How Codecademy (YC S11) Snagged 200,000 Users in Seven Days
forbes.com
forbes.com
It was fun and interesting for a while. But the instructions began to get cumbersome. You had to read 3-4 paragraphs just to learn that they wanted you to write a simple, one line loop.
I spent more time reading instructions than thinking about or writing code.
I was using K & R at the same time, and the contrast was instructive. In K & R you're given a concise description of a feature, and then a short exercise that forces you to think about how to use it.
In the final few weeks, my only motivation to keep going with Codecademy was the thought that "at least I'll have these badges that show what I know". That was a pretty big warning sign.
I stopped when I realized I wasn't even learning the concepts in the lessons. There simply wasn't enough coding practice for them to stick.
I haven't been there for a few weeks, so perhaps things have gotten better. But from what I saw, they needed to work on cutting out the cruft in their instructions. Pedagogy is difficult.
I should say that the addition of the Q and A forums was a very good change. I have no doubt you'll introduce many more as you learn what works and what doesn't.
Another useful change that I remember from the final weeks was adding a review unit at the start of each lesson - before that I often found myself forgetting syntax.
Both courses/companies have been great for me though as a non-programmer. I think these companies and others like them have bright futures.
That's not to say Codecademy hasn't been useful. If anything, it was the service that helped me get a grasp of javascript, which I'm now implementing in my personal projects. But I wish there was more.
I would really love to see how the drop out rates are. At one point it seemed to me the only ones left are those who already are decent programmers and just love to discuss semantics in the forum sections. I had convinced three friends of mine to start with it as well and over time each single one dropped out.
FWIW, I don't mean to be caustic. I honestly can't believe that anyone who writes posivitely about it has used it.
Udacity is challenging, engaging and helps me learn better than anything I've seen yet.
I've started with Udacity CS101 and it's much better. I still think the instruction from the professor isn't the greatest, but it's good enough for me to be able to keep progressing, even if it means I have to repeat a unit to understand the concepts.
From what I went through I would say its a good platform to learn syntax and keyword definitions e.g. "this is a function" but it doesnt address the application part. and no having a step by step project at the end of the lesson does not address the application part. application needs to teach how to think in programming, how to take problems conveyed in english and solve them with programing.
lastly, ive found technical errors in the way instructions are worded. what they are asking for in english is not exactly what they expect as the code solution. needless to say this frustrates beginners.
its very hard to teach.
if you have more (or specific) comments, please shoot me an email - contact(at)codecademy(dot)com. thanks!
The 0% completion numbers might look exceptionally bad for Codeyear as there was so much of hype surrounding it back then (Bloomberg and all..). But that is understandable, and the founders could not have done much about it.
I find I spend a lot more time coding when doing a Udacity lesson.
i am curious how far the people who signed up during this big spurt are getting through the program, and if it can be evaluated against competitors like Treehouse?
overall i am a big fan of competition in the e-learning space, because it's a topic that hasn't receive much attention in the past (Kahn Academy is likely to thank).