On the Usability of Codecademy
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On the Usability of Codecademy
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Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#2Great article with a small typo...
"Codecamedy did a very good job, but even them left plenty of room for improvement."
Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#3Glad someone pointed this out. Several of us are doing this at the office and I've watched our design team struggle in similar ways. If you're not used to the the kind of errors you'll see in coding or javascript, it can be incredibly confusing. Luckily for me, a reference error can be meaningful but to someone who has no idea about scripting, it's utterly worthless (sure you could argue this person should go to google and learn it but I'd say that this is the learning tool they've settled on and it should provide that instruction).
I've found myself struggling with their less-than-clear directions. I'm even convinced that there is at least one problem set so far with no solution (Functions in Javascript Optional Course » Lesson 2, part 3).
I have high hopes for Codeyear. After toying with it for a bit during the first week though, I'm hoping the usability and directions are cleaned up otherwise this will be more of an exercise in patience than in learning programming or javascript.
All this said, I've at least gotten some totally sweet badges.
Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#4His/her friend is dumb and she uses a bad browser.
(I hope you note it's sarcastic)
Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#5She can’t be faulted for thinking that “for instance” meant she could try something else. Yet, she got an “Oops, try again.” message.
I did exactly the same thing when I was checking out Code Academy - in fact I think I even typed the same math she did.
Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#6Great article with a small typo... "Codecamedy did a very good job, but even them left plenty of room for improvement."
Thanks. Fixed. :)
Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#7I apologize in advance if what I'm about to say may sound harsh, mean or elitist, but the truth is programming isn't for everyone.
While the intent of the article is very noble ("improving the usability of Codecademy"), it also raises very important questions about programming tutorials in general. How much "holding by the hand" should a tutor do, really?
The examples the author gives are very relevant to my point. The behaviour of a web browser when pressing "BackSpace" or of an interpreter when leaving an opening quote unmatched ... Those are perfect examples of the kind of things that a future programmer must learn to figure out by themselves. While I don't argue that the pupil has to necessarily find that out from the first time, I strongly believe it is not up to the tutor to point it out.
To a certain extent, the role of "introductory" tutorials aiming at teaching programming, should be a way to filter potential programmers and select the best from the ones who won't make it. Teaching programming is similar to Martial Arts in the sense that the best teachers are the ones who let their students struggle before earning an achievement.
I can safely assume most of us here found out the "backspace in browser" issue (as well as "unmatched quote" one) without having the solution pointed out to us. We played, tinkered and experimented. This is how we got where we are today.
Holding a student by the hand is not doing him a favor. Often, it's simply delaying his giving up. And I think that the worst thing Codecademy could do is presenting their student with a modified interface for the JS (or whatever language) interpreter, just to make things "nicer".
Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#8I made my (non-programming) girlfriend try codecademy and she had the same kind of troubles. I had to go at lengths to explain to her what a console was.
She also told me that codecademy assumes too much stuff is known, like booleans or whatever. All the things that we take for granted and innate are extremely complicated to teach through a human-computer interaction.
In the end she went and googled "javascript tutorial", clicked one of the results and told me "this is much clearer". The tutorial was in classic textual form. I think codecademy looks very appealing for developers because it looks like it's easy to learn on it, but that's because we are developers, not laypeople.
Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#9Codecademy have done a great job at reducing something that can be very difficult down to laymans terms but its difficult deciding just how far down the rabbit go they need to go.
While the problems with the REPL and trying to delete text are obviously a problem (and a hard one to solve), I'm not sure the issue with leaving out the quotes is. Obviously if the text was replaced with "I don't know anything called liz" instead of "liz is not defined" would be a minor improvement -- but at the same time anyone should be able to sit back, look at what they were asked to code ("Ryan".length) and notice the difference to what they typed (liz.length). The "Oops, try again" might be enough of a message there.
Re: On the Usability of Codecademy
#10I apologize in advance if what I'm about to say may sound harsh, mean or elitist, but the truth is programming isn't for everyone. While the intent of the article is very noble ("improving the usability of Codecademy"), it also raises very important questions about programming tutorials in general. How much "holding by the hand" should a tutor do, really? The examples the author gives are very relevant to my point. T…
It's not hand holding when you're trying to introduce someone to programming. Learning to use a REPL isn't a test to separate good programmers from bad. It's something that has to be learned first.