Hacker News Reader

Comment by teach | Hacker News Reader

I've had a couple dozen students working through many of the CodeCademy programs this semester as an experiment. And most of the Javascript lessons currently on the site are just barely above mediocre.

View on HN

Hi teach - would love to hear your feedback after working through it for a semester. Feel free to shoot us an email!

The core problem is what you've identified in your blog. You assignments don't explain many core concepts that students struggle with, they move WAY too quickly through concepts, and there's no coherent sequence. For example, in the middle of the "Conditionals in JavaScript" assignment/tutorial, you throw in arrays and loops. Both are MUCH harder than conditionals.

Zed Shaw, on the other hand, does a marvelous job of not covering concepts until the prerequisite knowledge is already in place.

Mostly I agree, except for his introduction of %r very early on in python the hard way. What %r does in the context of the lesson is clear, but many students ask why and what it's for, and the complete answer is much more difficult.

Frequently, I just settle for "it adds quotes around strings" because the truth is a bit much to handle at that point.

What makes you say that?

I have students that have been programming (in Java) for two years and have coded simple arcade games from scratch. These same students will spend more than five minutes unsuccessfully trying to get a single CodeCademy exercise to work. (I don't mean lesson or section: I mean a single page.) Some of the "tutorials" are so poorly written that it's just completely unclear what the author wants the student to do. I can't imagine that a student with no programming experience and no mentor is having a fun experience.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com