How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
1–10 of 32 posts
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#2How many are still taking lessons?
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#3I 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 K & R at the same time, and the contrast was instructive. In K & R you're given a concise description of a feature, and then a short exercise that forces you to think about how to use it.
In the final few weeks, my only motivation to keep going with Codecademy was the thought that "at least I'll have these badges that show what I know". That was a pretty big warning sign.
I stopped when I realized I wasn't even learning the concepts in the lessons. There simply wasn't enough coding practice for them to stick.
I haven't been there for a few weeks, so perhaps things have gotten better. But from what I saw, they needed to work on cutting out the cruft in their instructions. Pedagogy is difficult.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#4How many are still taking lessons?
Instructors from the free online classes at MIT/Berkeley/Cal/Stanford are much better than whoever is writing up code academy lessons.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#5How many are still taking lessons?
Instructors from the free online classes at MIT/Berkeley/Cal/Stanford are much better than whoever is writing up code academy lessons.
Likewise, the Udacity courses are also much better planned. They put a lot of effort into making their lessons flow naturally. They pare down the presentation to the essential.
I find I spend a lot more time coding when doing a Udacity lesson.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#6I 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…
Thanks for the comments, graeme. I'm the cofounder of Codecademy - we're working to keep our instructions clean and easy to understand. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any other comments.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#7I'm a web designer who really wants to learn JS to be able to fully implement my designs on the front end (I know HTML/CSS and can edit a jQuery script to fit my needs). I feel I am in their target market, or close to it, but they failed at keeping me a student. I stopped going to Codecademy because I could no longer understand the instructions, and because it was buggy. I often had to ask my boyfriend, who is an engineer, to explain the instructions to me because they were so hard to understand for someone with a very limited programming background.
I've started with Udacity CS101 and it's much better. I still think the instruction from the professor isn't the greatest, but it's good enough for me to be able to keep progressing, even if it means I have to repeat a unit to understand the concepts.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#8I'm a web designer who really wants to learn JS to be able to fully implement my designs on the front end (I know HTML/CSS and can edit a jQuery script to fit my needs). I feel I am in their target market, or close to it, but they failed at keeping me a student. I stopped going to Codecademy because I could no longer understand the instructions, and because it was buggy. I often had to ask my boyfriend, who is an eng…
Thanks for the feedback. I'd love to chat with you in a bit more depth about your experience if you have a chance - can you email contact(at)codecademy(dot)com if you have a minute? We're doing everything we can to improve quality of content as well.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#9I don't know why Codecademy gets any attention. After seeing a number of items about it, I attempted to use Codecademy to brush up on javascript. My conclusion: it's a fine idea poorly executed and basically useless as a learning tool. Pure hype.
FWIW, I don't mean to be caustic. I honestly can't believe that anyone who writes posivitely about it has used it.
Re: How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
#10I 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…
Thanks for the comments, graeme. I'm the cofounder of Codecademy - we're working to keep our instructions clean and easy to understand. Feel free to shoot me an email if you have any other comments.
Ok, I'll take another look later this week and see what I think.
I should say that the addition of the Q and A forums was a very good change. I have no doubt you'll introduce many more as you learn what works and what doesn't.
Another useful change that I remember from the final weeks was adding a review unit at the start of each lesson - before that I often found myself forgetting syntax.