Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials | Hacker News Reader

Codecademy Becomes A Platform: Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials

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148 pointszds24 comments

Everybody here is complaining about the money thing but I'm just bothered that the "platform" seems to be paradoxically...not programmable enough. I mean, there's been a lot of criticism about codeacademy's populist ambitions lately, and the core of them to me is that you can't bridge regular johny's knowledge to programming knowledge by just presenting them with an esoteric text adventure in a javascript command line. People can't be so easily compelled to play text adventures nowadays, especially if the game commands don't relate at all to their everyday language and experience. I think in order to produce succesful learning experiences for noobs, which is what they seem to be aspiring to (I mean, maybe Mayor Bloomberg has a hacker soul, who knows), you have to give them a real inmediate need for it. Like - when Myspace forced everybody to learn to get under the hood to customize their profiles. Myspace created more programming literacy among non-coders than I think Codeacademy ever could if it remained like this! They have to offer fundamentally different ways of giving lessons if they really want to get there, other than command line games. Someone out there mentioned ifttt.com being a better way to learn about programming basics and getting people interested in the possibilities. I can think of a few others.

As I said I have not looked too much into what their lesson framework looks like, but if they offer a choice between js, ruby and python...that's already too narrow. If """we""" want to educate the general population about programming, it has to be way broader than that, and the framework that supports such education has to be more programmable

Mayor Bloomberg was a hacker actually. He started out working in a financial company, saw a need for a better way of getting information and quit to build the Bloomberg terminals which turned into the Bloomberg company.

Good point about MySpace -- I think you're spot on.

Teaching the general population how to code is a pipe dream. There is a hard limit on the number of people who can (and want to) become programmers, even at the hobbyist level.

These sites are great as accelerators for those who would eventually learn to code no matter how hard or inconvenient the process was. The sites are also a great way to introduce programming to people who otherwise wouldn't have known they'd enjoy it. But I think we're kidding ourselves if we believe that even 25% of the people signed up for Code Year actually start coding. Programming (not programming quizzes) is hard. People, in general, don't like to do hard things.

I wrote a lot more about this here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3509620

"The site doesn’t have any current plans to pay contributors, but to help incentivize users to write high-quality courses, Codecademy aims to provide significant exposure to the best lesson creators."

You should figure out a way to do this right now, you have a product that makes me say "shut up and take my money" and I have no way of giving it to you. Instead I give money to your competitors (codeschool, treehouse, etc.) for similar services. If you have already developed the platform to create courses open it up so people can make content and get paid.

Etc = http://trybloc.com, http://CodePupil.com ... Anyone know others ?

http://rubymonk.com

http://udemy.com/ http://codelesson.com/ (from both ends, earn money as a course director, spend money as the student :-))

Personally I haven't tried it yet but I saw an interview Kevin Rose did to the founder on Foundation and the idea seems promising (also gave great insight on how to rate and encourage your employees but thats off-topic) It kinds of add badges, achievements, challenges and more stuff to try and make the learning experience and process a more enjoyable activity.

Treehouse - http://teamtreehouse.com/

Exactly. I really love CodeYear look forward to every Monday and the new lessons. But some non-profit approach would be a nice option so that people could donate money directly to the course creators. On the other hand the lack of other courses makes me stick to it and not switch horses all the time.

I remember, I think this was in an RSAnimate video from Dan Pinker[1], and one interesting fact was that once you offered people money to do something, they had far less motivation to accomplish the task. I think offering money for the lessons creates the wrong tone--I'd personally rather create something for free than have a possibility of getting paid.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

I think you have framed the problem incorrectly. If you are given the option to either make your course paid or fee you include people who are motivated for different reasons. If you wanted to create a free class, would the fact of having an option to create a paid course motivate you any less? I think that codecademy should create a structure similar to Apple's ibooks platform where you have the option to create paid content if you so wish.

Codecademy is smart - they realize that collecting use/accomplishment data on high-quality lessons carries much more upside than trying to sell the content created on their platform.

How is this smart?

Either you get money directly, or your left trying to monetize -accomplishment- data? Are we expecting the ad-market targeting newbie programmers to explode or something?

What would be a good way to have crowdsourced content that pays its creators a fair share?

Honest question; I am looking for insight in this area.

Payment could be tied to a semi-annual or quarterly code contest where students compete in different "events". This could all be live-code-streamed. Judges are a collection of ______ (fill in the blank). The better the students in a particular course do, the more money that course creator gets. Funds for this prize could even be kickstarted, or funded by non-profits in the free-education domain, or through other means (prizes could even be free services from relevant start-ups?).

Just an idea for a jumping-off point.

...allow people to add a flatr button to their content?

Just one thought.

I know Ruby very well (programming with it since 2006) and I have been professionally trained as a teacher. Yet "significant exposure" is not an incentive for me. I already have enough exposure to get the programming gigs that I want. My incentives would either be (1) money or (2) the joy of teaching. Since I have hardly any free time, my only incentive would be (1) money.

"significant exposure" is, always has, and always will be a draw to teens and 20-somethings. It loses its luster as we move into our 30s and has zero draw in the 40s and later (at least in professional circles). But, it's like the line from the movie "Dazed and Confused": "You know what I like about high school girls? I keep getting older but they stay the same age." There's always new blood out there willing to exchange blood, sweat, and tears for "significant exposure".

What sites like CodeAcademy, et al have to worry about is maintaining the quality of training from one batch of "not burned out yet" trainers to the next. Because if you aren't paying people, "significant exposure" only has a short life span.

This could potentially be an awesome platform for tool/framework developers to implement the 'tutorial' sections of their offerings.

Like it

Disclaimer: I don't know enough about the legality/planned dev of CodeAcademy to know if this is actually feasible.

It seems like one of the best ways to compensate creators (and support another young company) would be to integrate the flattr platform. members, would create CodeAcademy lessons and at the end/completion of each lesson, users would be prompted to rate the course, write a few sentences of feedback (e.g. "What was the most interesting part of the lesson? What did you learn? What do you still have difficulty understanding?) and then are asked to click the flattr button and flatter the course author if they feel it benefited them.

Benefits include payment to authors, another metric to evaluate course quality, and a payment scheme that doesn't feel like it is draining your user's wallet.

Though again, I defer to my disclaimer.

"Now Anyone Can Write Programming Tutorials"

Nice move, but there's something about the article title that rubs me the wrong way.

And I'm put off by the restriction on which languages you can teach with.

Anyone know why it is restricted to Javascript, Ruby and Python?

Ever tried codecademy? They teach by real-time evaluating your code. They just haven't built the real-time Ioke evaluator yet.

As someone who is interested in crowdsourced e-learning startups, what are some good models for user-created content? Ie how to create the content, curate it, reward it, etc?

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