Codecademy (YC S11) Raises $2.5 Million To Teach You How To Code | Hacker News Reader

Codecademy (YC S11) Raises $2.5 Million To Teach You How To Code

techcrunch.com

128 pointsnickfrost39 comments

Have others gone through their second JS course? I thought the first course was great (albeit a bit rigid) - but the second course was really terrible. Most of the "interactivity" was just hitting enter, and reading another blurb about JavaScript.

Codecademy will live or die on the quality of its courses, and it gives me pause to see them publish an iffy course so early on. I hope they raise the editorial bar as they release the additional courses they've teased.

Well I hope they will take this feedback and take that into account. They are new and going to make mistakes.

Hopefully they're testing out different types of lessons on different people and gauging proper metrics.

We'll definitely take the feedback into account - we're perfecting analytics that should tell us the same thing. Feel free to email us more feedback!

Ya, agreed. The second one was nowhere near as good as the first. Also have been wondering when new courses will come out. I finished the first two in two days (one each day) and was disappointed there weren't any more. It's been about a month since I last used it and there haven't been any new courses added.

Agreed. I do wish there were more lessons.

On the way!

This is really a fantastic idea. Although there was an article on HN recently about not dropping out, I have to say I feel that computer science is a field that requires no formal education to be successful (economically, and intellectually) in.

Also I find something detrimental about college to the individual, and I'm thinking in a individualistic sense.

Anyways, I'd love to see sites like this pop up, and micro grant programs around them to help encourage individuals to build something great.

I think you mean computer programming here, which I completely agree with. Computer science is an entirely different beast.

It's one thing to learn how to lay bricks, but another to learn how to architect a skyscraper.

I'd clarify it as, programming as an engineering field, but not programming as a science. So yeah, essentially the same thing.

Interestingly enough, at North Carolina State University, Computer Science is part of the College of Engineering, and the coursework largely follows the same path as their other engineering programs (complete with the standard E 101 course at the beginning and a senior design project at the end), albeit more theoretically focused than most.

Right. The University of Michigan does the same thing. But there was discussion on the first day about how computers aren't grouped into science or engineering, because the broadness of compsci provides opportunity in both fields.

Vision might be an example of what I'm trying to explain, moving from researching how to get a computer to see, to something that is practically being used for face recognition and license plate recognition. At the same time there is still more research on vision to be done, especially when paired with robotics.

Architects can also focus on design, which reduces the need for a rigorous engineering training. An architect doesn't have to be a construction engineer.

For example, Tadao Ando started as a truck driver and became one of the world's most celebrated architects with no formal training: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tadao_Ando

The software world is missing a job title that would approximate the role of a design-oriented architect. There are plenty of software architects, but this is usually a misleading title because they design infrastructure rather than public-facing spaces. The software architect is more like a "software municipal engineer".

It's called Information Architect.

America has been discussing the lack of females that code for some time, but I've never seen women show more interest in programming than when they discover this site.

They're really onto something and I wish them success!

thanks!

With the risk of sounding naive or out of place - am I the only one surprised at this idea raising $2.5m? Not that the site isn't cool and well done, but I can't figure out how developing and hosting a site like this, say for the next five years, may cost something in that range.

What would they possibly need that kind of money for?

hiring smart engineers.

Their problem is more likely going to be great content not technology, don't you think?

Check out how much Khan Academy raised :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy#History

Education is the next big thing. Recent public classes in databases, machine learning and AI from Stanford is proof enough that even the most traditional learning ops are looking at the Khan meme very seriously.

If anything , these guys have raised frugally and probably will be a big hit in approximately 24 months from now.

You can't find millions of post that teach you the basics of math, physics, etc.

But you can find millions of posts that teach you programming, from way down to the high mountains of programming.

The difference, though, is that the money that Khan Academy has raised is donations. They're not investors who are seeking a (financial) return on their capital. Education is a tough space for startups trying to make money: http://avichal.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/why-education-startu...

Salman had options to go either way, he chose it to be structured differently due to philosophical reasons. There are other folks who are doing pretty well:

http://www.vccircle.com/500/news/niit-sells-element-k-corp-t...

People people and more people.

The greatest cost of any startup is going to be hiring and paying good people (and in Code Academy's case, perhaps teachers / education experts as well).

They are also probably raising more in order to weather out any possible drying up of VC in the future.

We're hiring a team to make Codecademy even better (faster).

I like it, but this space is getting crowded. I wonder how these sites will start to differentiate themselves?

codecademy.com, codeschool.com, teamtreehouse.com, lynda.com, et. al.

I'm building one now too :)

Codecademy offers jump right in type of learning, (interactive), while the others seem to have a different style(a lot of video, along with interactivity).

Everyone learns differently so there is the avenue for many.

Congrats to Codecademy!

I thought that initially, but long term it looks better. After all, there are lots of different book publishers in the programming/tech space alone and they're all doing OK. With their potential to reach even larger numbers of people further down the skills ladder, these interactive tuition sites are still at the leading edge of a potential explosion of providers (solely IMHO, of course).

I participate in the round. Congrats guys!

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, I have to say that I still can't use the site due to how they handle keyboard events. It breaks with my normal keyboard layout: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3120338

It's great to see them teach JavaScript. It's a really nice language and lets people do shiny things immediately.

JavaScript doesn't have the barriers to entry that other languages do: it is dynamically typed, already installed and fairly transparently tied into both a UI framework and distribution channel.

I also rather like the interactive approach they take. I learned programming by reading random tutorials and using Notepad, but I think I would have learned faster with something like this.

Really cool. Hope they add some stuff for other languages soon!

soon enough!

This is very exciting for me. I have a communications background, and zero coding experience. (I've tinkered with Wordpress, HTML, and CSS, but nothing anymore hardcore than that). I've started using code academy and it seems great thus far. However, as a non-coder, they do seem to run through a lot of stuff quite quickly - am I supposed to remember everything I learn after I run the code and steps just once?

Just playing with it just now. Very cool site, the sign-up is super easy and quick. And you just dive straight into the programming. This more hands-on approach I find better for learning than just watching online videos. Congrats to them for the round!

I tried "2/0" operation in the console. If this is for programmers, I think the result should be "divide by zero", not "infinity". But I think the idea of the startup is good and the UI is catchy.

Congrats to the team! I've run through the exercises they've posted and I think they're really on to a cool learning format here. I'm excited to see where they go from here.

thanks! we're excited to show you (soon).

Thanks for all the comments and votes folks! I agree that Codecademy has a ways to go until they are a really effective way to learn coding, but it's a start. :)

This is a great idea, and the site is fun to try. Congrats, and good luck!

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