After the acquiring by Unacademy is this so called “An Educational Initiative” is it going to be something where it won’t be community driven and a more of a pay to learn platform ?
Is it no more about building the best programmers and levelling the field and providing the equal opportunities for budding programmers for the CodeChef ?
All the blog posts that it’s just transfer of parent company and nothing changes on how CodeChef operates were those a lie when the transition happened from Directi to Unacademy ?
What is the difference between CodeChef and Udemy, Scaler, Coding Ninjas, Coding Blocks, if you are starting to make your own paid courses ?
Why not keep those courses for free and serve the goal that separates CodeChef from every xyz company in India which is there just for making money out of students ?
Aren’t college fees and unequal access to technology enough challenges which a beginner programmer faces, you are adding to which by creating paid courses with your “Parent Company” ?
Everything in this nation that has potential to build critical thinkers of tomorrow, be it UPSC, Civil Services in 80s and 90s, JEE in 2000s, and Programming and Software Development in this decade, it gets converted into a coaching and then an unequal playing field where it is pay to succeed, and unequal access to opportunities if you come from an underprivileged background.
It hurts me now when I look at the motive and early posts about the vision with which CodeChef was started and into this commercialized thing it is going to be soon. It’s just sad to see the platform degrade day by day.
Go to this comment on this post if you are new and wondering where you could get great resources for free: Link
Yeah It seems so. Just a suggestion to those who will read it before this post probably be taken down. Just use codechef for coding contests. Unsubscribe to any kind of newsletter or emails you are receiving from codechef because they are advertisements from unacademy brainwashing you( yeah that’s what advertisements are) to spend money on unacademy.
It’s no more a not-for-profit company the moment unacademy bought it.
Peace
I thought codechef’s initiative is to educate people and “go for gold” but now it’s even more difficult to get gold because now they will attract every newbie coder to their paid courses and they will try to create environment that without paid courses newbie’s can’t be a expert competitive coder and most of the newbie coder will be miss guided.
It’s disheartening I have been sent promotional emails of unacademy’s course. Codechef is just a way to sell It’s courses for unacademy. If they need money they can ask for donations…just like codeforces…they would have gathered crores of rupees…why go for such paid campaigns? Only recent I came to think of unacademy as a good company as it is selflessly promoting competitive coding and improving codechef…but they have started milking the cow!!
On one side, Codeforces Edu is providing free Cp lectures and that too is taught by ICPC Finalists, Code Jam winners and here Codechef is taking 6k/month for the same🙂
Yeah really looking forward to Pashka’s DSA course, this year he is doing it in English and he is an instructor at ITMO university. Here are the links for anyone who is interested:
Why do you think everything in the world needs to be free? You don’t want it, don’t take it.Why this kind of mud slinging at Codechef all the time? You do not like a particular platform,do not use it.
When everything is free, people dont have dedication often.
codechef authority should think about this, that there are so many good organizations who are working on video courses like codingninja, codingblocks, etc. but we like CodeChef because of his motive to create a healthy coding environment for free.
now codechef is not a free platform and I think after some time they will start hiding things like LEETCODE these things are very unhealthy for a coding community. they should make the platform either fully paid or free.
my suggestion for the community will be, move to #codeforces as soon as possible.
I know how you feel but its more like useless posting for you because you must have spent an hour or so, writing this.
You guys are acting like codechef is the only coding platform available and that too is getting monetized. Come-on you can happily shift to Codeforces(the best), Atcoder, Spoj and others. There are plenty of free websites which are way better than codechef in every manner.
"it gets converted into a coaching and then an unequal playing field where it is pay to succeed, and unequal access to opportunities if you come from an underprivileged background"
I’m certainly not commenting on other businesses but its 100% wrong for you to think like this in programming field. I’ve seen people from tier-3 college being candidate master at codeforces without even taking any courses from coding ninja, block, scalar or any other. At-least in programming community playing field is at same level for everyone.
If you really thrive for something then go snatch it by working hard rather than posting and wasting your time in writing blog as why is something happening. Apologies if you feel I was bit harsh, but this is truth no one really cares about it, we better focus on ourselves.
@sayan_1999, when things are free in software industry, they get valuable contributors. Look at stackoverflow for instance. How much useful do you think it would be if the platform started charging users to view or publish answers?
I totally agree with you @anmol_tomer_cc. I am very disheartened by seeing such a promotional mail from CodeChef. Earlier, whenever I receive an email from codechef, i open it excitedly to see whats more exciting has come to my inbox; but unfortunately that excitement no longer exists. Students are studying and already paying high fees everywhere, but codechef was there to help us learn the most required skills, but i guess its no longer true now. Unacademy asking us to pay before we get a job, with the help of codechef, and thats what we cant do.
Also, CodeChef started a new program called Conversations with CodeChef and hosted a live stream with Nishita Agarwal guiding students. No doubt it was wonderful and helpful, but it happened on 20th june, about 3 months ago, and still no announcement for new conversation. I am wondering, will that be a paid entry for us? I also agree with @rajiv_kale_nit’s and @raman_1111’s suggestion.
Thanks for your concern but I would like to point out, that’s your opinion that it’s useless posting. As someone who had faced a lot of difficulties to get even access to his first computer and challenges I faced I think it is our duty to speak up when a non profit becomes a for profit company, when they use the reputation which they built using the community and they use it to shamelessly become the only thing they were trying to eradicate, in this case they were trying to provide a community and level the field.
About your point of shifting to another platform, I think I am right when I say this, codechef is the biggest Indian platform when it comes to competitive programming, am I really the one who is wrong if I am trying to ask questions on what’s the need for it to become a for profit? Also if you haven’t noticed, all the platforms you mentioned AtCoder, Spoj, Codeforces all of them are community based, maybe that will help you understand why I am trying to focus on community aspect, CodeChef has lot of Indians, like minded people, who had similar struggles academically as well as in general and it is much easier to get correct answers on problems you face and much better answers with context to programming in India specifically.
You don’t have to apologize, that’s your opinion you have every right to say whatever you feel about the subject.
