Is something really wrong with the WhiteHat Jr ? Why are some people against it? Should you go for it?
Before going into the story let me clarify something first. I’m an engineering student and not a software professional but you need not to be a professional to really find about what’s going on with it and why it is gathering such negativity (especially in tech communities). I will tell you what I learnt from my little research , which will let you decide what to do.
IF you ask my personal opinion , I will say no . Its not just because a 6 year old shouldn’t code but, it is how it is introducing them to coding , and also what bugs me the most is their false claims and annoying ads. It is impossible for a 6 year old (unless they are some super-naturals)to create an app and have investors fight to invest in it(referring to one of their “Chintu” advertise). That is just right-out ridiculous and also frustrating being a code. I know how difficult it can be sometimes let alone coding an app. The marketing strategy that they are following is just very aggressive .
From the above tweets itself you can say that Wolf Gupta is a fake identity, frankly speaking, who on Earth will keep their children’s name Wolf Gupta(especially in India). Wolf’s identity keeps on changing. One time it says that he is a 9 year old earning 150cr(nearly 20 million dollars) , and then it says that he is a 12 year old , 13 year old and so on. It may be a fictional story about a fictional character for promotion, but what's wrong here is that they didn't put a disclaimer on it.
Another major thing its doing is stifling voices who put genuine criticism comments which you should not do at any cost . You should appreciate negative feedback and improve by using them, but this isn't the case here, which is what many people are furious about. It is censoring many reviews and giving many fake reviews in playstore(allegations made by pradeepPoonia also known as whitehatSr in twitter ). There are also many allegations on WhiteHat Jr that it manipulated many questions on Quora. Censoring Internet is what angers many people these days (as long as they are not false).
What makes matters more interesting is they filed a defamation lawsuit against its major critic Pradeep Poonia (IIT alumni) for a whopping $2.6 million . For more about this watch his interview here. “WhiteHat Jr and Byju’s are misusing their position. For more than a month I have been trying to post about WhiteHatJr. On whichever platform I go to, either my accounts get suspended or my posts get deleted,” he wrote in a LinkedIn blog. His twitter handle got blocked , Quora got dismissed for temporary and 16 of his YouTube videos are blocked, and so on. But he did not seem to be stopped by all this he seems to more motivated , and he is not doing this with any particular grudge against them, he is just calling their mistakes out .
He also put out their slack chats (Slack is a proprietary business communication platform developed by American software company Slack Technologies.) which includes their own CEO Karan Bajaj sending some messages which are very controversial and disgusting that he said those things. You can get those chats by google search or you can see them by yourself here . In those chats we can see they are chatting about reporting and taking down videos, tweets , reviews which are just giving some negative reviews . They are not even considering those feedback they are just trying to delete them. Below is the number of videos, tweets etc.. deleted by them according to a youtuber coffeezilla.
You an see yourself that how many things they took down , the number is just huge like 51 number of videos from YouTube alone in October month.
Bajaj has admitted to making “mistakes”. “We’ve made mistakes while growing up. Our marketing campaigns were poorly designed, which we changed. Legitimate, honest fact-based criticism is truly welcome…,” he wrote. This is what Karan Bajaj wrote in a LinkedIn blog that honest fact-based criticism was allowed but I don't know why they blocked all these posts.
Apart from this I recently read an interview or article about him in Eenadu (One of the largest circulated daily Telugu newspapers.) Sunday magazine which is where I first started to get to know about him . He mentioned in those that he worked as discovery CEO and about his early life. But what intrigued me most is that he went on a spiritual journey and became a saint in Himalayas. He says he returned just to complete his life goal which is becoming an entrepreneur and money is not his preference and I don't know why it is marketing with such aggression .
Okay, enough of this marketing fraud you still may think that if they teach it good why should I care about their marketing schemes and scams. Let me give you some not so brief about their course. I saw many WhiteHatJr classes in YouTube and OH MY GOD! I don’t even know how they select their teaching staff they know nothing more than the script they have given . If they didn’t answer some questions it’s alright because no one knows everything but what makes me furious is that they act like they knew everything they mislead children with their answers.
Let me give some examples: When somebody asked what is java they literally said “Java is a high level programming language and we work C++ in it” . What sort of answer is this , if you don’t believe me watch it here. In another class when another student asked about internet she blabbered something that only she can understand and when student asked about how cloud storage works she said that when we don’ t have space in our hard disk we store in air(she thought cloud means actual rain clouds in sky) and she said we can anything because it is imaginary LOL! ,you can watch hat here. When another kid asked about java vs JavaScript she said java is program and JavaScript is a single line in that program. Like these I mentioned there are a lot of examples in YouTube , Facebook , etc.. They also use scratch to teach which is actually a block-based visual programming language and website targeted primarily at children 8–16 to help learn code , which you can learn for free here.
So finally what I say is there a lot of free resources out on the internet so don’t waste money on those Byju’s , WhiteHatJr kind of things. Those are just making money out of gullible parents. Your kids can use scratch for now and please do not put a lot of pressure let them be what they are . Coding is not a very easy thing especially for kids they have to know a lot mathematics to learn coding. If they are interested in learning introduce them to scratch , I am making a lot of emphasis on this because it is made specially for kids . They can use Khan’s academy for academic purposes and there are tons of videos on YouTube on every topic. Let them develop interest on computers just do not force them to do that. This is all I have to say , even if you are not convinced I can say just one thing do a lot of research and then make your decision.