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I was rejected by Codecademy three times, so I built my own
- petee 5y agoWhat does 'rejected' mean, I thought they let you sign up free? Either way, it's always nice to see alternatives, thanks for sharing
- camillomiller 5y agoI think he means as a teacher?
- efbbrown 5y agoI think OP probably means he was rejected from working for codecademy. Their loss judging by codeamigo.
- duxup 5y agoPossible loss, on the other hand "this guy wants to build his own site / make the decisions" might not be a great hire if you're trying to hire a worker drone to build a given widget. Lots of different situations could apply.
- plondon514 5y agoI would've been very happy to contribute on any level. I have a desire and passion to be in the ed-tech space. Eventually I just figured that the lowest barrier to entry was building my own site.
- wila 5y agoCool site and congrats on a successful launch! Tip: Add it to your HN profile.
- plondon514 5y agoThanks for the tip!
- officialchicken 5y agoThe only possible situation here is "A-types hire A-types; B-types hire C-types". If a single applicant can replace your entire engineering team (which definitely happened in this case) why wouldn't you hire them to build a widget?
- duxup 5y ago>If a single applicant can replace your entire engineering team (which definitely happened in this case) why wouldn't you hire them to build a widget? Because possibly that's not what they want to do, build a widget.
- playpause 5y agoHaven’t you answered your own question? Because they don’t want to build the widget you want them to build. They want to replace your whole engineering team. What about hiring them to replace the whole engineering team, saving on salaries? Then you’re fucked when that person gets bored and leaves. Hyper passionate individuals don’t make good hires. They might make good founders though.
- andrew_ 5y agoThe number of presumptions in your reply is astounding. Based on replies and the blog post, OP clearly has projected the best of intentions. This is classic owning of a clown show hiring process and the hiring wing of Codecademy by the OP. I say "well done."
- playpause 5y agoYou've misunderstood. I was directly answering the question in the comment that I was replying to. I know nothing about the OP's situation and said nothing about it.
- m00x 5y agoReally? I don't want to be rude, but that site is really awful-looking and looks like something a bootcamp grad would do for their final project. The complexity though of making something like this though is definitely intermediate+.
- johnwheeler 5y agoOh, you don’t want to be rude? Really? Why just come in here to shit on the devs project? I saw your previous “constructive” criticism. Do you know how hard it is? How many fine details are involved in launching something? Please display some of your solo work, so we can see the merits of your valuable “feedback”
- m00x 5y agoI definitely know how hard it is, I have 10 years of experience and I'm now staff eng and team lead at a 50B+ MC company. I had my own startup, and built many projects first-hand, but I'm not going to de-anonymize myself for the sake of argument. In my opinion, it should always be hard. OP had a good launch and delivered, which is something that's incredible and that only < 1% of devs do, especially by themselves. The design is terrible, but the idea and execution was great. I also love the fact that he did this out of wanting to prove that he could do the work, and not taking the L from the rejection.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ojr 5y agoThe design doesn't need to be great for an educational site. More frontend tasks can be done to change the css with a library like tailwind ui and it will look better, doing css from scratch is harder but cheaper than the $200 tailwind download. The hardest part of this application is done.
- rpmisms 5y agoI hope I never work on your team, the attitude you're displaying would me an instant no-go from me. Junior devs need encouragement, guidance, and positive feedback. You've managed to wrap semantically positive feedback in a negative mantle. Please leave this guy alone and allow him to continue kicking ass.
- smitop 5y agoTheir job applications were rejected: https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog/why-codeamigo https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog/why-codeamigo
- Marcus316 5y agoHey actually explains in a blog entry here: https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog
- plondon514 5y agoHey! I was rejected as a frontend engineering job applicant 3 times. The most recent application led to an on-site. After that rejection I started working on codeamigo, it's been a ton of fun!
- petee 5y agoAh thanks! I didn't know if you meant as a student, thus wanting to make your own classes. Looks great!
- SebastianKumor 5y agoWay to go! Very inspiring. Website looks like a good start
- 0xbadcafebee 5y agoIf ya can't join 'em, beat 'em.
- sliq 5y agoBrilliant! That's the mindset the world needs!
- ChrisMarshallNY 5y agoGood luck! I tend to have a similar reaction to being excluded.
- cardosof 5y agoCongrats! That's very inspiring.
- VWWHFSfQ 5y agoWhy don't they just call it Code Academy. why does it have to be some weird little made up word that doesn't even make any sense
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- slowmotiony 5y agoIf it was 15 years ago it probably would have been named "Codr.io", so there is progress
- the_only_law 5y agoCan't tell if this is a joke or not.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ModernMech 5y agoSay Codecademy and Code Academy out loud. Also in general, weird little made up words are more defensible in terms of trademarks.
- consumer451 5y ago
- grifball 5y ago>My favorite part of the photographic process was watching prints come to life. I loved starting with a blank sheet of paper and applying various photographic methods to bring the image to life. >I found that building websites was similarly satisfying. For example, click the "Reveal Image" button to watch an image fade in to the blank canvas! I think a lot about why I went into computer science and this is the same conclusion I came to. There's something really cool about starting with a blank page and coding in elements that appear one by one and adapting the code to be what you want. Maybe there's other ways to do it but programming seemed to be the most powerful. Just to be clear, it was video games, not photography that kinda nudged me into programming, but same idea with a blank canvas and having control of it.
- matheusmoreira 5y agoI know that feeling. It's a godlike feeling. We start with literally nothing and we create whole a universe inside the computer. A personal virtual universe that reflects our minds and our understanding. We are the gods of these realms.
- bakuninsbart 5y agoThis was my go-to answer for why I started programming, too. Only recently I realized that it didn't hold true for me, the real drive I think was wanting to explore things. I loved computers, and games, and naturally was very curious about wanting to understand why and how they worked. Understanding driving motivations is so incredibly important, as it now gives me quite a lot more perspective in which direction I want to take my career and hobbies.
- duxup 5y agoThat's kinda what did AND didn't work for me when it came to programming. In college my first class was a class about C, the instructor read from the book (that appeared to be written about C for people who already knew C...) and then you worked on the assignment. I didn't have the patience at that age to work that way and dropped the class / decided programming wasn't for me. I did some other tech things and decades later ended up working with a bunch of engineers at a company and realized that we understood each other / how we worked really well. Company was bought out and I had time to think about what to do next. By this time the world of web development and web apps had taken off and there was so much information available / folks sharing the land of programming seemed entirely different to me. Attended a boot camp and everything just clicked, the immediacy of producing something in a web app (even if it broke) really drove home what I was doing and so on. I've been happily coding since then.
- mtc010170 5y agoWay to be! It's silly how often employers overlook the "I just really want to be part of/build this" factor. People with that make for excellent teammates.
- MattGaiser 5y agoI suspect that it often does not hold and people are not completely honest about it.
- Evan__ 5y agoI think it's less that it doesn't hold and more that many people saying this are being disingenuous.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago> "I just really want to be part of/build this" factor. People with that make for excellent teammates. Not always. You want to be a part of something/build something, and then you want to build it YOUR way. Or you see an obvious hole and then an ugly battle between your ego and that of the chief architect ensues. Also, there may be cases when you want to be a part of something, meet your heroes, and then it all goes pear-shaped. Because you shouldn't meet your heroes. And sometimes it's better to have mercenaries who don't necessary believe in the same thing as you but care a lot about their own reputation and take pride in having done a good job.
- xwdv 5y agoSorry but anyone who comes with that attitude is extremely naive and cannot be trusted. And is NOT a good teammate. How can you want to be part of something when you don’t even know what it’s like on the inside? What happens when you are given a task you do NOT want to be part of? What happens when a task has moral gray area? What happens if you suddenly decide you really want to be part of something else? Fuck people like that, if you’re hiring someone you want someone with valuable skills who is ready to be of service, ready to do whatever you ask, and will remain loyal so long as they are paid. You don’t want people to be nice, you want them to be predictable. That’s true value.
- indiantinker 5y agoLove them! Reminds me of Larry David opening a Coffee Shop in Curb your Enthusiasm. I call them spite-sites.
- aspencer8111 5y agoGood on you man! You: 1. Dodged a bullet (booo on any company that would reject someone with this level of passion). 2. Created your own product (which you seem even more passionate about) 3. Did all the heavy lifting to make it interesting out of the gate (provided content). Wishing you all the success!
- q-big 5y ago> 1. Dodged a bullet (booo on any company that would reject someone with this level of passion). Considering what he writes on https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog/why-codeamigo https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog/why-codeamigo, I would assume that he has a somewhat different vision on the product than Codeacademy.
- codingdave 5y agoAgreed - passion is great when aligned with the business direction, but can be downright toxic when in conflict.
- masklinn 5y agoI can only concur, having someone who's extremely passionate about a project but whose vision diverges drastically from the project's leads is hell all around. Given GP seems to indeed have quite divergent opinions about the product's focus: > What bothered me about the platform was that I didn't know or connect with my teachers. I wanted to connect with members of my community and learn from them, instead of just digesting information from a black box. then it's probably a better thing that they went and created their own version focused on what they think is important.
- samstave 5y agoIts where "mac fanbois" or "BOFHs" come from... I worked with a guy who was so mac focused he was blind to other tools/perspectives and it was often a friction point between team-members...
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- johnmato 5y agoThis is great; Code Academy fueled the desire in you and made it as inspiration to create your own. I have watched some videos, and I do love your byte-sized coding tutorials.
- Closi 5y agoWell it looks like you are down, apparently the 'HN Hug of Death' still occasionally exists.
- plondon514 5y agoYeah does seem to be struggling a bit...
- pipnonsense 5y agoHa! I have a kind of similar [0] story with Substack. I couldn't get to work there (I really wanted to) so created a "read fiction on your email" side-project[1], which evolved to a more ambitious "substack for fiction" project: https://www.confabulistas.com.br https://www.confabulistas.com.br (for Brazilian market, so in portuguese). [0] "Kind of" because I couldn't even apply. Very early on I exchanged a few emails with the founder and they wouldn't hire remote. Then months later a recruiter reached out, but they wouldn't hire remote still. Then they started to hire remote, so I sent an email to the recruiter to apply, but they only hire remote in the US. So I wasn't exactly "rejected", but prevented from applying. [1] https://www.serialliterature.com https://www.serialliterature.com It got to the front page of HN when I launched.
- agustif 5y agoIf you're a freelance or equivalent, you should apply anyways to those Remote (US) positions, YMMV, but since you can be treated as an external provider, they don't care about where you reside as long as it makes sense with timezones and such for meetings etc... That's my experience at least, have worked for some US companies remotely from europe that way anyways
- mettamage 5y agoWait, so how do you propose this in a way that they will take it? Simply mention that you're a freelancer and then they know it's fine, or how do you introduce this in a handy way?
- OJFord 5y agoI've wondered about that when I've seen it described as 'US timezones' or similar, which on the face of it seems to just mean the Americas (modulo I have no idea if maybe Canada or somewhere South has an extra one not used in the USA) - but maybe it suggests they're pretty open to anyone anywhere who convincingly says they'll work Pacific (or whatever) hours. Good to hear it's worked out for you.
- smegger001 5y ago
- jason_zig 5y agoThis is great - love the frictionless signup and onboarding experience. I'm planning to teach my niece some basic programming stuff (moving on from scratch) and this seems like a great way to put together some mini-lessons that are quick and rewarding.
- throw_m239339 5y agoF. it! Build your own! congrats.
- diomio 5y agowith blackjack and hookers
- nvr219 5y agoIn fact, forget the coding!
- 9387367 5y agoFantastic work. Would you have anything to help a kid build a blog and learn by doing it?
- yewenjie 5y agoReally like what the site is doing, however the styling needs some work though.
- shakey_mcshake 5y agoI suppose the people who get rejected by every company just need to build an entirely new internet to redeem themselves.
- plondon514 5y agoEveryone responds to rejection differently ;)
- SadWebDeveloper 5y agoOh nice fainlly a place to test my sandbox escapes... get ready to pwn!
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- petee 5y agoIt was nice to see C will still run execv(), I appreciate the trusting nature - maybe someone can do a Beej-like lesson
- chrisabrams 5y agoVery nice job! One small request: add an option to move the step/info column from the far left to the far right.
- yayr 5y agothe app for "build your own crypto wallet" is essentially: const App = ( <div> <h1>Hello Bitcoin!</h1> </div> ); curious about version 0.0.2 ;-)
- plondon514 5y agoYeah that's definitely Step 1, but there are a few more steps that dive into how mnemonics are created, their importance, and how addresses get derived.
- hstan4 5y agoThink you’re missing the “next” button at the bottom haha
- yayr 5y agoups - Thanks - lol
- javier10e6 5y agoWhat brought me into the coding world was its novelty. In those days an electronic games were: Merlin, Simon and Mattel Football. Today, there is nothing novel about coding and its crushing and relentless.
- csours 5y agoSo this is completely unrelated to the YouTube Channel amigoscode? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SGDpanrc8U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SGDpanrc8U
- throwaway158497 5y agoHey, great work. I have a small feature request. I want to be able to give feedback on code to my students, just like in github. Click on a particular line(number), a text box pops up and then I can type in my comments. Is it possible to build the feature?
- plondon514 5y agoI love this idea!
- hanniabu 5y agoSmall fix: when you click next it should bring you to the top of the page instead of staying at the bottom. It gets annoying needing to scroll up every time and really takes you out of focus.
- plondon514 5y agoMobile friendly strikes again, been meaning to tackle this one, facepalm
- lbriner 5y ago..and the deluge of feature requests begins! Do you know what else would be a good idea? Lots of things. The difference between the successful company and the unsuccessful one is the ability to say, "not really the most important thing at the moment but thanks for the idea"
- justinzollars 5y agonice work!
- sithlord 5y agoI applied to codecademy earlier this year, recruiter never showed up to our intro call, and then never emailed me back. Took it as dodging a bullet!
- FractalHQ 5y agoCan I request a Svelte tutorial?
- plondon514 5y agoYou certainly can! And thanks for reminding me, I need to add an interest form on the site. BTW the svelte tutorial on the official docs site is really great! https://svelte.dev/tutorial/basics https://svelte.dev/tutorial/basics
- inaseem 5y agoHi Philip, Its great to see codeamigo come to life. Definitely a platform I would use myself to learn more. I am following you from radon's riju project.
- plondon514 5y agoHey! Radon's project is great and powers the languages not executable by the browser! Check us out on discord as we grow the community there: https://discord.gg/UUgEe5MH https://discord.gg/UUgEe5MH
- m00x 5y agoI'll be honest, this is a great start and a good app that not a lot of people would achieve and deliver. Hopefully this feedback can be constructive. It does not feel like a modern "professional" app though, the design is extremely lacking and not something you'd see from an intermediate+ frontend dev. The "New lesson" part doesn't work because it's behind an auth check, but there's no error message and it's displayed as an unauth'd user. There's a bunch of console errors everywhere for undefined objects. It's basically a reskinned version of this https://riju.codes/ https://riju.codes/, so nothing of major complexity was done here. That said, delivering this is impressive, especially for a more junior developer. This is major step towards building up your career and I'm looking forward to see more!
- plondon514 5y agoAppreciate the feedback and I don't disagree! I definitely would love to work more on the design and general "smooth-ness" of the app. I've been focused on functionality and driving towards something that works. Time to tighten some screws! PS, did you interview me last year at Codecademy? ;)
- m00x 5y agoI didn't, I never heard of the company before this.
- albertgoeswoof 5y agoThe design is fine, it’s totally functional, perfect for a developer focused site and quite refreshing actually. Great that you’ve pointed out a couple of bugs but I’ve seen “senior” developers who couldn’t conceive of, build and deploy anything close to this. There’s enough here to build a SaaS business out, and the OP can be CEO, CTO or whatever title they want
- m00x 5y agoYeah I totally agree, OP is definitely further off in delivery and self-drive than most developers, senior or otherwise. I just meant to give him fair feedback to keep him growing. Design is subjective, so if most here people love it, it must mean it appeals to its audience!
- bingohbangoh 5y agohug of death?
- KronisLV 5y agoHere's the link with more information, from the linked blog at the bottom of the page: https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog https://docs.codeamigo.dev/blog
- 40four 5y agoI don’t understand the title? How do you get ‘rejected’ by Code Academy? It’s not a ‘boot camp’ with an application process. You either do the free lessons offered, or pay up for one of the ‘Pro’ level tiers. This title seems sensational, and it’s misleading to people not familiar with Code Academy. Considering that, it doesn’t sell me on this product. In fact it makes me not even want to look at the lessons offered, since the premise feels dishonest. Edit: I don’t think I’m the only one that read it that way based in other comments. Honest mistake, it looks like English is not the authors first language.
- radlad 5y agoI assumed he meant rejected as a job candidate.
- HiroProtagonist 5y agoI think he applied to work there and was rejected, as opposed to applying as a student.
- 40four 5y agoThanks, that makes more sense. Totally misread that. The blog post was buried at the bottom didn’t make it that far.
- weswpg 5y ago> I don’t understand the title? How do you get ‘rejected’ by Code Academy? It’s not a ‘boot amp’ with an application process. You either do the free lessons offered, or pay up for one of the ‘Pro’ level tiers. From his blog: > I've applied to work at Codecademy three times, once in 2014, again in 2015, and most recently in 2020. I've been rejected all three times. I wanted to prove to myself I was capable of building something like it, so I decided to build my own version.
- 40four 5y agoThanks, I didn’t dig deep enough to find the editblog buried at the bottom. That definitely clears things up.
- maximp 5y agoOh hi, Zach!
- tac0_ 5y agoThis is awesome! Love the focus on short practical tutorials and not leetcode style questions. Are you planning on iterating this further?
- plondon514 5y agoYes! Check us out on twitter to follow along on our progress @codeamigo_dev
- stoned 5y agoRejecting someone three times from something is pretty brutal. How bad could this candidate have been? Is Codeacademy like the Rhodes Scholarship or something? One of my luckiest breaks was when a college that rejected me the first time around accepted me the second time I applied. Really grateful for that opportunity.
- sngz 5y agoyou should ask how bad the interviewing process in this industry is instead
- lbriner 5y agoHow is it brutal? Dependeing on the job and the applicants CV/interviewing skills, it would be easy to consider that she/he is not a good fit for the company or the role. The fact that they have created their own site is not a reflection on Codecademy, just that the interview process is not necessarily great or even that they would still not be a good fit for CA for whatever reason. I don't like the tone of naming the company then basically sticking two fingers up at them "look at me now". There is a tonne of stuff involved in these sorts of sites and we will see whether they can keep up or not.
- stoned 5y ago> I don't like the tone of naming the company then basically sticking two fingers up at them "look at me now". That’s true, me neither…
- wagslane 5y agoI had a similar experience, not that I got rejected, but that I didn't like their content very much. I made https://qvault.io https://qvault.io to focus on computer science. I'd actually love to chat with you, we could potentially collaborate or something :)
- plondon514 5y agoLet’s chat! My email is in my profile!
- fulanito418 5y agoI’m a teacher and I’m hoping someone can share some of the best platforms to teach middle schoolers how to code. Thanks.
- plondon514 5y agoOP here. I think Codecademy, Scrimba, and freecodecamp are great resources for new learners. Middle school though, that’s tough… If you’re interested in writing your own tutorials for your students, I think codeamigo would be great for that. Feel free to email me (email in profile) if you want help with that!
- garbanzoPDX 5y agoCodecademy and Treehouse are both great platforms that I've used and recommend. If you're looking for a great free intro to programming, I recommend "Learn to Program", available at https://pine.fm/LearnToProgram https://pine.fm/LearnToProgram. It's concise, introduces the reader to a very approachable programming language (Ruby), and geared toward total beginners. Coincidentally, I went on to work at the same company as the author later down the line which was pretty cool.
- asicsp 5y agoThis list might help: https://github.com/HollyAdele/awesome-programming-for-kids https://github.com/HollyAdele/awesome-programming-for-kids
- nyanpasu64 5y agoI tried visiting https://codeamigo.dev/lessons/preview/90 https://codeamigo.dev/lessons/preview/90, but no matter what I type in the text editor, if I press the Test button, Ctrl+E, the right arrow, or Ctrl+Enter, it doesn't get executed.
- plondon514 5y agoSorry about that. I’ve rebooted the aws instance so the execution env should be back Edit: there might be a bug in that lesson, thanks!
- plondon514 5y agoOk, should be resolved now!
- ahmetyas01 5y agoand that doesn't work
- plondon514 5y agoHey! What doesn’t work for you? Maybe open a bug report on discord? https://discord.gg/c2JrzbMH https://discord.gg/c2JrzbMH