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Comment by kyt | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised they are looking to translate the site, considering I think their English version is of mediocre quality. I have been programming for 10+ years and had a chance to go through a lot of the exercises with my girlfriend. It looks like the exercises are crowdsourced from several different authors and therefore lack flow. Additionally, I felt the exercises did not explain enough, or were downright confusing, especially to a novice. For example, one solution required the use of "&&" despite it not being taught in any other previous lesson.

I still recommend books for anyone that is serious about learning to code.

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"I felt the exercises did not explain enough, or were downright confusing"

"I still recommend books for anyone that is serious about learning to code."

Agree although I haven't tried the site since January.

"looking to translate the site, considering I think their English version is of mediocre quality"

Expand expand expand before getting your own house in order. It sounds impressive to investors and future investors if you've got a large footprint and as many users as possible. The experience and utility of codecademy is of course of less importance and that info certainly isn't going to be released. Other than we will most likely have some carefully placed stories about someone who was able to give up pole dancing because they learned to code in order to support their 4 children and go to medical school.

If you're looking for free books, I'm a big fan of Chris Pine's Learn to Program and Eloquent Javascript. Both have online versions and EJ's online version is far better than a paper book, due to its console.

As far as sites teaching coding, I'm a fan of http://www.codeschool.com/

Most of its content requires a $25/month membership, but last I checked just its free content is more and higher quality than what you can get at codecademy

really appreciate your comments here - i'm the cofounder of codecademy.

we're working on fixing a lot of these problems. much of our content is community generated and moderated/rated by the community. we're getting better at course quality and won't stop until you'd recommend us over books. thanks again - feel free to email me if you have any further questions!

"we're working on fixing a lot of these problems"

If you are working on fixing and improving your site that is what you should be spending your time on.

Not doing this:

"“We will launch foreign-language sites in German, Spanish, Japanese, Russian and Chinese,” he said. The translation is being done by the site’s users."

Regardless of whether the translation is done by the site's users my feeling is that that is a distraction to you right now in coming up with the best product you can for your initial market.

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