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Codecademy Surges To 200,000 Users, 2.1 Million Lessons Completed In 72 Hours
- ramkalari 15y agoVery nicely done. I enjoyed going through the exercises and it was fun.
- rorrr 15y agoNow that's impressive.
- RobertHubert 15y agoSeriously, WOW!
- ph0rque 15y agoSims also says that the company is actually a part of the latest Y Combinator batch (something they hadn’t previously disclosed). I was hoping they would be picked up by YC... looks like it already happened :~)
- Joakal 15y agoI'm interested in Codecademy's marketing; how did they accumulate so many active users in 72 hours?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- citricsquid 15y ago> [..] it has drawn 200,000 unique users. That’s users who have actually interacted with the app — and not people who hit the webpage and bounced away a second later. from the article...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mattwdelong 15y agoIn the article, it actually says That’s users who have actually interacted with the app — and not people who hit the webpage and bounced away a second later. So it's not unique users, and is actually quite impressive either way.
- citricsquid 15y agoI assume it was "viral". I know I shared it with a bunch of people and posted it on Facebook, I assume a lot who were impressed did the same :-)
- zds 15y agoWe'll try to do a postmortem on this as soon as traffic dies down a little. But yes, as a few people have mentioned, it's mostly viral traffic.
- Joakal 15y agoI hope you include the subtle parts that help make it viral. For example, a media button that posts to friends: <Happy Programmer picture> "The Khan Academy of programming, try it!"
- alain94040 15y agoI don't think the shape of the share button matters. What made it viral is that once you play with it for 10 seconds, you just want to share it with all your non-geek friends. Because it's fun. Because it finally lets them understand why you are having fun programming. Make what you do fun, and it will be viral. Obsess over the language of the share button with something boring, and pull your hair for eternity.
- Joakal 15y agoA startup needs to understand that there's several stages to becoming the next big thing. The first and most important: Raising awareness. How can some users tell anyone if they haven't heard about it yet? How they not only raised awareness but captured the interest of thousands is important.
- waterlesscloud 15y agoAsking you to just type your name in quotes at the prompt to start helps too. Never underestimate the power of someone's name.
- derrida 15y agoWho says it will die down?
- zds 15y agoThanks to everyone in the Hacker News community for being so supportive and providing feedback on our launch. We really appreciate it! As always, if you have any issues, shoot me an email - contact (at) codecademy (dot) com. -Zach EDIT: I'll be back on HN in a bit to answer questions but the next few hours are a little busy. Thanks again.
- turbulence93 15y agoThere has definitely been requests and offers to create lessons... When are they coming???
- zds 15y agoSoon!
- follower 15y ago> Follow the directions in the console to begin It would seem that using the word "console" hasn't been too much of a barrier but perhaps a different word would be more familiar to new programmers? (Or a bright red indicator of some sort.)
- prawn 15y agoWhat about "text console"? That'd give a hint.
- citricsquid 15y ago> Sims also says that the company is actually a part of the latest Y Combinator batch (something they hadn’t previously disclosed). I love them for that. Having their product loved (here and elsewhere) based on the product not the connections they have. Awesome.
- zds 15y agoThanks! We're glad you think the product spoke for itself ;)
- marcamillion 15y agoTotally agreed. I initially clicked on it, cuz it was getting lots of love. Then when I tried it myself, I thought...."My Gosh...this seems like it should have come from YC...these guys did a fantastic job.". I then re-checked the title and didn't see a YC S11 tag...so I dismissed it. It's kinda interesting to see now that people are getting sick of seeing the YC badge beside a company name. The truth is, more often than not, I tend to gloss it over. So the mere fact that these guys focused on the product itself - is admirable and more from your batch should take a leaf out of your book.
- merubin75 15y agoAs a non-programmer, I absolutely love this. I was able to complete two courses within 10 minutes. More than anything, this makes programming seem like FUN. Well done and kudos to the Codecademy team!
- zds 15y agoThanks! Glad you're on your way to becoming a programmer.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- u48998 15y agoI'm stuck on lesson 4, chapter 6. You should have a reset button or a helper, your lesson doesn't accept what I type and the Hints are of no help. This is like loosing one the users because if it doesn't work than I won't be back to frustration.
- hebejebelus 15y agoI pointed my younger sister at this the other night. She's 17, and I'd tried to interest her in programming before with no avail. She seems to have caught on to this, though, and it's something I'm extremely happy about. It's not that I think that she'll ever become a hardcode graphics programmer, but I think it's fantastic that she even has a basic understanding now. The only criticism I've had from her is that she doesn't know what to do with what she's learned. Maybe some suggestions on some basic examples might be good? (say, "Try writing a loop that averages these numbers," or a grade calculator). Thanks so much for this - I believe that everyone should know how to program in the same way that I believe everyone should know how to read or do arithmetic. It's another form of literacy, and codecademy is definitely a big step towards much better understanding of programming (edit: that is, for the general public), and hopefully less social stigma and the like as a result of that.
- very-pleased 15y agoBeautiful. There's a bit of poetic justice in this. Programmers have been callously obsoleting various careers (and thus people) for decades now. In fact, it's likely that programmers are currently hard at work trying to obsolete careers that your little sister may already be considering! It's wonderful that the programming field is about to get disrupted. Wonderful! Programmers about to see their skills become as common as basic reading or writing. Programmers, fear Codecademy. You're about to taste your own medicine. Expect your irrationally high salaries to drop — that's justice. Love the site, guys. Keep it up. :)
- mscarborough 15y agoThe coding job salaries and the barriers to entry have been driven down for years via outsourcing, the easy-to-write mobile frameworks, and other factors like downturns in the first-world economies combined with a glut of CS students that were chasing the previous wave. There's always going to be value in really knowing what you are doing across the full stack, and that is not going to be killed off next year with tutorials. I share the excitement with having more people in the field, which will help drive it forward. But your glee in programmers "getting what's coming to them" (my words, not yours) is odd.
- mathattack 15y ago10 minutes in and I can say this is a great website! I hope it has the depth to match. Great work Zach!
- bialecki 15y agoAlright, loaded question. Can/will this work with other languages? I guess a related question is, does it have to? The only thing the YC note tells me is this wants to be a real business, so the big question is, what's the model? Edit: By the way, love the site. For JavaScript, this is a huge leap forward. I'd love it to be the same for other languages, I'm just curious if that's possible.
- patio11 15y agothe big question is, what's the model? People are asking this a lot about YC companies within a few weeks of birth. It's not a silly question, but it is perhaps not the best time to best asking. Most of them don't know yet. That isn't exactly unprecedented: Google didn't know it was a contextual advertising company when it launched, etc. Given the amounts spent on employee training in the US, I think that if you had a magic box which said "Put non-programmers in the left end, programmers come out the right end", you would not be in a bad place in life. Heck, people make millions upon millions doing the same thing just for MS Excel.
- simonw 15y agoIt's definitely possible for other languages, although significantly technically more difficult: http://tryruby.org/ http://tryruby.org/ http://try-python.appspot.com/ http://try-python.appspot.com/
- abiekatz 15y agoI wonder if this service will become more of a business or a non-profit. I feel that this site is providing a great public good, akin to Khan Academy, and it would be great if donations could cover the costs of further developing the site. That way, price is not a deterrent to any users getting started with learning to code.
- Alex3917 15y ago"it clearly has loads of potential for one key reason: it actually feels fun." This is an excellent example of Programmed Instruction. Most of us probably learned typing the same way, and maybe even Logo. The reason this approach is good is because, in addition to being fun, it's also compatible with the Keller Plan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keller_Plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keller_Plan Granted you can get only so far with this approach, but it's still terribly underused in the current scheme of things.
- aaronblohowiak 15y ago>Granted you can get only so far with this approach, but it's still terribly underused in the current scheme of things. In the teaching of concrete skills, I am not sure what the bounds are -- the burden on the instructional designer to administer the skill dependency graph as the skills become more complicated continues to grow, but I don't see that as a limiting function.
- Alex3917 15y agoThe problem is that concrete skills are only a small part of learning. This sort of approach is great for teaching kids to pass math tests, but less great at turning kids into mathematicians.
- wisty 15y agoIs there any approach that works great at turning kids into mathematicians, though?
- aaronblohowiak 15y agoAh, I'm glad you agree. I suppose my reaction is that most people underestimate just how far you can go with this approach, and I am glad to see that you are not one of them; we agree that you can train someone to solve calculus problems, but not the skills of derivation. Where we seem to disagree is about wether this approach should be used in isolation. Frankly, I think most people (successfully) trained in theory are bored by application so there is a use in multiple educational paths. While application is a small subset of the available learning to someone interested in a field, it is often a sufficient subset to be a productively contributing member of society.
- andrewcross 15y agoI actually started working on an idea like this back in January but never went anywhere with it. These guys have made something very tough look incredibly easy. Honestly, very well done!
- paul9290 15y agoYeah I proposed a similar idea at a startup weekend here on the east coast. It only got five votes, but after seeing this and some other avenues popping up (good places to market it) we started coding what I proposed at startup weekend. Hope to have done within the week; excited!
- josscrowcroft 15y agoCongratulations! It's a great site, you deserve the praise.
- danest 15y agoWhat where you guys working on before this and how did this idea start from?
- simonista 15y agoI can see this fitting really well with Khan Academy. I wonder if the two have talked at all. Congrats on the success guys, the site is awesome.
- xiaoma 15y agoWeird. Several portions I'd completed before displayed "in progress" today. I just went back and re-did them to see if they were new. I don't think the were.
- mikeleeorg 15y agoNon-technical people looking for technical cofounders no longer have an excuse not to learn how to code ;)
- fabiandesimone 15y agoI've been around programming pretty much all of my life as an spectator (my brother can code and well I'm a product guy so I'm around coders every day). I never quite got the grasp of it and programming seem like this huge abstract thing. Never got myself to take action in learning because frankly I just dismissed it as being to complicated but deep down I always wanted to be able to code. I completed code academy in one hour. WOW. Now I'm hooked. I'm actually so hooked that I looked more resources on learning JavaScript. I'm reading this: http://eloquentjavascript.net/index.html http://eloquentjavascript.net/index.html (found it via a Google Search in StackOverflow) I can't wait for more lessons. Thanks so much for this! Note: there were a couple of lessons were I did need to ask my devs for help because there were some concepts that were missing. Once explained to me, I was able to complete the lessons.
- zds 15y agoThanks! We're working on more lessons as soon as we can and we're going to hopefully help devs help you with some new features coming out.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- egiva 15y agoGreat App! I thought the lessons were well commented and laid out. One trick, instead of bulking up with more features, it to lay out more lessons and publish a system for letting us know when they're available. For me it would be more useful if the lessons came in similar large blocks/iterations with a predefined goal of "by taking these lessons you will learn X". Anyhow, great work!
- sek 15y agoNot that i don't like this approach, it think it's a good way to give regular people a impression what programming is. I did the fist Chapter of programming books in over 10 different languages and it always felt good. What comes after that is the problem, the ones where you have to really think and it just doesn't work on the second try. I know this from college, the first two lessons nobody is complaining and then it starts to really freak out the people who didn't know before what programming really is. When you find a way to let people deal with this phase, than you really did accomplish something that makes a difference.
- tomlin 15y agoAt first I only took it as a "me-too" to Khan Academy, but it really isn't. It definitely takes away some great features in KA, but it's defined differently in the sense that the design reflects the web industry rather than how a typical course would teach.
- Tichy 15y agoIs that web site strictly for absolute beginners? I find it a petty that I can't skip the beginner lessons to try to learn something more advanced.
- zds 15y agoAt the moment it is. We'll have content for experts as soon as we can make it.
- alphamale3000 15y agoBrilliant but weak. Doesn't belong on Hacker News, should be on n00b news.
- pbreit 15y agoThe "_why" post led me over to TryRuby.org which looks like it may have been inspiration. The thing I noticed was how much I prferred TryRuby's layout. It seems like the CodeAcademy instructions are overwhelmed by other screen elements and awkwardly placed lower left of the console. I also think you could let people type more a la Learn * The Hard Way. But really like where you're going.
- Tycho 15y agoI showed this go my colleagues at work yesterday. They want me to teach them how to program (well, write VBA) but I kind of feared for them since they have very little free time to devote. And it took me a massive investment of time upfront to get into programming, although I didn't have access to a resource like codecademy.
- avb_wkyhu 15y agoWhen I saw Codecademy I was quite impressed and I truly enjoyed it, even though it was extremely basic for me. It was actually really fun, remembering what it was like when I first started learning I WISH there was a site like this. I am so happy that this site was released and that I was turned on to it. My question is when will we start to see more lessons/courses? Will they stay at a beginner level or get more advanced? Will there be some sort of discussion/forum section to the site? And lastly, do you feel there will ever be an article/paper section to the site (Such as a section where submitted papers, tutorials, articles, etc are posted when approved by the main staff at Codecademy)? All in all, great job guys! Love the site.