment><USER36> Having played both Railroad Tycoon II and OpenTTD, I must say that I prefer RT2 immensely more. (I've not played the original, so I can't comment on its quality).

Some of the advantages of RT2:

\- Less tedious micromanagement without need for signals (although it does mean there's no way to build a 4-track mainline in RT2 that works like you can in OpenTTD).

\- The stock market and competitive play is more fun. I never found the AI of OpenTTD fun, except when I was bored and wanted to watch their cars get plowed by my trains.

\- The economic aspects of RT2 were more enjoyable. You can buy industries, for example. It's also laid out more clearly how the economy works (you can turn off these features to make the game easier, but it's much less fun). There's also lots more type of cargo (ship iron and coal to a steel mill to make steel, rubber to a tire factory for tires, the steel and the tires to an auto plant to make cars which go to the cities).

\- Also, all the locomotives! Just so much more in depth.

<comment><USER37> \- Also, all the locomotives! Just so much more in depth.

^ You can install GRF sets for OpenTTD that have even more locomotives than railroad tycoon. NARS or UKRS2 have extremely expansive sets of trains compared to the small selections of bland name trains the base game comes with. Also NUTS has a set optimised for gameplay over realism, if you want to go the other direction.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> Did anyone else play A-Train (looks like it was actually A-train III)? I loved it but have never found anyone else who has even heard of it.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Train](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-Train)

<comment><USER39> Just logged in to comment on this game which brings back so many memories: transporting materials and passengers, crafting a complex network of railroad while also purchasing long term investments like apartments etc. And it required you to be patient, but when that first road appears it's like magic!! :)

Loved that game, probably didn't understand everything as a teen playing this, but i loved it so much. Interestingly I never met anyone else who played that game! :)

Cheers!

<comment><USER38> Ah, that first road! I had forgotten all about that feeling :-)! I can still vividly remember the tick-tick-ti-ti-ti-tick-tiiick noise of the trains.

I was probably a bit too young to understand all the complexities but have such happy memories of it too. Happy that you had the same experience :-)!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> If there was ever a game that encouraged me to become a developer during my youth it was definitely Railroad Tycoon. I remember being so curious how everything might have worked within the game with out knowing a thing about programming and it was definitely an inspiration to me in so many aspects. Games were my avenue for learning DOS and later my learning to write Software. I can't imagine what my life would have been like with out so many great early game developers.

</comment><comment><USER41> We build planning and scheduling software for railroads and I continually think back to playing this game as a kid. The concerns are unsurprisingly similar but the level of detail you go to in managing a real railroad is obviously far greater.

For example we delivered a piece of software to manage where to park trains during storms so they don't blow over.

[http://biarrirail.com/](http://biarrirail.com/) btw.

<comment><USER42> I hope you are using Ruby on Rails for your backend.

<comment><USER41> Unfortunately not!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> A really sweet one is Transport Fever. It is however more like of an electronic model railway and less of a game - there is no competition, scenarios (pretty much a tutorial actually) are very straight forward and it is difficult to go under. However, the beautiful part is modelling the transport network and the detail of it, however I was mostly fascinated by the city growth and development.

</comment><comment><USER44> A great board game with a train theme is Steam, it's available for iOS and Android and next week for OSX, Windows and Linux as well. The good thing is that you can play it as a boardgame as we, competing with others face to face as to who can lay the tracks and transport goods most efficiently. [http://store.steampowered.com/app/595930/](http://store.steampowered.com/app/595930/)

<comment><USER45> Is it longer or shorter then a quick game of _1830_?

<comment><USER44> Shorter, as it doesn't include a stock market, but 1830 (msdos) is a good one as well (you probably know the java 18xx). For other train board games with a pc adaptation, see Eurorails (crayon type) and Wabash Canonball (aka Chicago Express). There's also American Rails (which imo is better) which I'd wish there was an AI implementation for. [http://www.railgamefans.com/ebp/](http://www.railgamefans.com/ebp/) [https://www.engadget.com/2010/10/07/app-review-wabash- cannon...](https://www.engadget.com/2010/10/07/app-review-wabash-cannonball- rolls-in-with-a-near-perfect-score/)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> If you find this interesting, the interview with him at idlethumbs is really good: [https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid- meier-...](https://www.idlethumbs.net/designernotes/episodes/sid-meier-part-1) (looks like its one of the sources for this post). I think the portion related to railroad tycoon is in the second part but its worth listening to all of it.

</comment><comment><USER47> All this love of microprose games and no mention of Silent Service? This was the first "choose your own path" kind of game I ever really got into.

</comment><comment><USER48> Oh, Railroad Tycoon! The first game that really hooked me. I still remember the feeling of utter betrayal when I first tried cutthroat competition and lost a station in a rate war. Then the absolute glee of stealing a valuable station from another line on my next play through. I could go on for hours, but instead I'm going to fire up DosBox now.

</comment><comment><USER49> Absolutely love this game. I found a dosbox image that runs on mac, and still guiltily play it on occasion. :)

</comment><comment><USER50> Building railways is kind of like visual programming.

The Railway orientated programming comes to mind [http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/recipe- part2/](http://fsharpforfunandprofit.com/posts/recipe-part2/)

</comment><comment><USER51> For anyone interested in a minimalist track laying game, I've had a lot of fun with Mini Metro. It's available on both iOS and Android.

The goal is to transport as many passengers as possible, so it has a little competitiveness in it.

</comment><comment><USER52> I don't what version I had, but this game was my introduction to Jazz.

<comment><USER53> Are you sure you are not thinking about Transport Tycoon?

<comment><USER52> Erm - why yes, that is exactly what I am talking about. :|

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW5MP4DFcYg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cW5MP4DFcYg)

<comment><USER54> Amusingly, I was going to comment that RT2 worked as my personal introduction to the blues – I remember my dad walking by and commenting on just how good the soundtrack was.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER55> Someone please please please make a modern refresh of transport tycoon. I still love that game but would love to see it brought up to date in the style of cities in motion and with more depth added.

<comment><USER56> OpenTTD is basically Transport Tycoon, with added support for plugins/mods etc. Its actively maintained with a good community following.

Not quite a modern refresh, but theres enough new stuff to keep you going if you haven't played it yet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> My early 20s were heavily Microprose. Silent Service, Red Storm Rising, various flight sims, and Railroad Tycoon consumed huge blocks of time. This article was a great look back.

</comment><comment><USER58> I don't know if it is just the MIDI, but the intro tune reminds me of the intro music to M.U.L.E., one of my favorite games of all time!

</comment><comment><USER59> Très Grande Vitesse

</comment><comment><USER60> Additionally to RT2, I have found memories of _Industry Giant 2_. Does anyone remember this 2002 game?

What are Bruce Shelley (RT, Age of Empire), Rick Goodman (Age of Empire, Empire Earth), Chris Sawyer (Transport Tycoon, Roller Coaster Tycoon, etc) and Geoff Crammond (Sentinel, Grand Prix 1-4) doing lately?

<comment><USER61> Bruce Shelley was working for BonusXP on The Incorruptibles until it released in December 2015 [1]

Rick Goodman's last game was in 2006 (though apparently he was prototyping one in 2012 [5]), and the only thing I can obviously find is that he was on the board of (and co-founded?) 8D World, a virtual world for Chinese children to learn English, but their site doesn't load. [2][4]

Chris Sawyer appears to have been working to port RCT to mobile (came out December 2016) [3]

Geoff Crammond hasn't apparently been associated with a game since 2010. [6]

[1] - [https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3w9vkr/i_am_bruce_she...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3w9vkr/i_am_bruce_shelley_game_designer_ive_worked_on/)

[2] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Goodman](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_Goodman)

[3] - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Sawyer](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Sawyer)

[4] - [http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?...](http://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/person.asp?personId=45091725&privcapId=45045850)

[5] - [http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/what-is- ric...](http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/what-is-rick-goodman- doing-today.78856/)

[6] - [http://www.virtualr.net/catching-geoff-crammond- interview](http://www.virtualr.net/catching-geoff-crammond-interview)</comment></comment>


How Exercise Might "Clean" the Alzheimer's Brain - <AUTHOR> https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-exercise-might-clean-the-alzheimers-brain1/ <comment><USER2> So, some biology 101:

The lymphatic system is powered in part by the circulatory system and in part by physical activity (aka "exercise"). Fluid from the blood, minus certain blood products, goes out into the tissues and becomes _interstitial fluid._ Muscle action dramatically increases the rate at which it gets returned from the tissues to the blood.

This is the mechanism by which the body cleans up most tissues. Except for the brain. The brain has a separate mechanism whereby lymphatic fluid (aka _interstitial fluid_ ) gets flushed out, taking wastes with it, only during sleep. This is a primary function of sleep.

Personal firsthand experience suggests that exercise is frequently followed by napping precisely because these are separate systems. Exercise may start this process by flushing out other tissues, but your brain won't get flushed of wastes until you sleep.

If you want to benefit from this research, you will need to have good sleep hygiene in addition to exercising. From what I gather, aerobic exercise is likely to do more good from the perspective of powering the lymphatic system than weight lifting.

<comment><USER3> Not to mention the fact that good sleep hygiene provides immediate payoffs as well. The single best thing I have done for my health was giving myself the gift of a regular sleep schedule and sticking to it. I perform better in every aspect of my life. Even if I feel like I have less time than I did before, I feel much better every day than I did when I was getting < 7 hours of sleep every day.

<comment><USER4> I am curious, what is consider good sleep hygiene academic wise.

<comment><USER5> In a nutshell setting aside 8 hours, going to sleep and waking at the same time even on weekends and holidays, refrain from stimulants and depressants 8 hours before bed.

Recommended reading: Why We Sleep

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> There is an awful lot of "might" in that article.

Not disagreeing with it on face value, mind you, but the actual research basically states that you can't just start exercising... you have to already been exercising (and not even all that much, like, ~5000 steps ~= 2 miles a day, some HIIT (less is more) + low rep heavy weight lifting one or twice a week) benefit from this.

So, all of us who are in our 30s now? The time is now.

Also, re: weight lifting, try to target all of your muscle groups right. Don't be the guy who skips leg day, don't be the guy who has a shitty core and is trying to squat 250+. Guys like Jeff Cavaliere are who to look at on how to do this right.

<comment><USER7> If you're in your 30s a much better bet for your overall health and for keeping Alzheimer's away is giving up on sugar, since there's a strong link between Alzheimer's and insulin resistance.

Exercise too does help a little with insulin resistance (but not enough to repair the damage done by a diet high in sugar), plus people that exercise tend to also eat healthy.

<comment><USER8> This.

STOP EATING SUGAR PEOPLE!

<comment><USER9> > STOP EATING SUGAR PEOPLE!

But sugar people are delicious! They're such sweethearts.

<comment><USER10> Sour Patch Kids for life <3

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I recently joined a gym ( industrialstrengthgym.com/ ). It has an emphasis on having a welcoming atmosphere and community.

When they asked me during orientation what my goals were, I said "Show up three times a week. I need to grow up, it is time to work out."

And that really is how I feel about the matter.

If you listen to Tim Ferriss' interviews and read his interview books ( Tribe of Mentors, Tools of Titans ), you will notice a pattern: MANY of these highly effective people MAKE time to have intense work-out sessions.

All of the research and knowledge we currently have about human health and successful aging points to regular weight training and cardio training as the secret sauce for having a healthy mind and body as you age.

Going to the gym and working out isn't about having a hobby or enjoying it. It's about being an adult and taking care of yourself.

So grow up. Get to the gym.

Disclosure: I am a member of the gym I mentioned above but have no other affiliation with the gym.

</comment><comment><USER12> For what it's worth -- an anecdotal as tentative counterpoint: my mentor in my teenage years, an academic and just an excellent man, was an avid cyclist with a diet that supported said hobby. To the extent that he rode daily and would cycle from around lake Michigan every other year. He repaired and built ham radios in his basement, next to his de facto bike repair shop. He was a socialite and happily married. This is how he spent his days.

Yet he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's at 72, six months after mild symptoms started appearing. He passed less than two years later, and his personality & mind a year before that.

Just six years before that he was detailing vector calculus proofs with me at his dinner table.

I try not to be too cynical but I just can't help thinking of him and his bitter end when reading about these albeit preventative measures.

<comment><USER13> Is it possible the onset would have been earlier without the lifestyle? 72 is late, isn't it?

<comment><USER14> Depends on who is talking, my grandfather ate healthy and exercised nearly his entire life and lived to be 96 before he started getting Alzheimer's and died a few years later.

I think most people would consider my grandfather to be a near optimal outcome in terms of lifespan and keeping your mind nearly intact until you are very very old. The number you are citing isn't even average lifespan in US for instance (78 currently). If you take out most of the things which are out of our control from that average, or things which cause disproportionate amounts of negative entropy on your body and recalculate it (things like homicide, suicide, accidental death, people who smoke profusely, people who drink to excess, people with severe mental health issues, etc etc) the number is much much higher.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> No matter what disease you are worried about, it seems like you need to follow the same advice in your day to day life: eat better, smoke less, drink less, exercise more, sleep appropriately.

<comment><USER16> Don't exercise too much. You wanna take the car out to have the motor running every once in a while but if your driving 200km/h everyday the engine is going to wear out prematurely

<comment><USER17> Indeed, overtraining is bad for you in all aspects, it even hampers training progress - it's really good for nothing. I heard that you can avoid overtraining by keeping an eye on heart rate variability - if that is low, you are either over-stressed or overstrained, and should tread lighter. Some fitness trackers can measure HRV.

<comment><USER18> One thing I've been concerned with lately is the tradeoff between systems that strengthen with training and systems that degrade with use.

Most of my favorite forms of exercise (climbing, hiking, running) are pretty hard on my joints, along with several other risks like shin splints and pulley injuries. I know there's some capacity to strengthen tendons and ligaments, but I can't find decent data on what tradeoffs I'm making at what levels of activity. Replacing everything I do with swimming and intermediate-rep weight training would almost certainly offer a better tradeoff, but I want to at least work out what price I'm paying.

<comment><USER19> Their are workouts that strengthen joints up to a point and significantly reduce injuries. The trade off is you need to specifically focus on them and their are a lot of at risk joints.

More important in many ways is knowing what pain is a sign to immediately stop, and take time off to recover from. Taking a week or two off now can prevent significant long term issues.

<comment><USER16> Which is difficult for type a personalities !

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> Seems that brain physiology and health don't live in isolation but are integrally linked with aggregate body muscular physiology. In a _Frontiers in Neurology_ report [1] a prolonged sedentary lifestyle (mouse model) resulted in a 70 pct reduction in neural stem cells compared to a free roaming control group. Specifically, leg-loading exercises (weights) result in the transmission of neurological signals which catalyze generation of healthy nerve cells. A summary of the first technical article appeared in _Frontiers Blog_ [2] if interested.

[1] _Reduction of Movement in Neurological Diseases: Effects on Neural Stem Cells Characteristics_

[https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.0033...](https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2018.00336/full?utm_source=G-BLO&utm_medium=WEXT&utm_campaign=ECO_FNINS_20180607_leg- exercise)

[2] _Leg exercise is critical to brain and nervous system health_

[https://blog.frontiersin.org/2018/06/07/neuroscience-leg- exe...](https://blog.frontiersin.org/2018/06/07/neuroscience-leg-exercise- brain-nervous-system-health/)

</comment><comment><USER21> Regular exercise with elevated heart rate improve circulatory health (vascular and lymphatic). Low carbohydrate real, organic foods improve vascular function and prevent insulin resistance in the organs. Fasting performs cellular cleanup in all portions of the body.

Our planet and thus our bodies are highly populated with viruses and bacteria. Our body is the best healthcare system we have and works continually to eliminate or quarantine harmful pathogens like Borellia (Lyme), Bartonella, Babesia, Erlichia, Chlamydia, malaria, epstein-barr, herpes, etc. The quarantined pathogens (from biofilms, bacterial starvation forms, etc) often reproduce during immune suppression and over time propagate across the body. Many of the 'deposits' in Alzheimers are composed of quarantined pathogens (lyme, chlamydia, etc) and fasting + diet + exercise can help minimize those.

Personal experience here: Incidentally, the non-Hodgkins Lymphoma symptoms of Wikipedia very strongly parallel Bartonella and Babesia symptoms. The immune suppression from those often raises viral antibodies to things like Epstein- Barr. Cultural/native medicines lacked microbiology, but had a much better understanding of the body as a whole just from visible physical and patient reported symptoms than most western medicine practice today. Most pathogen testing is poor due to low blood/urine density and most doctors are authoritatively ignorant and refuse to look at other markers like TNF-a, TGF-b, C3a, C4a, etc blood tests.

Steven Buhner has written a number of scientifically and medicinally based books on the bacterial/parasitic pathogens (he has a ton of references from China, Korea, Russia, Germany, India, and the US).

<comment><USER22> > organic foods improve vascular function and prevent insulin resistance in > the organs

This is bullshit.

> Many of the 'deposits' in Alzheimers are composed of quarantined pathogens > (lyme, chlamydia, etc) and fasting + diet + exercise can help minimize > those.

This is also bullshit.

> Steven Buhner

He's a well-known crackpot.

<comment><USER21> [https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2949767/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2949767/) and there is another study that I don't have the link to where autopsies on 100 Alzheimer brains showed a mix of spirochetes, chlamydia, etc in the deposits.

Buhner protocols have helped many tens of thousands of people with tick borne diseases and is widely used by a number of lyme specialists throughout the world.

If you feel healthier eating processed food containing higher levels of pesticides, herbicides, etc then please continue to consume them. Be the center of your own black hole.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> My Opa is struggling right now- mid 80s, thinking is getting very fuzzy, and he isn't exercising the parts (back) he needs to. It's causing his body to break down. The cartilage and disks in his ribcage and spine are collapsing, forcing him to hunch deeply (accelerating the degeneration) and crushing his lungs. If he had kept his back strong, it would have kept the stress off his tissues for decades. He would still be losing his sight, smell, and taste (horrible, for a chef), but maybe he would be less fuzzy.

My Opa is also the most hardcore motherfucker I've ever met. It's not that he didn't exercise. He _still_ heaves around 80 lb bags of sand, he's building a goddamn cottage almost by himself, he's still almost immune to pain. He's the toughest man I know, and even on the days he has trouble with fairly basic spatial tasks he can multiply three digit numbers in his head faster than I can write them down. His short term memory is still better than mine. He's still smarter than me. He's so stubborn he keeps falling off ladders every week because despite how much he has lost he just refuses. to. give. up.

I can't understate how fucking scary it all is. The man is unstoppable when he puts his mind to something. Time has not worn down his will even a tiny bit. He breaks bones more often now, but he shakes it off, does the PT, and it's like it never happened. But even that isn't enough when age decides to take you. If your spine wilts, all the exercise and work in the world will not save you. When you can't sleep more than two hours at a time, what do you do? You can't force yourself to sleep. You just slowly go nuts, a little more each day.

Aging is the real process of senescence, not just of getting older. Dementia, weakness, and frailty all seem increasingly like symptoms of a larger bodily/immune system degeneration. The inability to exercise, the constant pain, the _constant_ sleep deprivation- those things could give dementia to a young man too. You can stave off the bodily decay _until_ you start aging, but not after. Some lucky few, the Jeanne Calments[1], seem to be basically immune to senescence. They follow the path you'd expect, of a body slowly wearing out. The rest of us eventually hit a point where our bodies suddenly start to break down, and things like exercise just no longer produce the same changes they used to. The systems that handle growth, repair, immune responses- they just stop.

I'm sorry if this is bleak, but it hurts to see him like this. I just spent a couple months helping him put up siding. He wants to finish that cottage so much. I hope it's not his swan song.

[1]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment)

<comment><USER24> "he can multiply three digit numbers in his head faster than I can write them down"

As in e.g. 365 * 128? Or 365 * 8? The latter is realistic, the former is a bit unbelievable. Even the latter is a violation of the "magic 7"[0].

[0][https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two)

<comment><USER25> That's a trivial detail of the parent's anecdote which may or may not have been exaggerated for narrative purposes and completely tangential to the point they were making. Given the subject matter it's pointless and a frankly bit insensitive to nitpick that IMO.

<comment><USER24> I am really interested in measuring working memory and how it relates to IQ, hence the details.

I admit to not taking emotions into consideration here.

<comment><USER26> If you actually were interested, you would have asked for details rather than simply attacking the anecdote as implausible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> @OP: where do you find all your links that you submit?

Are you just submitting your RSS feed here?

</comment><comment><USER28> >there have been traces of evidence for exercise playing a preventative role in Alzheimer's disease

It seems quite a weak correlation compared with the story 3 months ago "Alzheimer's risk 10 times lower with herpes medication" [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17540094)

Maybe healthier / exercising people are better able to deal with viruses?

</comment><comment><USER29> I do not know About exercise; there are other options too: fasting for several days ( 4-5) ; Your body will produce ketones as fuel for your brain and growth hormone will also be produced; both can be used to repair your brain. It is free and from ancient traditions

</comment><comment><USER30> Am I wrong to be frustrated with the way this is phrased. I think something to the effect of, "Lack of exercise pollutes brain and promotes degeneration." is more informative of the finding.

Similar to "Time in nature heals you"...

</comment><comment><USER31> I thought autophagy was what "cleans" the brain i.e. fasting or keto.

<comment><USER21> It is and it does. Water fasting is the quickest way to trigger autophagy. Depending on the person this will start around 12 - 18 hours of no caloric intake.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Buried lede: Major pharmaceuticals are giving up on Alzheimer's research...?!

</comment><comment><USER33> why is this pop-science trash at the top of the front page???

<comment><USER34> Reading the comments, might be because of the lack of literacy on this topic in this venue

<comment><USER25> Then do educate us instead of posting passive-aggressive comments! This is hacker news, not biohacker news, it's not really surprising that most people here (including myself) are not very knowledgeable on the subject.

<comment><USER26> Raising literacy on a topic is beyond the scope a post on HN but observing that it is low is not.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> How about healthy people can do exercise while people with the early symptoms of Alzheimer's are kind of bad at it, but they just need to try harder and have their Medicare to pay people to help them flail around a little more gracefully and when their disease progresses we can just blame them for their disease because of their lack of exercise even though it's a bit hard for them to remember to exercise at that point.</comment>


Bitcoin plummets after a massive Deep Web drugs marketplace vanished overnight - <AUTHOR> http://news360.com/article/283520376# <comment><USER2> Dropping 10% is hardly a "plummet" for a volatile speculative asset.</comment>


Cluefire and Damnation - <AUTHOR> http://www.cluefire.net/ <comment><AUTHOR> A reminder to us all in this time of political correctness that Internet used to be way more tolerant before. : )</comment>