Avi Flombaum has never taken a programming class. He wrote his first code in grade school (to make a computer game more difficult), and learned how to build applications as he needed them, for instance, automating his high school internship with a congressman using an Outlook plug-in that sorted constituent email. A creative writing major, he dropped out of college after a hedge fund recruited him to write software applications.
In many ways Flombaum’s background fits a stereotype. He’s a self-taught programming whiz who dropped out of college for a job.
But he doesn’t necessarily think that’s a good thing. “I think that the way I learned how to program is why there are so few programmers,” he says. Nor does he think a traditional computer science degree is worth the record-high tuition.
In September, he cofounded something between the two extremes. Called the Flatiron School, the program offers 12 weeks of full-time, intensive instruction (plus pre-work) “designed to turn you into a web developer” for a $10,000 tuition fee.
The school’s only classroom, located in a walk-up near Madison Square Park in New York City, looks more like a startup. Some students work at Ikea desks pushed together to create one long table. Others sit on a sofa with their laptops. About 80% of the class has a background in either writing, music, or photography. Two are pregnant. One is a former professional poker player. Another is a founder of SparkNotes.
Turning all of them into developers in just 12 weeks is a bold promise that some say “stinks of snakeoil,” but here’s how Flombaum and his cofounder Adam Enbar plan to do it:
Get Them to Love Coding First
“The way I got serious about technology in high school wasn’t’ through building things. It was through hacking and lock-picking and cracking Wi-Fi passwords and making free phone calls,” Flombaum says.
