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Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code

codecademy.com

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Re: Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code

#191

Post by jpd »

nicki_easy wrote: post #172
tolmasky wrote: post #138

Interesting feedback: I had my gf do it, and she got stuck in the .length portion, because she kept typing: "name".length. This is because the prompt said: Well done! How long is your name? Find out by typing your name in quotes and ending it with .length. For me, that'd be "Ryan".length. Apparently its not clear enough what is code and what isn't. While you and I can tell that the last period belongs to the sentence…

I am no one's girlfriend, and I am stuck on lesson five :P I think that if this is aimed at beginners it needs to be dumbed down more--I am a reasonably intelligent absolute beginner curious about coding and whether I'm interested in learning some, and in this lesson you have completely lost me; I no longer understand what I am doing or why, and I don't know how to proceed: Everything we've talked about so far has on…

Judging by the text of the hint you gave us, I believe it's trying to make you type:

   var six = numbers[2]
I am not sure where the hangup is, considering I just copy-pasted that from two parts of the hint. Have they described arrays to you yet? Perhaps the problem is that they insufficiently described what an array was and what it did? I have not tried to use the site, so I'm not sure.

Re: Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code

#193

Post by czzarr »

zds wrote: post #2

I've been a longtime member @ HN, but I haven't been a developer. In fact, my only HN submission has been one asking how to learn to code ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=820741 ). We decided to solve the problem by making a simple, interactive way to get started with Codecademy. We'd love your feedback. If you're interested in helping us to get more courses up (on any topic!), please send us an email at HN (at)…

could you write about how you went from a non-programmer to be able to launch that web site? would be super-interesting.

Re: Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code

#195

Post by scelerat »

The hardest part of learning to program for me (thinking back many many years to THINK C) was learning the environment and what all the terms and messages meant.

I think basic programming is actually conceptually easy. I remember being frustrated by not understanding the lingo and I think that's where a lot of people starting off get hung up, too. What's the difference between a syntax error and a runtime error? Or an exception? What happens when the compiler spits out some gobbletygook, and now I'm digging through a manual written for people who already know how to program.

In this sense the Codeacademy poses similar hurdles. It will report an Error, without giving more context. Why is it an error? Did I quote something I shouldn't have? What does unexpected token mean? OH, I left off a quote.

i.e. instead of "Error: Unexpected token ILLEGAL", a better message (perhaps linked from the strict message) would be "The program interpreter couldn't understand what you meant because it was expecting to see some syntax or punctuation that didn't exist. Common reasons are unpaired quotes, braces or parentheses"

Because the environment is already somewhat controlled, the helpful messages can have a narrower, clearer scope. Overall Codeacademy is great; I'm recommending it to a lot of people.

Re: Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code

#196

Post by dusklight »

aik wrote: post #188
dusklight wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be called codecadamey, it should be called javascriptkindergarten. I think it is arrogant because it is claiming to be teaching how to code, when it is not doing anything of the sort. I think it is supremely arrogant to not even mention that it is teaching javascript specifically, making it sound like you could learn how to code in general from the site, when it covers only the most basic of basic topics…

Few things: 1. I think you have a good argument concerning how they may seem to be belittling the complexities of programming. Again, I'm interested in seeing where they will go from here... I believe they have a good (early) start, and I believe the worth of the site will be determined by how effectively it can teach anything beyond the very very beginner level. 2. The site just recently was made available -- it's c…

People hate math because they are cowards and people are cowards because we have math 101 in school but not courage 101 ... I have spent a lot of time teaching myself how to learn, so I agree that current institutionalized methods of education are very flawed. But it's like, life is hard. It's not going to get any easier just because you pretend it's not hard.

Re: Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code

#197

Post by dusklight »

MrKurtHaeusler wrote: post #181
dusklight wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be called codecadamey, it should be called javascriptkindergarten. I think it is arrogant because it is claiming to be teaching how to code, when it is not doing anything of the sort. I think it is supremely arrogant to not even mention that it is teaching javascript specifically, making it sound like you could learn how to code in general from the site, when it covers only the most basic of basic topics…

You have a point. But 90% of the lessons are relevant to any C-like language. It uses Javascript sure, but I think it does teach the beginnings of how to code. Also I disagree on the last paragraph. The topics you mentioned are far less useful for learning to program than the material this tutorial covered. They are advanced topics, and only used in special situations.

This is why I mentioned the Dunning-Kruger effect. You have no idea how bad you are at programming and how completely wrong you are. From other comments in this thread we can already see how poor of a decision it was to use a dynamically typed language to introduce programming to fresh newbies. Javascript is NOTHING like C. Just because it has curly braces in it doesn't mean it is like C. That is like saying you saw a red ferrari so all red cars are ferraris. No.

The concepts I mentioned are not advanced concepts. They are BASIC concepts, such as would be covered in a basic freshman/sophomore class in college. You probably have no idea about the huge class of bugs that you could easily avoid if you understood these concepts. They are not used some of the time, they are used ALL of the time.

Re: Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code

#199

Post by jsharpe »

Lesson 6, exercise "Otherwise..." is wrong. Here's the code:

  var number = prompt("Guess what number I'm thinking of between 1 and 10!");
  if(number === 7) {
    print("You got it!");
  // Change the following line.
  } else if () {
    print("Close! Try guessing a little higher.");
  } else {
    print("You were way off! Sorry...");
  }
prompt returns a string, but then attempts to compare it with === with an int, which clearly doesn't work.

This is a really awesome site though, and I'm really excited to see it grow with more and more lessons.

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