You can use Code School for free next weekend | Hacker News Reader

You can use Code School for free next weekend

codeschool.com

118 pointstehwebguy56 comments

I was mildly interested until I read the T&C at the bottom. Not being available to current or past users, agreeing to learn more about New Relic, and explicitly stating no time extensions being possible came across as overly negative for 2 days of free access.

What you say simply isn't true. The Free Weekend is offered to all users (past or present) as long as they don't currently have a subscription to Code School.

Time extensions aren't stated because this is a limited-time event.

New Relic is our sponsor, in exchange with the agreement to be contacted by them via email you obtain access to all our content for 48 hours — something that would otherwise cost you $25. Is that really unreasonable?

> What you say simply isn't true.

What did I say that isn't true? Negative T&C gave me pause about trying Code School. This turned me off forever.

> The Free Weekend is offered to all users (past or present) as long as they don't currently have a subscription to Code School.

This is the only statement I see that differs from my interpretation of the T&C. The line in question, "Free Weekend is not available for current or past subscribers and is intended to allow new Code School users to sample the benefits of a Code School education."

How common is it for a current or past user to not have a disqualifying subscription? The wording makes it clear (intentionally or not) that the promo is for new users.

> Is that really unreasonable?

I didn't say it was unreasonable, but that the T&C as a whole appeared to me as overly negative for what they protect, 2 days of free content valued at $25.

> What did I say that isn't true?

Actually, I was wrong. The terms incorrectly stated that past subscribers couldn't have access to the Free Weekend. That's what was untrue and has now been fixed.

From the T&C:

"[...] and by doing so, agree to learn more about New Relic."

How is that even enforceable and what does that even mean?

Presumably you are subscribed to their email list.

To be fair, the terms are all the way at the bottom of the page.

They e-mailed me earlier today, with the message "New Relic wants to buy you a free weekend of Code School to celebrate!" however, after typing in my e-mail on the promo page, I was told I was not eligible! Have now added Codeschool to my e-mail block list.

You could have just unsubsidised. This will just do unnecessary harm to their email delivery rates.

Crappy business decisions deserve crappy responses. Don't advertise to your existing customers and then tell them they're ineligible for the product you spammed them with.

Codeschool has made crappy decisions in the past. I paid for a course and shortly after they made it free (but the free version had ads). They also discontinued said course so I can't even watch it anymore. Yeah ... they lost me as a customer.

Maybe that was the plan?

Emailing people offers they can't take advantage of is not good practice.

That sounds like a bug. If you want to help us resolve this for you, reach out to support@codeschool.com with your account details and I can look at what happened. Otherwise, sorry to lose you on such a sour note.

Code School is not for people who know how to program. I found their material very basic and slow, even for things like node that I did not know at the time. I felt like the same material could be absorbed much quicker using other means (blogs, etc.)

That's a rather bold statement. We've helped quite a few people with prior programming experience learn new technologies and languages.

It's certainly possible that you're too experienced for the levels of expertise we aim for. In that case, of course, there are surely more appropriate resources for you out there.

In April of 2011 we pitched codecademy type service at a startup weekend. It didn't get picked as an idea to work on but after seeing reaction to codecademy we created CodePupil and then everyone and their mom created a codecademy clone too.

There is room for more/better, but to do these types of start-ups/concepts it takes a ton of testing and iteration.

Good to see codeschool is still in the game, they were around prior to codecademy.

I've tried codeacademy briefly before (Spent ~8 hours total on there). After only 10 minutes on codeschool it feels a lot better. It seems like it's much easier to learn it show you 'real life applications' which is one thing that I thought codeacadmy didn't do well.

I'm definetly going to be spending some time on codeschool, seems like a great site.

Insightful review! What about HN? It seems you've spent about 10 minutes here. That should qualify you to review it, right?

I can't tell if you're comment is meant to be sarcastic ('10 minutes is not long enough to review') or not but i'm going to go with not:

I've been lurking on HN for a few months, have recently come back to it after a month hiatus and wanted to comment on something so signed up this morning :)

I love this site, I'm usually a redditor but I find that there is much more interesting and gripping content here whereas reddit is more of a quick laugh. I do find that I can easily waste an hour on the front page here but I just learn so much in that hour! I'm sure that I'll stick around and find out lots of new stuff.

Go back to Reddit

Wow, bitter much? People can lurk on HN without signing up.

Compare this to these other paysites where they cannot judge the material until they have paid for it.

Pretty sure the allegation is that the parent only signed up to post a positive comment about codeschool, hence: spam.

Well, I didn't sign up just to comment on it, You can see that by looking on my comment history: My first comment was about the uses of facebook. Ah well.

I've been meaning to sign up so it's a good option for me, thanks for the link. Am I supposed to get an email now or next week? Using a throwaway email that sometimes gets blocked, so just wondering.

You should receive a confirmation email soon, and you'll receive a link to access your Free Weekend next week when it starts.

How is their Node.js course? Are there comparable courses out there for learning Nodejs from scratch?

I really liked it. Good introduction, but it won't offer too much if you've worked with Nodejs in the past. It goes over the basics, some refactoring, then introduces socket.io and redis. Their Rails courses are also quite excellent.

I too wonder about this question :)

My series, "Let's Code: Test-Driven JavaScript" covers Node.js, along with a lot of other material. It's intended for professional developers.

http://www.letscodejavascript.com

That's great and all, but why pay for an online coding school in the first place? The web has a ton of freely available programming learning materials.

Why pay to watch movies on Netflix when there are so many free videos on youtube?

Why pay to buy games on steam when there are so many free games on sourceforge.net?

Why pay for Google Apps or mail chimp or any of those million other tools when there are free alternatives?

I would guess codeschool is trying to prove to us that it is worth paying for.

There's a difference between same content and same medium.

CodeSchool has a consistent quality, with professionally done videos. By now, the site has enough of a reputation, that you can show around your profile that lists what challenges and courses you've passed.

Doesn't the old-fashioned Lynda.com offer much better videos? At first blush, Codeschool doesn't seem to be teaching so much as introducing. The JavaScript lessons seem way too high-level, and way too focused on frameworks and libraries (these are important, but only once you have the basics down).

I hope there's a kickstarter project to make some badges for challenges passed. People will then be able to sew them on their shirt, to show how good a programmer they are.

Because people learn differently. I learn a ton from google searches every day at work but new topics are better served by a structured program.

When I learned Rails I paid $100 or so to Hartl and another $30 for the Obie book. That's one hour of consultant work to have people who know their stuff tell you about it.

Because people learn differently.

Agreed. Online schools are fantastic, because anyone anywhere can work through them at anytime.

At the end of the day, some people need a little more interaction. There are in-person mobile programs like The Disruption Institute (http://www.disruptioninstitute.com) with teachers & mentors. They can really help if you get stuck on a tough problem you're trying to work through, need a concept explained further, etc.

While it's not the only resource of its kind, it does feature in-browser coding and feedback. You have to get through those exercises in order to continue. While I felt it was far from thorough (you can often ape the examples you've been shown without really understanding what you're doing), it's a nice way to get your feet wet by taking baby steps.

They also provide freebies/discounts, like free Peepcode screencasts, discounts on Michael Hartl's screencasts, etc (varies by course). I personally feel it gives me its $25 (often $20 - you get $5 vouchers for courses you complete) value.

Most people don't know what to learn, or where to find the resources.

When you google around, you either find something too advanced or to "beginner" and it gets frustrating.

When I started learning how to code, I was learning JavaScript, cause I didn't really get the "concept" of web apps, back end and front end. I didn't even know there was a concept to "get"... "Rails? What's that?"

So really, that's what you're paying for with these online code schools, someone to show you the way.

>So really, that's what you're paying for with these online code schools, someone to show you the way.

No, just a way not the way. The confusion you point out even makes light of it: there are many ways.

My biggest gripe about Codeschool is that they switched to 'Paths,' seemingly to compete with Treehouse. I much preferred the prior iterations of the product.

I'm also not fond of partnerships pitched as courses. I'm not sure if revenue is low, or if the money offered by partners (such as New Relic and Github) is so good that they can't resist, but I lost interest in the product after the TryGit course.

Both Treehouse and Codeschool are decent for beginners, but even amateur programmers will outgrow them quickly as their thirst for new knowledge outgrows the offerings. This is one of the reasons I like paying per course instead of per month.

If you are new to programming and want to start learning quickly, I'd recommend paying for Peepcode, Codeschool, Treehouse, and anything else you can get your hands on. Having access to a variety of content and styles can be invaluable.

If you're looking to learn iOS and know how to write other software, skip Code School and go to iTunes U.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/course/coding-together-developin...

Or you could skip iTunes U and check out Try Objective-C for free right now: http://tryobjectivec.codeschool.com/ ;-)

For the people who actually sign up for this and are learning rails -- ie have done the M. Hartl tutorial but might not have seen many projects live -- take a look a Rails Best Practices.

Its definitely doable within a weekend.

If you're a newbie it says, which I know I'm not so keep that in mind.

Edit: whilst saying noobs it actually just means subscribers are out, anyone already with an account seems eligible.

We meant "Code School newbs" as in people who haven't tried Code School before, not programming newbies.

IMO, there should be a free trial period who users who sign up. At least a day, or one premium course? But yeah, looking forward to seeing what Code School is all about

They have seven courses that are always free, mostly intro stuff but they are worth checking out: Ruby, RoR, Objective-C, DevTools, Git, R & jQuery

http://www.codeschool.com/courses#all

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I wish these courses would be less newbish. I might not know Objective-C, but I know what a variable is.

We try never to make assumptions that would exclude beginners in our intro courses. As someone already mentioned, it's easy to jump ahead if you already know that stuff.

If someone isn't as familiar as you are with variables and we don't cover it, they might give up because too many things go over their head. That's not what we want.

Bear in mind, you're judging Code School based on our more beginner-oriented intro courses, whereas most of our paid courses are aimed at the intermediate level. That's why we like having an event like the Free Weekend, so you can get a good taste of all that we offer.

This was one of the great things about the book Accelerated C++ when I was picking up C++ but had already been programming for a few years. This sort of thing seems harder to find for other languages though.

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You can. Codeschool courses allow you to skip the video presentation and attempt the exercises.

Does anyone else find this to be a cruel kindness to geeks given that it coincides with the release of Arrested Development Season 4?

We didn't plan for it but it's going to make for a perfect little refreshing break for people between courses and we're definitely going to have Netflix playing in the office while we work to keep everything running smoothly.

I don't think this was a huge mistake. ;-)

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