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Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

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Re: Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

#41

Post by russelluresti »

rickdale wrote: post #36
hluska wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see what you're saying and there are some sites that do a pretty decent job of what you're saying. For example, Opera has some amazing documents on their site. The much maligned w3schools even does a pretty decent job of showing how everything fits together (in the context of web development). The problem that I see with your approach is that it is really hard to explain certain concepts to people without any exper…

You know, the problem is you are smart and you are not aware of how people are approaching computer programming topics. IMHO, sorta like a startup pitch, if you can't explain the difference (to a beginner) between two languages in less than 4 sentences, you probably lost them.

There's really no need to explain the differences in languages to a beginner. When you're teaching someone to code, you're not teaching them a language. You're teaching them (or should be teaching them) concepts that they can take to any language they need. You teach them logic, flows, etc - how to think in terms of solving a problem through programming.

Re: Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

#42

Post by teamls »

bromang wrote: post #39

the indentation the code editor shows does not always reflect the actual indentation of the code. so i had to c+paste it into another window and then back again to get the code to run...

We will be releasing changes to the code editor which will resolve the indentation issue in Python.

Re: Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

#43

Post by teamls »

lowglow wrote: post #32
teamls wrote: post #2

Hey HN - We’ve built a site where you can learn Python, Ruby, and JavaScript in a fun, engaging and interactive way. How is LearnStreet different from other learn-to-code sites you ask? UI/UX: A key aspect of LearnStreet’s courses is its distinct UI/UX. In order to see this, simply sign up! Multi-modal: Our courses are designed for beginners, and we have multiple ways to help you learn, including live chat, Twitter,…

On your javascript tutorial, it kept giving me an error when I typed in the string "Javascript" as it instructed.

Hey, can you email feedback@learnstreet.com and we'll help you out. Thanks.

Re: Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

#44

Post by lists »

russelluresti wrote: post #40
justjimmy wrote: post #30

Still waiting for a code teaching site that actually explains how everything fits together. What's HTML used for? What's CSS? What's the bigger picture? What's the difference between java and javascript? Why are there so many languages. What are all these terms you are spitting out? Can we get some real world analogies so we can grasp some concepts? But every single lesson from all these startups starts with type 'th…

Actually, most of that information is unnecessary to start coding. In fact, it actually works as a barrier to entry. People who don't understand a programming language aren't going to understand the different nuances between Python and Ruby. Instead, you teach development by having people start coding as soon as possible. You get them playing with the code, manipulating values, and seeing the outcome. Once they see t…

I'm not sure what the research on that methodology looks like, but speaking anecdotally as someone who's teaching themself how to write dynamic websites, I find that methodology to be very unengaging. '1+1=2' and 'Hello world' console input may hook a younger mind, but I need to see a bigger picture to know whether or not this is going to amount to anything I might be interested in. I shouldn't have felt like I was willing myself through CodeAcademy at times. My time as an adult is limited, so it's important that educational products like these forge a framework for my creativity (and therefore interest) as quickly as possible.

Learning piano, Norman Monath's 'How to Play Popular Piano in 10 Easy Lessons' did exactly this, whereas a lot of the material I ran into did things the classical way, which was entirely boring.

Re: Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

#46

Post by jitl »

alexholehouse wrote: post #19

Looks great, really nice. Minor point, I have a feeling (and can't find evidence to the contrary) that Twitter's stack is actually Java, not Ruby [1]. They may have changed back since then, but I can't find anything about it. Maybe I'm totally off though, and other parts of their stack are rails. I don't know - I'm not really a webdev guy... [EDIT] - any reason for the downvote? I'm totally fine with being wrong, or…

Twitter runs a whole range of different technologies, as you can see from their Github page [1]. Much of their performance-sensitive code is Scala, but they also run Python, Ruby, C, and Javascript tools.

Their front-end, however, remains Ruby. The link you posted is just about search infrastructure.

[1]: http://twitter.github.com/

Re: Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

#48

Post by lutusp »

intellegacy wrote: post #38
lutusp wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't need to start at lesson 1; i want to skip around to different lessons. There's a good reason for this, which I will explain with an analogy: Lesson 1: Write the Great American Novel. Lesson 2: Learn how to write engaging, readable short stories. Lesson 3: Learn how to write internally consistent essays. Lesson 4: Learn how to write coherent paragraphs. Lesson 5: Learn how to structure grammatically correct…

I get it. It's just that I'm not a beginning programmer. I mean, unless the site is only for novices with zero programming skill, you're requiring all intermediate programmers to relearn stuff they've already mastered. Also, I wanted to browse around the lessons in order to evaluate the quality of the site so that I could decide whether to recommend the site to non-programmer friends.

> It's just that I'm not a beginning programmer.

That should have been the first thing you said. :)

But such tutorials are obviously for rank beginners, experienced programmers don't use these kinds of sites. Unless it's a dramatic jump, like from COBOL to Haskell, to learn a new language they go straight to the language's documentation:

Python 2:

http://docs.python.org/

Python 3:

http://docs.python.org/py3k/

Re: Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

#49

Post by RegEx »

skyhook_mockups wrote: post #33
kyro wrote: post #11

Although these types of sites (Codecademy, etc) are great and teach absolute beginners all the basics of programming, they've left me lost as to how to continue developing my skill set. I've hit a wall for some time and am stuck in this strange better-than-a-beginner-but-still-terribly-amateur middleground where the resources I keep coming across are either tailored for fresh beginners or more advanced programmers. D…

Everyone is different. Speaking for myself, I never found books or tutorials useful. My mind simply balks at the prospect of doing exercises for the sake of it. Instead what worked really well for me is to find a practical problem that I wanted to solve (maybe with the goal of making money from it). It turns out that just about any interesting project that you dream up for yourself will have aspects that are outside…

And I'm the exact opposite. I love exercises. You should find what works for you and stick with it until it doesn't work for you! For a while, I would read a section out of a programming book, think to myself "Could I explain this better?", and if I could, I'd write an article. If I came across an exercise in a book, I'd think to myself "What if these requirements had to be met? What if this needs to be read in from a keyboard? A database?", and I'd expand the exercise into a full fledged project. Just do your best to keep yourself interested. Find a reason to stay excited.

Re: Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

#50

Post by jamesbritt »

keeptrying wrote: post #29
jfarmer wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Read Mindstorms before you do. :)

I second this. For anyone trying to teach computers (and anything else), this will save you from repeating all the mistakes that all the other computer programming education startups are making/will make in the future. Again, just to be clear, this book is really really really really important. Hope that landed. :)

Mindstorms? I did a quick google and there are assorted books with that title (after you filer out "lego"). None seemed to be relevant to this discussion.

Who wrote it? What year?

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