u/michaelnovati

Codesmith's "free learning platform" that they claim can get you an "entry level job" by completing is one of the worst pieces of software I've seen in ed-tech.

For example, this URL gives the ENTIRE CONTENT IN ITS ENTIRETY away in a single click: https://csx.codesmith.io/api/yaml/all

This isn't a secret or a hack, it's literally just fetched when you login to load all the content and is freely available to the internet, no authentication.

Next, anyone can just grab all the user data for any user they want.

For example, this is my user data: https://csx.codesmith.io/users/95526 and I give you permission to open it and look at it.

DO NOT look at other users data because that can be a gray area if you scrape it, even if Codesmith doesn't have any permissions or controls on their own.

Enough is enough here, no pretending and shut it down.

P.S. Will Sentance, you need to take responsibility for this level of garbage software and Codesmith students deserve to know if their personal information has been at risk.

I asked CIRR 30 days ago where the 2024-25 missing reports are. I did not get a response. This tells me CIRR is dead and its flagship Codesmith is dead. Other bootcamps we've lost are: Rithm, Turing, Codeup, Kenzie, Launch Academy, Momentum, Alchemy, Epicodus, Lighthouse Labs, 2U/Trilogy, Lambda School, and more.

Unlike the embarrassing end that CIRR and Codesmith are experiencing - too ashamed to end on a positive note and instead end in layoffs and utter silence, I want things to end on a positive.

If you graduated from a coding bootcamp in the past, and it changed your life, TELL US YOUR STORY. No selling or shilling, just tell us how coding impacted your life and in the right time and right place your bootcamp experience mattered.

An SEO guy, Lars Lofgren, wrote what I think was an unfact-checked hit piece about me.

It had a bunch of trivial and self-contradicting factual mistakes, left out key context, and got shared around by other SEO people anyway.

I wrote an 8000 word response walking through the errors, debunking the piece, and setting the record straight, but the whole thing left me genuinely confused.

It feels like I'm playing a game I don't understand.

Is this normal in SEO?

In my world, if you publish something damaging about a real person, you fact-check it. You reach out. You separate facts from assumptions. You don’t just write the spiciest version and let the target clean up the mess later.

So I’m asking honestly: is the SEO community generally okay with “viral first, facts later” content? Or is this considered bad form by serious people in the industry?

Trying to understand how to navigate this world.