I pointed my younger sister at this the other night. She's 17, and I'd tried to interest her in programming before with no avail. She seems to have caught on to this, though, and it's something I'm extremely happy about. It's not that I think that she'll ever become a hardcode graphics programmer, but I think it's fantastic that she even has a basic understanding now.
The only criticism I've had from her is that she doesn't know what to do with what she's learned. Maybe some suggestions on some basic examples might be good? (say, "Try writing a loop that averages these numbers," or a grade calculator).
Thanks so much for this - I believe that everyone should know how to program in the same way that I believe everyone should know how to read or do arithmetic. It's another form of literacy, and codecademy is definitely a big step towards much better understanding of programming (edit: that is, for the general public), and hopefully less social stigma and the like as a result of that.
Yeah I gave my 12 year old brother my laptop this weekend and he said he enjoyed it a lot too and was able to complete all the lessons. I had to give him a few pointers here and there but it's only to be expected from a 12 year old kid who's native language is other than English. Having said that, it would be nice to have it in multiple languages, to reach an even larger audience (especially kids, who i think this is very useful for).
Just called my son (age 9) at home and spent 30 mins on the phone with him while I responded to emails. He loves this! He now understands the importance of paying attention to the details. You can't leave out a ()," or ;. Great way for kids to learn to precisely follow directions!
We don't try to teach girls (or people) to program that much, but make them realize that they could build something and give them the first experience of creating or developing something.
Like how you go from idea to concept, from mockups to implementation and from application to actually shipping it.
(We're planning organizing events in the US and around the world)
This is brilliant - i'm in the same boat as your sister and I'm loving the very simple, very encouraging platform they've provided. Perfect for us non-techy people.
Beautiful. There's a bit of poetic justice in this.
Programmers have been callously obsoleting various careers (and thus people) for decades now. In fact, it's likely that programmers are currently hard at work trying to obsolete careers that your little sister may already be considering!
It's wonderful that the programming field is about to get disrupted. Wonderful! Programmers about to see their skills become as common as basic reading or writing.
Programmers, fear Codecademy. You're about to taste your own medicine. Expect your irrationally high salaries to drop — that's justice.
The coding job salaries and the barriers to entry have been driven down for years via outsourcing, the easy-to-write mobile frameworks, and other factors like downturns in the first-world economies combined with a glut of CS students that were chasing the previous wave.
There's always going to be value in really knowing what you are doing across the full stack, and that is not going to be killed off next year with tutorials.
I share the excitement with having more people in the field, which will help drive it forward. But your glee in programmers "getting what's coming to them" (my words, not yours) is odd.
Programming is becoming more complicated over time. The increase in complexity will offset the increased availability of basic literacy. We see this in Law as well. Though most people can read and write the language of Law, they do not understand the implications of what they read and would write. Similarly, though someone may read and write code, they may not understand the implications of what they do. Same for scriptwriters or novelists.
Programming is as singular a profession as "writing" is a singular profession; instead of the future you seem to imagine, I foresee something else entirely.
Just as there are lawyers, scriptwriters, journalists, novelists, biographers, bloggers and tweeters, so too will there be an increased societal understanding of the differentiation already happening within code-writing. Embedded, Systems, Application, UX.
Further, programming (like law) is a profession whose mastery requires an understanding of an ever-increasingly complicated system. While there is a glut of fresh law grads, there is also high demand for lawyers with niche skill sets.
In short, yes. Low-end programmers will continue to get paid less but high-end programmers will probably get paid more, and there will be more of them, but not as a percentage of all programmers (but as a percentage of the population as a whole.) Also, more people will program as an adjunct to their existing responsibilities.
Programming is becoming more complicated over time. The increase in complexity will offset the increased availability of basic literacy
Is it? Python will do in a few lines what would take forty lines in Fortran. I was programming for the Mac in 1995, when you'd spend thousands of lines just trying to get the machine to do things which a new Xcode project now does by default without any lines of code.
No doubt Python is more expressive than Fortran. Programming languages, tools, and software engineering has gotten better.
If we were write the same software as 30 years ago, it would be an easier job. But we aren't. We have more powerful processors, more memory, more data and more connectivity. The kind of software that is in demand now is more complex than the software from 30 years ago.
People develop to the limits of their technologies and their own ability. Smarter technologies allow us to make much more complex apps, which require more effort. I don't have to create my own windowing framework anymore, but that doesn't mean I'm not still working to the limits of my ability 20 years later.
Hah. I won't downvote you...but you're wrong. I remember when people were telling me that web designers wouldn't have a job because everyone could just use Microsoft Frontpage.
Coding takes effort. Really good coding takes smarts + effort. An awesome application takes effort, smarts, a great idea, luck, good design, lots of time, etc. Codecademy should be encouraged because it gets people an entry point to developing, but I suspect you're underestimating the effort required to produce Call of Duty or Google Docs.
As I've learned to program, I found that the language was the easy part. The hard part was learning to think like a programmer, which requires a complete mental shift, for most of us anyway. That's the hard part.
> effort, smarts, a great idea, luck, good design,
Also End-to-end, top-to-bottom knowledge of the technology and knowledge of the problems you're trying to solve with the technology (aka 'Domain Expertise').
I applaud your enthusiasm, and while I look forward to a future where some degree of logical reasoning and programming skills are commonplace, looking around at a world where it's rare to find a human who is literate with their own spoken and written language, I have no fear of my programming skills becoming common.
Learning a few basics of syntax is one thing, but learning to actually develop software is a skill that is not entirely common even within the subset of mathematically and logically inclined people who are currently programmers.
MIT (and I assume other top CS schools) doesn't teach coding 'skills' (6.00 aside, and its not required for a cs degree, or the first two weeks of 6.005), but instead teaches you knowledge about how to solve problems that a coder will encounter while... coding... IMHO, thats what the salaries are for.
That said, lowering the barrier to code also means lowering the barrier to encountering these types of problems, thus hopefully making more/better solutions. The more the merrier!
I've heard this argument in a variety of professions--that an influx of new talent is going to destroy things for the incumbents. The part people don't get, is that the reason these fields become exciting is because demand is widely expected to increase and therefore more people take that as a signal to get into the field.
So, millions of people are going to get into programming as demand increases by the equivalent supply of millions of people. Prices, if anything, will stay the same or go up. And yet still, there is a wide difference in wages between 1st world and 2nd, 3rd world devs. As far as I can tell, there isn't a particular difference in talent, so I suppose there's some artificiality built in there.
In any case, I think things like code academy are great, I'd urge more people to learn to program, it's a great skill.
I hope more people do follow those signals and get into the field!
The challenged faced in other countries (such as Spain where I live) is that it's easier than ever to pump highly qualified programmers and engineers out of state-sponsored colleges, but businesses rely on software and technology from other countries (like the US) - hence there's not the same level of a national job market demanding these skills. Too much supply, so to say.
Codecademy and similar stuff are great for strong programmers.
Why?
Strong programmers doesn't compete with weak programmers. The stuff they can do, and the speed they work is at a totally different level. see the 1000X productivity debate.And it does take years of training to stop being a weak programmer.
To strong programmers, codecademy(and similar tools) will open a lot of opportunities.It would be easier for them to collaborate with business and domain experts.It would be easier to talk with domain experts, easier to prototype and domain experts could offer more help in the development process which will help building partnerships.Those collaborations would open many new collaboration opportunities , and business opportunities.
The day someone can code as well as me and my fellow computer science graduates for <= $10 / hour will be a great day (if it ever arrives) - I'd be happy to code alongside a team of a couple of people on a new startup idea (or hire a few at $10 an hour for my own startup).
Totally agreed. I initially clicked on it, cuz it was getting lots of love. Then when I tried it myself, I thought...."My Gosh...this seems like it should have come from YC...these guys did a fantastic job.".
I then re-checked the title and didn't see a YC S11 tag...so I dismissed it.
It's kinda interesting to see now that people are getting sick of seeing the YC badge beside a company name. The truth is, more often than not, I tend to gloss it over.
So the mere fact that these guys focused on the product itself - is admirable and more from your batch should take a leaf out of your book.
Thanks to everyone in the Hacker News community for being so supportive and providing feedback on our launch. We really appreciate it! As always, if you have any issues, shoot me an email - contact (at) codecademy (dot) com. -Zach
EDIT: I'll be back on HN in a bit to answer questions but the next few hours are a little busy. Thanks again.
It would seem that using the word "console" hasn't been too much of a barrier but perhaps a different word would be more familiar to new programmers? (Or a bright red indicator of some sort.)
I've been around programming pretty much all of my life as an spectator (my brother can code and well I'm a product guy so I'm around coders every day). I never quite got the grasp of it and programming seem like this huge abstract thing. Never got myself to take action in learning because frankly I just dismissed it as being to complicated but deep down I always wanted to be able to code.
I completed code academy in one hour. WOW. Now I'm hooked.
I'm actually so hooked that I looked more resources on learning JavaScript. I'm reading this: http://eloquentjavascript.net/index.html (found it via a Google Search in StackOverflow)
I can't wait for more lessons. Thanks so much for this!
Note: there were a couple of lessons were I did need to ask my devs for help because there were some concepts that were missing. Once explained to me, I was able to complete the lessons.
Not that i don't like this approach, it think it's a good way to give regular people a impression what programming is.
I did the fist Chapter of programming books in over 10 different languages and it always felt good.
What comes after that is the problem, the ones where you have to really think and it just doesn't work on the second try.
I know this from college, the first two lessons nobody is complaining and then it starts to really freak out the people who didn't know before what programming really is.
When you find a way to let people deal with this phase, than you really did accomplish something that makes a difference.
"it clearly has loads of potential for one key reason: it actually feels fun."
This is an excellent example of Programmed Instruction. Most of us probably learned typing the same way, and maybe even Logo. The reason this approach is good is because, in addition to being fun, it's also compatible with the Keller Plan:
>Granted you can get only so far with this approach, but it's still terribly underused in the current scheme of things.
In the teaching of concrete skills, I am not sure what the bounds are -- the burden on the instructional designer to administer the skill dependency graph as the skills become more complicated continues to grow, but I don't see that as a limiting function.
The problem is that concrete skills are only a small part of learning. This sort of approach is great for teaching kids to pass math tests, but less great at turning kids into mathematicians.
Ah, I'm glad you agree. I suppose my reaction is that most people underestimate just how far you can go with this approach, and I am glad to see that you are not one of them; we agree that you can train someone to solve calculus problems, but not the skills of derivation.
Where we seem to disagree is about wether this approach should be used in isolation. Frankly, I think most people (successfully) trained in theory are bored by application so there is a use in multiple educational paths.
While application is a small subset of the available learning to someone interested in a field, it is often a sufficient subset to be a productively contributing member of society.
I hope you include the subtle parts that help make it viral. For example, a media button that posts to friends: <Happy Programmer picture> "The Khan Academy of programming, try it!"
I don't think the shape of the share button matters. What made it viral is that once you play with it for 10 seconds, you just want to share it with all your non-geek friends. Because it's fun. Because it finally lets them understand why you are having fun programming.
Make what you do fun, and it will be viral. Obsess over the language of the share button with something boring, and pull your hair for eternity.
A startup needs to understand that there's several stages to becoming the next big thing. The first and most important: Raising awareness. How can some users tell anyone if they haven't heard about it yet?
How they not only raised awareness but captured the interest of thousands is important.
> [..] it has drawn 200,000 unique users. That’s users who have actually interacted with the app — and not people who hit the webpage and bounced away a second later.
In the article, it actually says That’s users who have actually interacted with the app — and not people who hit the webpage and bounced away a second later.
So it's not unique users, and is actually quite impressive either way.
Great App! I thought the lessons were well commented and laid out. One trick, instead of bulking up with more features, it to lay out more lessons and publish a system for letting us know when they're available. For me it would be more useful if the lessons came in similar large blocks/iterations with a predefined goal of "by taking these lessons you will learn X". Anyhow, great work!
When I saw Codecademy I was quite impressed and I truly enjoyed it, even though it was extremely basic for me. It was actually really fun, remembering what it was like when I first started learning I WISH there was a site like this. I am so happy that this site was released and that I was turned on to it.
My question is when will we start to see more lessons/courses? Will they stay at a beginner level or get more advanced? Will there be some sort of discussion/forum section to the site? And lastly, do you feel there will ever be an article/paper section to the site (Such as a section where submitted papers, tutorials, articles, etc are posted when approved by the main staff at Codecademy)?
Alright, loaded question. Can/will this work with other languages? I guess a related question is, does it have to? The only thing the YC note tells me is this wants to be a real business, so the big question is, what's the model?
Edit: By the way, love the site. For JavaScript, this is a huge leap forward. I'd love it to be the same for other languages, I'm just curious if that's possible.
People are asking this a lot about YC companies within a few weeks of birth. It's not a silly question, but it is perhaps not the best time to best asking. Most of them don't know yet. That isn't exactly unprecedented: Google didn't know it was a contextual advertising company when it launched, etc.
Given the amounts spent on employee training in the US, I think that if you had a magic box which said "Put non-programmers in the left end, programmers come out the right end", you would not be in a bad place in life. Heck, people make millions upon millions doing the same thing just for MS Excel.
The "_why" post led me over to TryRuby.org which looks like it may have been inspiration. The thing I noticed was how much I prferred TryRuby's layout. It seems like the CodeAcademy instructions are overwhelmed by other screen elements and awkwardly placed lower left of the console.
I also think you could let people type more a la Learn * The Hard Way.
I showed this go my colleagues at work yesterday. They want me to teach them how to program (well, write VBA) but I kind of feared for them since they have very little free time to devote. And it took me a massive investment of time upfront to get into programming, although I didn't have access to a resource like codecademy.
I wonder if this service will become more of a business or a non-profit. I feel that this site is providing a great public good, akin to Khan Academy, and it would be great if donations could cover the costs of further developing the site. That way, price is not a deterrent to any users getting started with learning to code.
At first I only took it as a "me-too" to Khan Academy, but it really isn't. It definitely takes away some great features in KA, but it's defined differently in the sense that the design reflects the web industry rather than how a typical course would teach.
I actually started working on an idea like this back in January but never went anywhere with it. These guys have made something very tough look incredibly easy.
Yeah I proposed a similar idea at a startup weekend here on the east coast. It only got five votes, but after seeing this and some other avenues popping up (good places to market it) we started coding what I proposed at startup weekend. Hope to have done within the week; excited!
Weird. Several portions I'd completed before displayed "in progress" today. I just went back and re-did them to see if they were new. I don't think the were.
The only criticism I've had from her is that she doesn't know what to do with what she's learned. Maybe some suggestions on some basic examples might be good? (say, "Try writing a loop that averages these numbers," or a grade calculator).
Thanks so much for this - I believe that everyone should know how to program in the same way that I believe everyone should know how to read or do arithmetic. It's another form of literacy, and codecademy is definitely a big step towards much better understanding of programming (edit: that is, for the general public), and hopefully less social stigma and the like as a result of that.