I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
codeamigo.dev
codeamigo.dev
>I found that building websites was similarly satisfying. For example, click the "Reveal Image" button to watch an image fade in to the blank canvas!
I think a lot about why I went into computer science and this is the same conclusion I came to. There's something really cool about starting with a blank page and coding in elements that appear one by one and adapting the code to be what you want. Maybe there's other ways to do it but programming seemed to be the most powerful.
Just to be clear, it was video games, not photography that kinda nudged me into programming, but same idea with a blank canvas and having control of it.
In college my first class was a class about C, the instructor read from the book (that appeared to be written about C for people who already knew C...) and then you worked on the assignment.
I didn't have the patience at that age to work that way and dropped the class / decided programming wasn't for me.
I did some other tech things and decades later ended up working with a bunch of engineers at a company and realized that we understood each other / how we worked really well. Company was bought out and I had time to think about what to do next.
By this time the world of web development and web apps had taken off and there was so much information available / folks sharing the land of programming seemed entirely different to me. Attended a boot camp and everything just clicked, the immediacy of producing something in a web app (even if it broke) really drove home what I was doing and so on. I've been happily coding since then.
As far as programming itself and designing software, I think I have learned as much as I would have retained in an undergraduate degree in CS. I have a minor in math and I took some basic circuits courses, and Ben Eater's YouTube channel has been hugely illuminating in areas of CS.
Really, if I could find places that are something like "solve this useful problem, here are the requirements, you'll need to know these 10 keywords to search stuff on the internet, here's how it'll be useful later" and then have someone or something evaluate my work, I'd love to see it.
In fact, the all-night coding binges happen because in an intense period of learning, you are producing a ton of adrenaline, and that annihilates sleep. (Sorry, working, don't care to look for the study right now). But it checks out.
But then I went professional and that felt a little like how the Old Testament God must have felt: overwhelmed and irritable.
...although I also got a kick out of "remixing" Windows 95. And "remixing" video games (Civ and Colonization were particularly great because they were SO EASY to edit both assets and configuration). So many custom mouse cursors, shutdown screens, start-up sounds, etc etc.
When you open vim and look at the blinking cursor, you stand on the precipice of greatness in the shoes of every programmer who has ever lived, all of you united across space and time by that peculiar feeling you get when you peer into the infinite possibilities of your empty text file.
I hope to one day remember and shamelessly cite it around.
I've only recently learned this word/concept, but your quote fits. You see a blank text file, you see an interesting challenge, something you're sure will lead you somewhere nice. I'm gonna admit - I'm the opposite. A blank text file scares me. I don't know what to do. I spend a lot of time agonizing over what I want to write, trying to desperately narrow the space of possibilities until I have the design[1] sharp in my head, and only then I'm able to actually write anything in that empty file.
I guess I'm the "low self-effiacy" kind of person.
--
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-efficacy
[1] - Or at least the first iteration of it.
In learning the craftsman style of TDD (i.e., the fluffy altruistic style) helped me to grok breaking down tasks, not because I wasn't able to have a detailed view of the big picture in my head, but because I simply didn't need to. It's also ok to change what you've already done. The guidelines for code modularity and separation are there to make this process of change and evolution easier, not just to make the system arch and code pretty, but because it should be expected to change and evolve your code as you develop the system - in both the short and long term.
I'm actually using a TDD-ish approach in my work, but I never felt comfortable letting it actually drive design decisions. I don't believe it works that way - I can explore the design space up front and pick good solutions faster than it would take me to organically arrive at them through applying orthodox TDD.
I'd like to do more TDD-ish approach, because the design process feels way too slow to me. The problem is, refactoring involved in test-driven design discovery is even slower. I constantly feel bottlenecked by the speed of tooling we use - and not on the surface level (I have my Emacs configured well, thank you), but at a fundamental one. Programming languages are not expressive enough. The whole approach of writing code as plaintext document is not ergonomic enough.
When I'm sitting in front of an empty text file, staring at the sea of infinite possibilities, all I feel is dread - the fear of how much effort I'm going to spend fighting tools to conceptualize my design, how much time I'm going to waste dealing with infrastructure, build systems, dependency management, constructing intermediary layers, writing and rewriting tests...
I guess I usually have a plan before I even sit at the editor of what I'm going to accomplish with the project. You don't have to know all the classes and data structures you'll need at the start, you will discover it along the way when you find you have data you need to group together or code you need to call in multiple places.
I think of writing code like writing a list of instructions to tell the computer how to do something. The natural place to start is step 1. Then of course you can start roughing out the major steps in order and filling in the details once you have something you can run and start testing parts with (either manually or automatically).
The poor little TensorBoard is crying right now because you didn't love it.
Quoting a relevant excerpt from my own blog post[1] that I wrote sometime back:
> FD 100
> That is the "hello, world" of turtle graphics in Logo. That simple line of code changed my world. I could make stuff happen in an otherwise mostly blank monochrome CRT display. Until then I had seen CRTs in televisions where I had very little control on what I see on the screen. But now, I had control! The turtle became my toy and I could make it draw anything on a 320 × 250 canvas.
10 MODE 7
20 PRINT CHR$141”A text adventure”
30 PRINT CHR$141”A text adventure”
SCREEN 13
I think this kind of experience is missing for kids now – but I'd guess it's more about how ubiquitous computers are, and how there's a lot more between the kid and the computer. When a CLI is your interface, making even rudimentary graphics feels like achieving magic. When your interface is a cell phone or GUI, there's a much larger leap from zero to "feels like magic" – OK, so I made a circle bounce around the screen... there's already an app that does that.
Now… Great UIs are everywhere. You can just use them. You don’t need to poke under the hood, or learn the mechanics of CRTs, or compile a kernel and a zillion libraries to get them working - you just flip open your phone, or hit up the uri.
I think there’s something quite specific about having learned the trade through that cusp, that changing of worlds - if you started with punch cards and ended with dumb terminals, your world changed only somewhat, and always had a utilitarian edge to it - we went through that Bildungsroman of growth and explosive expansion as a natural function of our environment.
I feel somewhat blessed to have been born in possibly the most interesting time since Gutenberg wrote “hallo, welt”.
10 PRINT "John is Awesome";
20 GOTO 10
I tried to reach her programming but she schooled me in AI-hype.
20 GOTO 10
* Edited for formatting
PRINT "Ach leck mich doch am Buerzel"
I broke out in laughter, realizing I can make real grey-on-black DOS programs just like that. It blew my mind and started my programming career.
Understanding driving motivations is so incredibly important, as it now gives me quite a lot more perspective in which direction I want to take my career and hobbies.
1. Dodged a bullet (booo on any company that would reject someone with this level of passion).
2. Created your own product (which you seem even more passionate about)
3. Did all the heavy lifting to make it interesting out of the gate (provided content).
Wishing you all the success!
Considering what he writes on https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog/why-codeamigo, I would assume that he has a somewhat different vision on the product than Codeacademy.
Given GP seems to indeed have quite divergent opinions about the product's focus:
> What bothered me about the platform was that I didn't know or connect with my teachers. I wanted to connect with members of my community and learn from them, instead of just digesting information from a black box.
then it's probably a better thing that they went and created their own version focused on what they think is important.
I worked with a guy who was so mac focused he was blind to other tools/perspectives and it was often a friction point between team-members...
Passion is a double-edged sword: When a person's passions align closely with the company's needs, it's wonderful.
But if a person's passions conflict with what the founders want, the passion can amplify the conflict.
That's why it's important to understand exactly what the candidate is passionate about. If they're passionate about helping the company wherever necessary, that's one thing. If they're passionate about something tangential and they expect the shift the company in that direction by joining, that's something else.
Codeamigo appears distinctly different than Codeacademy in some key areas, as the author explains, so I wouldn't assume that his passions aligned exactly with what Codeacademy was hiring fire. I think it's best to give the benefit of the doubt to Codeacademy in this case.
Remember: Being rejected from a job doesn't mean someone is unqualified or a bad developer. There's more to matching candidates to a team and not every candidate is a good match for every team.
The truth is - you'll miss some great candidates because they simply interview poorly and of the flip side sometimes get a professional interviewee that cannot deliver once hired.
You can also get a brilliant 10x candidate but a complete asshole (e.g CEO wanna be) that will destroy your team once hired.
We don't know how to accurately gauge a candidates experience, personality or knowledge. We can only make them perform monkey-see-monkey-do on a whiteboard or through stupid, asinine puzzles and leetcode style exercises.
To make matters worse, we often place our most senior software developers on interview circuits. For better or for worse, engineers trend towards more anti-social traits. It makes the whole process of understanding one's personality, how they think, and whether or not they'll be a fit for the company a complete crap-chute. This is literally the only industry I have been apart of that sucks this bad at a process that is so fundamental to professional life.
I would rather interview at McDonalds or for a call center (having had both of those jobs).
It's a chute you shovel crap into (or out of), with no justifiable expectation of useful results. The interview process as a whole is a crapshoot, but the process of understanding the candidate is a crap chute.
We have proven time and time again that certain times of interview questions are not helpful.
If you look at the best investors, their job is similar, I would say that most notably as YC being crazy successful and found similarly in my own hiring is that passion for a given space is one of the best predictors of success.
The pool of candidates interested in full-time jobs is not the same as the pool of candidates interested in doing contract-to-hire positions.
Contract-to-hire selects for people with the ability to risk working for a company for a period of time without a high risk of near-term unemployment if it doesn't work out. The people willing to take those jobs are usually more qualified to begin with because they have more career options open to them if the contract-to-hire doesn't turn into a contract job.
So you're basically pre-selecting your candidates.
Sounds interesting. If you happen to have links to any articles about that, it'd be interesting to read
Turns out I still had it open, half read, in one of my 100+ browser tabs :-)
Nice to hear that you recommend it. (Hmm I wonder if maybe some of the other things you've read were also based on Schmidt & Hunter, 1998?)
I have in mind to do as they recommend (incl work sample tests and structured interviews and work knowledge tests), when/if later on I'll look for people to help me with the software I'm creating.
I wonder b.t.w. if you know about any automatically generated GMA tests?
(Edit: I found some, I can post a link if you want.)
It'd be nice if there were ways to auto generate GMA tests. Then maybe it could be just fine if everyone was allowed to practice as how as they wanted -- if there was an unlimited supply of new questions, because they were auto generated.
Maybe something with generating random 3D shapes and applying rotations.
But then it seems to me it's necessary to measure how well begin good at such things, correlates with being able to learn and get good at software, and scrap any poorly correlated tests.
Why would anyone be passionate about any specific corporation? Sounds like a great way to be exploited. People are passionate about enjoyable activities such as programming, not companies. They help companies with their problems because they get paid for it.
Speculating that it's perceived risk mitigation. If you're perceived as loyal, helpful, and even somewhat capable, they'll keep you around! This is in fact the perfect role for that person who gets a lot of juice out of supporting someone else achieve their goals. It is also probably a personality thing.
Of course, you have to answer a generalization of your own question: why be passionate about anything? It doesn't seem to be a necessary, or indeed very useful, to improve darwinian fitness.
Corporations are made of people, many of whom have a moral compass, and operate by that moral compass. If you believe in the mission of a company, the company is filled with people who also believe in that mission, and you're making real progress on that mission...then why wouldn't you be passionate?
Sure, you could be "exploited", but many people don't really care whether or not they're being exploited, if they're being treated well and doing meaningful work with people they like -- even more so if they're working towards a goal that can only be accomplished by a larger organization.
This is quite evident in the entertainment (video games, film, music, etc.) industry. It has been established that many creative resources go to companies that produce most of their favorite work.
Sadly, it is quite common for those companies to have rather diverse and relaxed ethical guidelines around crunch and overtime.
Luckily, my own experience is moving away from a company with crunch and a product I didn't particularly care for to a company strongly against crunch making a whole array of games I really love.
Rather: Hiring based on passion is a way to get away with demanding a lot of overtime or crunch time. :-(
I imagine that building and releasing _the exact clone_ of the product from a company that rejected you would be petty and legally dubious.
I'd argue that Codecademy dodged a bullet. Calling them out by name is in really bad taste IMO.
Let's be honest: if he had launched a coding tutorial website thing and it didn't have the "comeback story" marketing narrative then no one would care.
My stance on the ethics of marketing is that "anything goes" until you start tarnishing the names of others to get ahead. This is why trash talking past employers/coworkers has always been an insta-no-hire in my book for example.
Now I don't know to overstate what this guy did. Obviously he's not outright trash talking here. But I think once you form a company and start marketing then you should be held to some ethical standard. If you mention other people or companies by name then consider how what you're saying could be perceived.
Every comeback story needs a bad guy that rejects or pushes down the hero before they rise. That's what makes this post interesting.
It's certainly not the content; creating a web app of stitched together NPM packages isn't exactly a major challenge these days. Especially if you're copying something else feature-by-feature.
FTR, I have no opinion for or against Codecademy.
Whether it's a bad or good hiring practice depends on what you think of this guy. The information on whether any company hires or rejects a certain applicant is not a trade secret. If you read this and think, "this guy's a douchebag," then yes, the company looks sane and reasonable, the opposite of bad. If you read it and think, "this guy is perfectly reasonable," then yes, the company looks bad.
This poster isn't saying anything about whether Codecademy is good or bad, they're just stating the facts, which were created as a result of the company's hiring decisions. If the facts make them look bad, that's on the company for making the choices they did. If they make them look good, the same applies. Again, I have no horse in this race.
They're stating their projected version of the facts. It's the narrative as they see it. Important details could be missing.
Suppose you and I made a few attempts to start a company together and it didn't work out. Then I went off on my own as a solo founder and got seed funding. Then imagine I made a blog post titled "I tried to start a company with ironmagma 3 times and failed, so I became a solo founder instead and succeeded".
> Again, I have no horse in this race.
There's no race? Just commentary. It's an interesting discussion IMO.
I don't think I can answer that question without more context. It largely depends on the situation.
In this case he could have simply omitted the name of the company:
> I was rejected by <insert succinct description of what these coding tutorial sites are> three times, so I built my own
He's sharing the same story without throwing jabs at a particular company. I could have done the same in my above example with the same result:
> I tried to start a company with someone 3 times and failed, so I became a solo founder instead and succeeded
--
IMO it comes down to professional etiquette. Don't broach muddy topics in public because the audience doesn't have enough context to see the complete picture. It's sort of like airing your dirty laundry in a public restaurant.
I would argue it’s not the same story. He wanted to join this other company but couldn’t, which means that his product or at least personage is going to be different in a way that is irreconcilable with Codecademy. They are thus his direct competitor, which is extra information conveyed by this title.
> the audience doesn’t have enough context to see the complete picture.
No one has enough context to see the complete picture, though. The logical progression of this is, “don’t talk about things in general,” which I rather fundamentally disagree with. If someone is unhappy, that can be a good motivator for a story. The same is true for happiness IMO, by the way.
Whomever you are--you will do well in life.
I've know some brilliant people who seem to suffer from anxiety, and depression. Don't push yourself to hard.
I love the simplicity of your site.
I will now signup.
Not always. You want to be a part of something/build something, and then you want to build it YOUR way. Or you see an obvious hole and then an ugly battle between your ego and that of the chief architect ensues.
Also, there may be cases when you want to be a part of something, meet your heroes, and then it all goes pear-shaped. Because you shouldn't meet your heroes.
And sometimes it's better to have mercenaries who don't necessary believe in the same thing as you but care a lot about their own reputation and take pride in having done a good job.
What happens when you are given a task you do NOT want to be part of? What happens when a task has moral gray area? What happens if you suddenly decide you really want to be part of something else?
Fuck people like that, if you’re hiring someone you want someone with valuable skills who is ready to be of service, ready to do whatever you ask, and will remain loyal so long as they are paid. You don’t want people to be nice, you want them to be predictable. That’s true value.
However when reading the above the tone seemed ridiculously over the top, which is why I tuned in.
Mission Accomplished.
"Moraly gray", "do whatever asked".
Sounds a lot like how we've needed up with the current nightmare in big tech.
I was sad because he sent the best "cover letters" I have read ever. And I almost never care about cover letters.
Based on the responses, I think I should clarify:
People that show that they want to be there often make for excellent teammates, because they actually care (the old missionaries vs mercenaries idea), and will often be willing to put in the effort to fill whatever gaps they lack, while creating a positive work environment.
Plus, they might have a really good feel for the product and market, because they're genuinely interested in it. You want people like that on your team.
Now, of course - businesses are not a charity that only employ people because they want to be there. There is a minimum bar of skills required and plenty of other traits that matter. And on the employer side, there's a ton of factors there too (budget, existing skills of the team, etc etc).
So yes, I was generalizing. But in general: I'd take someone who wants to be there with high aptitude who has things to learn over someone who has skills but doesn't actually give a crap about the product or company any day of the week, for the types of companies I'm trying to build. That doesn't mean my or your companies needs/goals are the same.
I spent a year at a TA at a University and in that time I had two students who were really stellar. They were outstanding programmers. They paid attention detail and wrote elegant but easy to read code that worked. I took the time to offer both of them my assistance if they needed any help after graduation.
I play video games with one of them. The other one got out of CS and changed her major to something art related.
It's a ridiculously basic problem. It doesn't filter good candidates, it filters terrible candidates.
Every startup I've been a part of has picked up a few extremely passionate but not necessarily fully qualified people along the way. It's hard to turn down an enthusiastic candidate who really, really likes your company, so they're often given a chance.
Some of them turned out to be excellent teammates who did everything necessary to grow into the role.
But sadly, many of them just wanted to be startup people without doing the startup grunt work. Worst case, someone with a lot of passion that goes in a different direction than the founders can become a drag on the company or create a lot of conflict. (NOTE: I'm speaking generally, not implying this is the case with the linked author)
Passionate people are generally good when their skills and wants align with the company, but if they're not well-aligned then the passion just amplifies every conflict.
> Passionate people are generally good when their skills and wants align with the company, but if they're not well-aligned then the passion just amplifies every conflict.
I'm starting to see where my original comment was definitely oversimplifying the depths of this topic.
and generally in these situations I find my criticism to be too deep and cross cutting to really be accepted or be really actionable.
so yeah, I think dialing up the passion just increases the magnitude of the risk or reward.
I agree, sort of. All things being equal, you want someone who has that sparkle, that enthusiasm.
But things often aren't equal and people are really prone to hiring who they like, over who will get the job done and it's a real problem.
It's tough, really. There are many highly disagreeable software developers I've met who are good at their job, but you just want to get away from, and then there are starry eyed social people who are fun but terrible at their job.
A software dev that's good and still has some sparkle in them after being in the industry for a decade is like a unicorn in my experience. I don't know what it means but it does make me sad.
I couldn't get to work there (I really wanted to) so created a "read fiction on your email" side-project[1], which evolved to a more ambitious "substack for fiction" project: https://www.confabulistas.com.br (for Brazilian market, so in portuguese).
[0] "Kind of" because I couldn't even apply. Very early on I exchanged a few emails with the founder and they wouldn't hire remote. Then months later a recruiter reached out, but they wouldn't hire remote still. Then they started to hire remote, so I sent an email to the recruiter to apply, but they only hire remote in the US. So I wasn't exactly "rejected", but prevented from applying.
[1] https://www.serialliterature.com It got to the front page of HN when I launched.
That's my experience at least, have worked for some US companies remotely from europe that way anyways
that memory is pretty tarnished by all the other times I couldn't even get very much done because the night team is asleep and its completely unclear where we are - not only did they not make any progress but they actually left things in a bit of a mess.
I ended up finding a job exactly like that on a small startup, so I am happy. But next time I am in the market, I will for sure apply to those "Remote(US)" jobs. Even though, in Substack case, the internal recruiter that told me that I couldn't apply.
Being hired as a foreign contractor makes tax and regulations issues easier. If you are growing rapidly, You can open an LLC in America then operate as a US contractor. You can work with larger and established companies that way. It would be easier if you have a business partner in America.
Hiring contractor has its pros and cons for both parties but usuaully it is quite different than hiring an employee.
Always thought that generally contractors are a better deal for companies (less tax burden, no paid holidays, easier to hire/fire, etc). Unless maybe when people here word 'contractor' they assume they will have to pay 2x more and that's why they prefer perm-employees? Or is there are any law in US that make it harder for companies to work this way?
Since this is a difficult subject, YMMV
One word answer (Pick One): Legitimacy/Accountability/Trust.
> Is there any reason why you need LLC in America to work with larger and established companies?
Companies need people they can hold accountable for the work they do. If you are an American LLC it means that you are a legitimate business that they can interact through proper legal channels and you are legally liable and held accountable under the contract. They are not going to take you to international court for breach of contract but if you are an American business you are fair game.
Also this allows you to sue client in failure of payment or breach of contracts. You have easy access to proper contract engagement services like escrow, small claims court etc.
With larger business you have higher degrees of authority as you come as a business based in America. It makes taxation and legal fillings easier for them. Money laundering acts, audit, tax fraud, wire fraud etc. have extremely strict laws and have serious consequences for a larger business. I have worked with people who are subjected to FinRa (wallstreet people). I had to file proper paperwork or there is a risk of them getting audited.
> Is there any law or limitation why they wouldn't like to work with e.g. European Self-Employed or LTD companies?
It is very grey. You have to file paperwork and send documentation that you are a legit tax paying business in your local country. You have audits and internal control team in large organization that cross checks every transaction made to individuals outside the company. You have to back it up with proper paperwork. Kind of a hassle for larger companies but if a startup, small business or an individual is hiring you that is no problem.
> Unless maybe when people here word 'contractor' they assume they will have to pay 2x more and that's why they prefer perm-employees? Or is there are any law in US that make it harder for companies to work this way?
There are some hassle but it mostly comes down how bad they want you. For individuals, startups and small business the pros far outweigh the cons. I am affordable, I am culturally on point, I am a decent dev. I submit invoice, I get paid. That's it.
But for larger companies there are some legal hassle. But if they really want you, they will find a way. They can hire you as an employee, or ask you send over paperwork as a business. The recruiter can and will make arrangements to hire you. But often times they could hire locally and not risk getting asked questions about you.
Very long answer but again grain of salt.
[1]: https://www.athensresearch.org/
One of my luckiest breaks was when a college that rejected me the first time around accepted me the second time I applied. Really grateful for that opportunity.
The fact that they have created their own site is not a reflection on Codecademy, just that the interview process is not necessarily great or even that they would still not be a good fit for CA for whatever reason.
I don't like the tone of naming the company then basically sticking two fingers up at them "look at me now". There is a tonne of stuff involved in these sorts of sites and we will see whether they can keep up or not.
That’s true, me neither…
I call them spite-sites.
Either way, it's always nice to see alternatives, thanks for sharing
Lots of different situations could apply.
Tip: Add it to your HN profile.
Because possibly that's not what they want to do, build a widget.
What about hiring them to replace the whole engineering team, saving on salaries? Then you’re fucked when that person gets bored and leaves.
Hyper passionate individuals don’t make good hires. They might make good founders though.
The complexity though of making something like this though is definitely intermediate+.
I had my own startup, and built many projects first-hand, but I'm not going to de-anonymize myself for the sake of argument.
In my opinion, it should always be hard. OP had a good launch and delivered, which is something that's incredible and that only < 1% of devs do, especially by themselves. The design is terrible, but the idea and execution was great.
I also love the fact that he did this out of wanting to prove that he could do the work, and not taking the L from the rejection.
There are legions of engineers perusing HN that have double+ your experience sans the narcissism.
It does not feel like a modern "professional" app though, the design is extremely lacking and not something you'd see from an intermediate+ frontend dev.
The "New lesson" part doesn't work because it's behind an auth check, but there's no error message and it's displayed as an unauth'd user.
There's a bunch of console errors everywhere for undefined objects.
It's basically a reskinned version of this https://riju.codes/, so nothing of major complexity was done here.
That said, delivering this is impressive, especially for a more junior developer. This is major step towards building up your career and I'm looking forward to see more!
PS, did you interview me last year at Codecademy? ;)
Great that you’ve pointed out a couple of bugs but I’ve seen “senior” developers who couldn’t conceive of, build and deploy anything close to this.
There’s enough here to build a SaaS business out, and the OP can be CEO, CTO or whatever title they want
I just meant to give him fair feedback to keep him growing. Design is subjective, so if most here people love it, it must mean it appeals to its audience!
True, it feels better that the standard "modern professional" design that you see nowadays, that it is just boring. Here you see some personality and functionality.
I also had trouble reading the About... tooltip. I'd probably move that to the sidebar?
This title seems sensational, and it’s misleading to people not familiar with Code Academy. Considering that, it doesn’t sell me on this product. In fact it makes me not even want to look at the lessons offered, since the premise feels dishonest.
Edit: I don’t think I’m the only one that read it that way based in other comments. Honest mistake, it looks like English is not the authors first language.
From his blog:
> I've applied to work at Codecademy three times, once in 2014, again in 2015, and most recently in 2020. I've been rejected all three times. I wanted to prove to myself I was capable of building something like it, so I decided to build my own version.
...there's a boy buried at the bottom? i hope that's a typo!
I tend to have a similar reaction to being excluded.
If you’re interested in writing your own tutorials for your students, I think codeamigo would be great for that. Feel free to email me (email in profile) if you want help with that!
If you're looking for a great free intro to programming, I recommend "Learn to Program", available at https://pine.fm/LearnToProgram. It's concise, introduces the reader to a very approachable programming language (Ruby), and geared toward total beginners. Coincidentally, I went on to work at the same company as the author later down the line which was pretty cool.
Edit: there might be a bug in that lesson, thanks!
Would you have anything to help a kid build a blog and learn by doing it?
One small request: add an option to move the step/info column from the far left to the far right.
const App = ( <div> <h1>Hello Bitcoin!</h1> </div> );
curious about version 0.0.2 ;-)