Show HN: Code Pal - A fun way to learn programming on Facebook
codepal.me
codepal.me
We're an education startup and we want to inspire students to learn programming by making the initial experience fun and engaging.
Two key problems that we're trying to solve are:
a) Make learning to code fun & interesting:
To write interesting code, you need technical skills & domain knowledge. While students are currently taught the basics of programming, the lowest common denominator when it comes to domain knowledge happens to be math and so you have tons of exercises on displaying integers (0 to 100), or printing out the fibonacci sequence etc. This can be boring (not to mention many students already find math to be hard / boring).
We're replacing math with social data that students are intimately aware of (ie. their own social data). So on Code Pal, students will learn a for loop by listing the names of their Facebook friends (as opposed to printing out integers from 0 to 100 or some other similar, potentially boring, exercise).
b) Enable students to work with real world data:
Data in introductory assignments are usually fake and artificially generated. This is a pain for educators (they need to create this data) and it is boring for students. We allow students to work with real data and learn programming in the process. One huge side benefit is that we don't need to tell a student when there is a logic error. For example, if you have 500 friends and your program outputs 499 as the total count, you know there is an error. Another example: we have a Coke versus Pepsi assignment where we teach students the IF statement by asking them to use the number of likes the two drinks have received on FB to determine which drink is more popular.
-------- Addressing privacy: We don't ask for any extra Facebook permissions (except e-mail) and we don't store any data (again except e-mail). We request data from FB every time you run your code (that's the reason we require Facebook login). Also, we don't ask for a stream publish permission and so we can't (and never will) spam your newsfeed.
Will appreciate any feedback & feel free to ask questions.