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Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

c0d3.com

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Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#141

Post by meristem »

yjhoney wrote: post #110
brlewis wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This looks awesome and has certainly piqued my curiosity. How long has the beta group been going? Do you have an idea of retention rate yet? And for those who drop out, why?

This beta group has been going on for a year, early 2019. Our retention rate is really poor, until today's posting about 400 signups and only 8 made it to the end. The current first phase is actually to answer this question: "For the students that complete the whole curriculum, could they contribute to a codebase that users use and follow good coding practices like an engineer would?" The answer is yes, so now we hav…

I'm curious to learn what you plan to do in order to understand the retention rate issues

Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#143

Post by seemcat »

The best part about C0d3 is the community of supportive ppl you’ll meet. When faced with what might feel like a dead end, you’ll never feel like it’s time to give up because there’s always going to be either Song or someone else there to help guide you through it.

C0d3 was way more helpful for me in learning programming than a college room filled with hundreds of students, and only one professor and a limited # of TAs to help.

Thanks to Song & C0d3, I’ve developed the strong foundation of engineering I needed to land multiple Developer Advocate roles.

10/10 would recommend lol.

Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#144

Post by pdubs1 »

nefitty wrote: post #47
songzme wrote: post #2

Last year, I mentored a few students who are learning coding to become a software engineer from non-traditional backgrounds. Rather than encouraging them to leetcode and practice for interviews, I taught them software engineering practices and mentored them to build c0d3.com together as a team. c0d3.com will be a free learning site where other students like them can learn coding and then help improve the site. As a s…

You said, “ Rather than encouraging them to leetcode and practice for interviews, I taught them software engineering practices...”. How do you square that with the reality that many software jobs have leetcode as a gate to an offer? I find myself stuck at this juncture. I am comfortable with software practices, but the reality of these sorts of interviews has me basically trying to figure out how to “hack” the coding…

I agree-- it feels 100% like tail chasing, and not like normal problems I encounter in coding up a business-tool related full stack application.

Plus, I have my own personal projects to work on. Plus, I have an open source project available for perusal. Therefore, I refuse to do leetcode/hacker rank problems for interviews.

I lucked out-- For my current job offer, I simply had a 45-minute conversation, answering technical questions about a particular language, as well as behavioral questions, with three people involved in the hiring decision. Two days later they notified me with a verbal offer that they would like to hire me. Note: I also have an open source project which they reviewed during their hiring of me.

So, given that success-- one interview -> hired, I am quite happy, but I know it's not the typical manner of hiring.

That said, since other recruiters are contacting me regularly, I am taking interviews. However, i inform them:

A. I am coding my own business project at the moment.

B. I do not code for free, not even for interviews.

C. I've received a verbal job offer, from an interview which did not require a coding test.

D. I have an open source project featuring a few thousand lines of code which can be reviewed-- if a hiring engineer is actually interested in seeing my code.

(That said, I did notice that learning to solve algorithm-efficient problems via video series has improved my skills. Just not that substantially, and not in a way that is necessary for my projects-- the code already works pretty gosh darn fast at the scale of my projects & past projects for companies which hired me-- they didn't need google or amazon level code efficiency.)

Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#145

Post by songzme »

meristem wrote: post #141
yjhoney wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This beta group has been going on for a year, early 2019. Our retention rate is really poor, until today's posting about 400 signups and only 8 made it to the end. The current first phase is actually to answer this question: "For the students that complete the whole curriculum, could they contribute to a codebase that users use and follow good coding practices like an engineer would?" The answer is yes, so now we hav…

I'm curious to learn what you plan to do in order to understand the retention rate issues

When students engage with me to ask questions, I usually just ask them directly: "If you decide that this isn't for you, please let me or someone else on the team know before you do so we understand how we can make this a better learning platform for future students"

Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#146

Post by songzme »

orange8 wrote: post #133
songzme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I haven't had time to revisit it to improve the wording, will do it tonight. This is really what I meant: Our decision behind JavaScript: We want our students to understand technology at a conceptual level first, end to end: 1. Client side - Mobile, web, terminal 2. Server side - Database interactions, system design and optimization 3. Batch - ML models and scripting AFAIK, JavaScript is the only language th…

Don't worry too much about the JS haters. JavaScript, a dynamically typed, flexible language is a great first language to learn programming with. As for the wording, all you need to add is the word platform: JavaScript is the only language that lets you build applications for any technology platform, including the web, desktop, mobile apps and terminals.

Thank you, I updated.

Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#147

Post by songzme »

orange8 wrote: post #134
songzme wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah after the curriculum, the students transition to using typescript. It is a natural progression towards wanting to type your function arguments and return values for clarity and consistency.

If you are targeting people learning programming, it really does not matter. TypeScript really makes sense to those who were already comfortable with a strongly typed language (eg Java, C#) before learning JS.

as they learn, I want them to build reliable open source products that will be useful and maintainable after they find jobs and leave. Since less experienced engineers are prone to making mistakes, TypeScript have been really helpful in maintaining code quality. I think its a win win for their growth and for code quality.

Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#148

Post by hmwhy »

enneff wrote: post #136
abraxas wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are right and I'm annoyed that you are. Because I think JavaScript is a really hard language to master. Ubiquitous yes, versatile yes but so full of cruft and bad design decisions that it really can put many people off programming.

And the ecosystem is a confusing, overwhelming mess.

I personally think it's only as overwhelming and confusing as one's predisposition to FOMO. I stopped worrying when I found out at meetups and interviews that it really doesn't work like that in most parts of the real world.

Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#149

Post by poma88 »

yjhoney wrote: post #106
poma88 wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. The links you send for password recovery are also again outdated on arrival.

what is your username? We will make sure this gets sorted out.

rogercre is the username. Everytime I try to get a password, the link opens a site where in less than half a minute I read "Link has expired. Request a new password reset". Thanks!

Re: Show HN: C0D3 – A free, interactive site to learn coding

#150

Post by hmwhy »

abraxas wrote: post #128
songzme wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, I haven't had time to revisit it to improve the wording, will do it tonight. This is really what I meant: Our decision behind JavaScript: We want our students to understand technology at a conceptual level first, end to end: 1. Client side - Mobile, web, terminal 2. Server side - Database interactions, system design and optimization 3. Batch - ML models and scripting AFAIK, JavaScript is the only language th…

I think you are right and I'm annoyed that you are. Because I think JavaScript is a really hard language to master. Ubiquitous yes, versatile yes but so full of cruft and bad design decisions that it really can put many people off programming.

I highly recommend working through YDKJS[1] if you have an interest in and/or a reason to "master" JavaScript.

I think you may find that some of those "bad design decisions" are actually not so bad, or at least manageable, once you will have read through the book.

1. https://github.com/getify/You-Dont-Know-JS

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