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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

#111

Post by jeffreymcmanus »

pnathan wrote: post #55
jeffreymcmanus wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have to get through the first lesson before it tells you that you're learning JavaScript. This isn't terrible considering the audience this seems to be targeting -- the name of the language is an implementation detail to a beginner.

No, it is absolutely not an implementation detail. When I was setting out to learn programming, I bought every book I could lay my grubby teenaged hands on about the language. Knowing the name of the programming language allows you to ask questions about it of other people and the Internet.

It's an implementation detail to a beginner.

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

#112

Post by HiroshiSan »

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)…

Any advice on starting something if you're not a developer, or how you gathered the resources to do it with your limited knowledge? I'm not a developer but I just started doing LPTHW, I'd love to create something of my own but I was never good at making something from 'nothing'.

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

#113

Post by chanux »

This is awesome. It definitely revolutionises learning programming.

One thing to improve, make the program sound the nice guy it sound when the user does things right. I tried doing something wrong and presented with just an error. Probably not good for the type of audience that would embrace this.

`> 2w2 ERROR: identifier starts immediately after numeric literal`

Wishing very good luck.

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

#114

Post by rkalla »

This new fad of providing interactive/iterative consoles for learning technologies (e.g. redis[1], mongodb[2]) is brilliant.

I really well done flow (like this one) reminds me just how fun it is to learn something when it is presented well. I am ashamed to say that if I had to teach someone, say Java, I wouldn't know how to present it in a fun, non-crushing manner.

I am glad there are people out there working on resources like this.

[1] http://try.redis-db.com/

[2] http://www.mongly.com/tutorial/index

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

#115

Post by zds »

rkalla wrote: post #114

This new fad of providing interactive/iterative consoles for learning technologies (e.g. redis[1], mongodb[2]) is brilliant. I really well done flow (like this one) reminds me just how fun it is to learn something when it is presented well. I am ashamed to say that if I had to teach someone, say Java, I wouldn't know how to present it in a fun, non-crushing manner. I am glad there are people out there working on reso…

thanks! we're hoping to help you learn a lot more than javascript soon.

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

#118

Post by HiroshiSan »

dreamdu5t wrote: post #116

Huge mistake to make it free. Huge mistake.

I could see it free for the main page and then any other languages they add could have something like...first 3 lessons are free and then you have to pay to unlock more languages or lessons.

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

#119

Post by amasad »

Cushman wrote: post #110

Just FYI, since I assume it doesn't come up in the lessons, your REPL doesn't like objects that self-reference, even though it isn't trying to print them out. > o = {} > o.o = o ==> [object Object] ERROR: Maximum call stack size exceeded This isn't totally unusual; `window` has several self-references, for example, and hangs for several seconds.

@zds inspect.js should fix this issue, which was written by the Node people to inspect objects in the terminal and take care of circular references. I edited it to make it work on the web https://github.com/amasad/jsrepl/blob/master/util/inspect.js Just pass all results from eval to the inspect function and you'll get a nice pretty printed output!

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

#120

Post by SudarshanP »

ph0rque wrote: post #104

Great work so far! I would suggest that when you have enough lessons, you create a knowledge tree instead of just a list, similar to what Khan Academy does ( http://bjk5.com/post/1664635835/constellation-knowledge ).

Hope it is possible to reuse the knowledge tree from khanacademy in your application directly... Maybe even the credits system... maybe even user accounts... just imagine a world where every feature does not have to be reinvented... All the best! Awesome product!
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