I wrote about the design side of CodeYear on my blog: http://sachagreif.com/how-i-designed-codeyear-com-in-1-hour/
How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
21–30 of 32 posts
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#22No magic shortcuts. It may seem cynical but please read Norvig's Learn to Program in 10 Years: http://norvig.com/21-days.html .
We agree - it's about putting the time into learning. We're trying to make it easier to get started on the path.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#23i stopped doing the lessons because of a lot of crashes. things like including print statements would cause Chrome to invoke my physical printer.
i am curious how far the people who signed up during this big spurt are getting through the program, and if it can be evaluated against competitors like Treehouse?
overall i am a big fan of competition in the e-learning space, because it's a topic that hasn't receive much attention in the past (Kahn Academy is likely to thank).
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#24I used Codecademy for the first seven weeks. I started learning to program in January 2012, so the timing was perfect - I was their target market. It was fun and interesting for a while. But the instructions began to get cumbersome. You had to read 3-4 paragraphs just to learn that they wanted you to write a simple, one line loop. I spent more time reading instructions than thinking about or writing code. I was using…
I've got the same exact criticism. Additionally, I was so hooked on getting through the exercises that I finished them and repeated them over the span of 3 days, then thought to myself "now what"?
That's not to say Codecademy hasn't been useful. If anything, it was the service that helped me get a grasp of javascript, which I'm now implementing in my personal projects. But I wish there was more.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#25I used Codecademy for the first seven weeks. I started learning to program in January 2012, so the timing was perfect - I was their target market. It was fun and interesting for a while. But the instructions began to get cumbersome. You had to read 3-4 paragraphs just to learn that they wanted you to write a simple, one line loop. I spent more time reading instructions than thinking about or writing code. I was using…
I've got the same exact criticism. Additionally, I was so hooked on getting through the exercises that I finished them and repeated them over the span of 3 days, then thought to myself "now what"? That's not to say Codecademy hasn't been useful. If anything, it was the service that helped me get a grasp of javascript, which I'm now implementing in my personal projects. But I wish there was more.
We've added tons of new content over the past few months - check us out again and let me know if you have any issues or concerns (contact at codecademy dot com).
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#26I'm just poking my head in here to sing Udacity's praises. Their CS-101 class is phenomenal; it is hands down the best intro to CS on the web. The fact that it's free is just icing on the cake. The 1 unit per week for 7 weeks pace is demanding -- and I think users would benefit from the doubling of the course length -- but the videos, professors, community, quiz frequency, and challenging homework make for one hell o…
Agreed. I've been working through their class as well. I've worked through Codecademy, Coursera, Udacity and a variety of other courses.
Udacity is challenging, engaging and helps me learn better than anything I've seen yet.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#27I used Codecademy for the first seven weeks. I started learning to program in January 2012, so the timing was perfect - I was their target market. It was fun and interesting for a while. But the instructions began to get cumbersome. You had to read 3-4 paragraphs just to learn that they wanted you to write a simple, one line loop. I spent more time reading instructions than thinking about or writing code. I was using…
Same here. I loved the concept, stayed motivated for almost over 2 month, but then the instructions got worse and worse. I read and reread them, jumped back and forth, and didn't grasp what they actually wanted me to do. The exercise level also seemed extremely out of balance, jumping from copy&paste to and "now apply everything you have learned ever before".
I would really love to see how the drop out rates are. At one point it seemed to me the only ones left are those who already are decent programmers and just love to discuss semantics in the forum sections. I had convinced three friends of mine to start with it as well and over time each single one dropped out.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#28It would be an interesting study to try and understand the behavior and personalities behind the 100% completion rates so far. Most of code year signups happened around new year resolution time - compliance can't be much different than that of a typical gym with a great offer. But those who have been consistently at it, must be special.
The 0% completion numbers might look exceptionally bad for Codeyear as there was so much of hype surrounding it back then (Bloomberg and all..). But that is understandable, and the founders could not have done much about it.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#29A strange question--as a service, I like the idea, but how do they plan to support it long term? Advertising? Grants? Will people pay for it?
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#30A strange question--as a service, I like the idea, but how do they plan to support it long term? Advertising? Grants? Will people pay for it?
If they could reliably train programmers, then recruiters or companies would be glad to pay for skilled graduates or custom courses.