12 ms·

Skillsoft Buys Codecademy for $525M

452 points by boeingUH60 5y ago

ramesh31 5y ago
I remember using codecademy the day they launched, January 2012, to start learning Javascript. The interactive CLI based courses were a breath of fresh air from the old school W3 style tutorials that I had gotten stuck on. It sent me down the path of building a serious career and making a six figure salary that I could have never dreamed of otherwise as a high school dropout. Thanks codecademy.
- lucasverra 5y ago
  Same feeling. Then, following the path of https://www.freecodecamp.org/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/, that has to be one of the most inclusive tech endeavours out there.
  - soneca 5y ago
    It did include me. freeCodeCamp was 5 years ago the foundational first step on a path to my current 6 figure salary in a job that enjoy a lot more than any previous one of my other careers. I never learned well with videos, so codeCademy interface (which I think inspired freeCodeCamp’s) was a great innovation for me.
    - estaseuropano 5y ago
      I thought freecodecamp is mainly a collection of Videos? At least that's what its been like every time I tried.
      - MikusR 5y ago
        The web and JavaScript is the same as codecademy - no videos.
- JALTU 5y ago
  Same comment as above! Thanks for sharing your story!
wara23arish 5y ago
First time I ever programmed was using Codecademy around 2013. I was always an average student in school. Never had the motivation/curiosity to study since I felt it was all pointless. Never had any programming/computer classes in school. I completed the python course that was available at the time that eventually guides you to build your own version of battleship with 2 players. It was an eye-opening experience for me. I started to view all my math/chemistry/physics problems as “programming problems”, it really made learning fun for me. My grades changed drastically for the better with little extra effort. And more importantly Im now working as a SWE years later. So thank you Codecademy :)
- bredren 5y ago
  Thanks for sharing this. Do you still have your code for your battleship game? All of my earliest programming projects have been lost to time.
  - 300bps 5y ago
    One of my few regrets is leaving old computers/disks at my parents house when I moved out. I didn’t value them at all at the time - they were old crappy computers. So my Commodore 64 and 128 and all the software I spent my childhood writing were thrown away. I had a full BBS program that I wrote when I was 14 along with a half dozen BBS games. Would love to see that code!
    - datavirtue 5y ago
      I lost all my youth code to a monkey virus (nasty boot sector propegator that someone placed on a computer in the college where my mom was studying nursing). Before I knew what was going on it had spread to every floppy and hard drive that I had and had destroyed all the data. Three years of work gone. At that age it felt like most of my life had evaporated. It was almost ten years before I started building serious personal projects again.
  - JCharante 5y ago
    Maybe that's for the better... my code from when I was 15 years old haunts my GitHub, and that's not even my first GitHub account.
wincy 5y ago
I learned the very basics to become a developer from Codeacademy. Back in 2015 I was a front line support technician at a small hardware startup who did Codeacademy in my free time, which was considerable. My first daughter had just been born and that really gave me motivation to learn and achieve my full potential. My boss was the only software engineer at our company and so was often overloaded with work, so he gave me small tasks to do, starting with learning regular expressions to massage a few thousand lines of data into something useful, and then getting to make PHP edits to Wordpress, and even some Visual C++. I more than doubled my income from that job to my next job, propelling me to the middle class, and have since achieved consistently high pay raises over the last seven years without much difficulty. As someone who dropped out of high school due to family issues and lack of motivation, I hope free resources like Codeacademy always exists on the internet and will be a pathway for those who have the aptitude to learn to code. For my personally it totally transformed my life as I was basically destitute before I got my first job as a web developer.
- AlwaysRock 5y ago
  100%. I met an AWS architect who told me his story of learning to code. He was a cab driver who took a software executive home one night and on the drive asked the guy what he did. He said he ran software teams/products and the taxi driver got some advice on how to move industries. The executive said check out a coding bootcamp. The taxi driver did, saw the cost, and decided he would learn on his own. He basically pulled the listed skills that the bootcamp taught and found free courses that focused on each of those. He did it all via self learning. Obviously this individual was special and most people wouldnt be able to teach themselves how to code entirely on their own but these types of courses exist and will continue to exist as a free or low cost option for those people. Then there are the rest of us who have 15 paid courses that we will never start :)
  - teh_klev 5y ago
    > Obviously this individual was special and most people wouldnt be able to teach themselves how to code entirely on their own I'd disagree. Sure online learning tools such as CodeAcademy and free videos on YouTube are useful and can provide a great leg up. But I know quite a few folks who pivoted their careers from non-programming jobs back in the 90's and none of these learning aids were available. We just used books, vendor documentation and whatever random stuff was available on the fledgling web and usenet groups to get us going. I don't think it takes a "special individual", it just takes a bit of willpower and attention.
jeanloolz 5y ago
I learnt coding with Codecademy back in 2013. I was 32 years old with a career in marketing. Their Python class was the perfect introduction to coding in general and I got hooked instantly. I took my first job as a software developer 6 years ago after an intense 2 years of self learning following the codecademy class . I'm now senior data engineer in a pretty big company in Europe. I feel blessed for discovering Codecademy. A big thanks to them. I owe them my new career.
frankfrankfrank 5y ago
I get a feeling that the comments here read like eulogies. Maybe that's just me due to exposure to skillsoft over the years.
- darkwizard42 5y ago
  Took them as validation anecdotes -- sort of like thank yous to the team. Kind of really like these threads! That being said, I've now asked a few folks about Skillsoft and they weren't that bullish about it. Kind of just hoping for a good return for the employees at Codecademy who worked hard to get to this stage (an exit).
  - jeofken 5y ago
    For me it’s certainly a big thank you to the Codecademy team!
  - temikus 5y ago
    At this price the deal probably minted quite a few new millionaires, so I think it’s a good thing for people who worked on something for 10+ years. It’s no S1 but for a lot of early contributors it’s probably a ticket to never having to work again.
zds 5y ago
Co-Founder and CEO here. We started Codecademy and launched on HN 10 years ago. I'm so thankful to this community for helping us to get started and to see up the momentum! We're committed to making sure that the product stays as great as the one you've used for years (and gets even better!).
- shippintoboston 5y ago
  I was a freshman in college in Fall of 2011 and took the python course because I was starting to regret majoring in business. 10 years later I'm a senior engineer and can take care of my family for life. I wouldn't be where I am today without the start you and the company gave me. Thank you and best of luck in whatever you choose to do in the future.
  - zds 5y ago
    this (and every other story in this thread!) really makes everything worth it. would love to hear as much as you're comfortable sharing over email!
- vm 5y ago
  Congrats! I've watched your 10+ year journey from afar and been inspired by the impact you've had on this industry & and your persistence during the ups/downs. Excited for your and the great acquisition.
  - zds 5y ago
    thank you!
- ijustwanttovote 5y ago
  Congrats! It's been great to watch your journey. I've always recommended Codecademy to my friends who wanted to learn to program. I can safely say you helped three people get into the industry.
- vhiremath4 5y ago
  Congrats Zach to you + Ryan! I was just talking to my co-founder (Shahed Khan) yesterday and you came up in conversation as someone he really admires. :) Best of luck in this new chapter for your company, your team, your loved ones, and your life.
hobofan 5y ago
I'm glad for all the people in this thread, for whom Codecademy worked, but I strongly suspect it worked for them because of their drive, and not because of the quality of Codecademy. ~1 year ago I pointed some friends that wanted to learn Python towards Codecademy (because it's just the most prominent example of it's kind of platform). Just out of curiosity, I looked over their shoulders, and I'm glad I did. From what I could the tell the course offered very little beyond a Python REPL in terms of guidance. It didn't teach the difference between a variable name `foo` and a string `"foo"` (one of the most common struggles for newbies), at a point in the course where it assumed that knowledge to complete a step. And all it gave as feedback were bad error messages (IIRC 1:1 the one of the Python interpreter, which are very hard to interpret for newcomers). I was baffled that the flagship learn-to-code-platform had that level of quality after ~10 years of operation.
- rmbyrro 5y ago
  I was baffle the first time I realised differentiating a variable from string was a thing for beginners, but it's true, a lot struggle with it at start...
  - flor1s 5y ago
    In my experience code highlighting that differentiates strings helps a lot to create intuition for this.
- ravenstine 5y ago
  Although I still think services like Codeacademy and Exercism are really useful, what you've said describes my main gripe with them, which is that these services are seemingly designed for people who have already maneuvered their way into programming to some extent. Someone who wants to learn programming from scratch probably won't get much out of having a "hello world" exercise thrown at them followed by FizzBuzz. Not only does the value of such exercises not necessarily translate to someone who has yet to fool with computers themselves, but these systems overall fail to educate new programmers on the many things that matter besides language constructs for a particular language. In my opinion, these are tools designed by programmers for programmers. Not that there's anything wrong with that... but not once have I become proficient in a language by doing online code challenges in a REPL; I always learn by doing, as was recently the case for me delving into C++ via an Arduino project. The C++ skills I momentarily learned online didn't stick because FizzBuzz isn't really applicable to anything (obviously I'm kind of oversimplifying things here).
nicative 5y ago
I learned python through codecademy back in 2016 and today I work with development professionally
oschvr 5y ago
I learnt to program using codecademy !
chux52 5y ago
Along with others I joined Codecademy shortly after launch after seeing it on HN (2012). My coding journey started much earlier, having no direction and trying to learn from one of those giant Visual Basic books I talked my parents into buying from a bookstore in the mall in the 90's. Went to college (early 00's) with hopes of learning there, but I was too far behind and not really interested in the focus, so switched to a business degree. Graduated and started work as an Accountant and hated the repetitiveness, so picked up some VBA and Access. Real breakthrough for me was the Codecademy Python class and the benefits of the short form format. Get frustrated, take a break and come back fresh the next day or two. That along with seeing Wes McKinney's Intro to Pandas talk around the same time ('13?) changed my career.
darkwizard42 5y ago
Congratulations to the whole Codecadamey team! Know lots of folks there who have worked very hard and I hope this exit is beneficial to them. I wish them nothing but success (and hope Skillsoft can retain and grow the talent)!
thekevan 5y ago
Welp, I signed up with the service in January of 2012 but I'm done with Codecademy now. When Skillsoft bought Element K, it did not go well for the majority of us there. Not only that, but they were my biggest competitor in sales. So not only was I not impressed with how they treated a company after buying it, but it's almost out of principle that I wouldn't support a company that has been such a barrier to success for me.
- SamBam 5y ago
  Having not used Codecademy, I'm curious: were you really able to get nearly 10 years of value out of it? My understanding was that it was mostly to teach people how to code to an intermediate level.
  - thekevan 5y ago
    I feel like it was. It used it as tool to learn intermittently along with many others.
neonate 5y ago
https://www.wsj.com/articles/skillsoft-strikes-525-million-deal-to-acquire-ed-tech-rival-codecademy-11640178188 https://www.wsj.com/articles/skillsoft-strikes-525-million-d... https://archive.md/O0MLo https://archive.md/O0MLo
imwillofficial 5y ago
I started my IT career with Skillsoft training for A+ certification nearly 20 years ago. Good times. Thanks Skillsoft, good luck with the transition Code Academy
mehlmao 5y ago
So how are the new owners going to squeeze more than $525 million out of it?
- choward 5y ago
  Another thing that makes me suspicious is that Skillsoft just went through chapter 11 bankrupty summer of 2020. It's near the start of a pandemic and people are at home yet these guys struggle? Also look how many owners skillsoft has passed through.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  Same way they all plan to, ads and selling data.
- majani 5y ago
  Jack up the price, reduce the free content, develop b2b packages
plondon514 5y ago
Congratulations to the Codecademy team! I always really wanted to join Codecademy and wrote about my experience being rejected 3 times over the past 7 years in a recent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025401. I've always rooted for them and wished them great success, their product has helped millions learn to code, including myself.
safdeep 5y ago
Congrats! Codecademy intro'ed me to coding. Glad there's a good outcome for you all.
- zds 5y ago
  thank you! i'm glad you trusted us as a place to start. i hope it's helped you level up your career!
davidsawyer 5y ago
I emailed contact@codecademy.com back in September of 2011 with ideas for the site, and Zach got back to me in no time. Been cheering for Codecademy ever since. Congrats, guys!
visarga 5y ago
How is Codecademy pronounced correctly, "code academy" or "code cademy"?
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  “Codec ademy"
evancoop 5y ago
With each new opportunity to learn to code without the expense of a four-year degree in Computer Science, don't we reach a point at which either: 1) The four-year degree in CS is actually seen as something of a negative indicator 2) We acknowledge the silent part out loud, e.g. "the college degree is a signal, not a delivery mechanism for professional skills." ?
- lsalvatore 5y ago
  I'm saddened that we're comparing a degree in CS to a subscription to Codecademy. I am curious if you've gotten a degree yourself, and whether that degree was from a reputable school. My CS degree is one of my proudest and most difficult accomplishments in my life. The difference in someone with a 4 year CS degree and a bootcamp graduate is jarringly apparent and one that I have uncomfortable experience with. My following statement will cause me to be downvoted, because the truth makes people uncomfortable. Computer Science education is a rite of passage, like getting a black belt, becoming a priest, doctor or anything else that requires intense study with peers for extended period of time. The CS degree at a top school is more than a signal, its a badge of honor and respect. You may choose to ignore it to your own peril.
  - Siira 5y ago
    A badge of honor and respect is also known as a “signal.” Not that signaling is inherently bad, quite the opposite, signaling is essential. But it would be great if we could discover cheaper and more accessible ways to signal. PS: I don’t think a CS degree is just signaling, but it could be improved an order of magnitude if the incentives of the professors and the institutions were aligned with teaching people marketable skills.
    - lsalvatore 5y ago
      Yes I totally understand your point of view. I spent almost a decade paying off a six figure debt for my CS degree. The funniest part? I learned almost nothing about web development in school. No marketable skills that would have really helped me when I first started my actual job! How can I argue this is a good thing? Well, the best analogy I can think of is a black belt in karate. It takes 10 years or whatever to get that. It has no marketable purpose. Why do it? The answer is more than "to get a job". It's about Discipline. Focus. Intense research into fundamentals. Stretching your limit if what you can learn in a weekend. Writing half a page of assembly code on a piece of paper. Debugging a C program. Red black trees. These have no purpose, but when reflecting on these experiences, I would not trade them for a second for "Intro to Javascript and HTML".
black_13 5y ago
Does codeacdemy hire codecademy?
tim-- 5y ago
Off topic, but what is the point of having a cookie consent dialog come up on the site, when on a mobile device, you can't press 'accept' when choosing required cookies only? Seems very hostile, and a way to have users agree to all the cookies regardless. On a Samsung S9.
paul7986 5y ago
In 2011 (April) at a Baltimore Hackathon I unsuccessfully pitched the same idea that is Codeacademy (Codacademy launched in June, July or August i think) for others to join/help me work on. Later creating CodePupil(dot)com but like everything I started it was pretty much solo and within a few years would lose steam. My comment is more so to tell others never to give up or at least try not to. Many who don't see great reward ...monetarily or as Zach is seeing here and has seen people being gracious for helping them learn an invaluable skill/changing and enriching their lives.
nshntarora 5y ago
Since my university's curriculum was stuck in the 90s, I used Codecademy to teach myself JS, and Ruby. Thank you Zach, and everyone who has been part of the team!
BossingAround 5y ago
I signed up for Codeacademy, apparently, a long time ago to check it out. I say apparently because I have 0 recollection of ever using the platform. However, Codeacademy became incredibly spammy with their emails and reminded me of their existence. In the recent weeks, I started getting 2-3 marketing emails a week. I got angry and deleted my account. This posed an interesting experience: 1. To prove it was me who requested the account deletion, I had to sign out and sign back in. 2. Upon signing out and signing back in, I navigated back through the menus to delete my account. 3. I discovered I had to prove that it was me who is requesting to delete the account by signing out and signing back in. This was an infuriating infinite loop. After browsing through the forums, I figured out the problem was that I hadn't signed in for so long that my password was probably expired. So, I changed my password and viola, I could delete my account. With my account deleted, I happily went on my marry way. Next day, a Codeacademy marketing email arrived. I was absolutely furious. Turns out they retain your email for marketing purposes even after you delete your account. So, I issued a GDPR request and finally, the emails stopped. Codeacademy, I ask you from the bottom of my heart, What. The. Fuck?
lanecwagner 5y ago
I've been working an an alternative to codeacademy, particularly one focused on closing skills gaps before job placement, and on building a tighter knit community. from a business perspective, this is great news for me I think xD
debi3523 5y ago

452 points by boeingUH60 5y ago

I remember using codecademy the day they launched, January 2012, to start learning Javascript. The interactive CLI based courses were a breath of fresh air from the old school W3 style tutorials that I had gotten stuck on. It sent me down the path of building a serious career and making a six figure salary that I could have never dreamed of otherwise as a high school dropout. Thanks codecademy.

lucasverra 5y ago
Same feeling. Then, following the path of https://www.freecodecamp.org/ https://www.freecodecamp.org/, that has to be one of the most inclusive tech endeavours out there.
- soneca 5y ago
  It did include me. freeCodeCamp was 5 years ago the foundational first step on a path to my current 6 figure salary in a job that enjoy a lot more than any previous one of my other careers. I never learned well with videos, so codeCademy interface (which I think inspired freeCodeCamp’s) was a great innovation for me.
  - estaseuropano 5y ago
    I thought freecodecamp is mainly a collection of Videos? At least that's what its been like every time I tried.
    - MikusR 5y ago
      The web and JavaScript is the same as codecademy - no videos.
JALTU 5y ago
Same comment as above! Thanks for sharing your story!

wara23arish 5y ago

First time I ever programmed was using Codecademy around 2013. I was always an average student in school. Never had the motivation/curiosity to study since I felt it was all pointless. Never had any programming/computer classes in school. I completed the python course that was available at the time that eventually guides you to build your own version of battleship with 2 players. It was an eye-opening experience for me. I started to view all my math/chemistry/physics problems as “programming problems”, it really made learning fun for me. My grades changed drastically for the better with little extra effort. And more importantly Im now working as a SWE years later. So thank you Codecademy :)

bredren 5y ago
Thanks for sharing this. Do you still have your code for your battleship game? All of my earliest programming projects have been lost to time.
- 300bps 5y ago
  One of my few regrets is leaving old computers/disks at my parents house when I moved out. I didn’t value them at all at the time - they were old crappy computers. So my Commodore 64 and 128 and all the software I spent my childhood writing were thrown away. I had a full BBS program that I wrote when I was 14 along with a half dozen BBS games. Would love to see that code!
  - datavirtue 5y ago
    I lost all my youth code to a monkey virus (nasty boot sector propegator that someone placed on a computer in the college where my mom was studying nursing). Before I knew what was going on it had spread to every floppy and hard drive that I had and had destroyed all the data. Three years of work gone. At that age it felt like most of my life had evaporated. It was almost ten years before I started building serious personal projects again.
- JCharante 5y ago
  Maybe that's for the better... my code from when I was 15 years old haunts my GitHub, and that's not even my first GitHub account.

wincy 5y ago

I learned the very basics to become a developer from Codeacademy. Back in 2015 I was a front line support technician at a small hardware startup who did Codeacademy in my free time, which was considerable. My first daughter had just been born and that really gave me motivation to learn and achieve my full potential. My boss was the only software engineer at our company and so was often overloaded with work, so he gave me small tasks to do, starting with learning regular expressions to massage a few thousand lines of data into something useful, and then getting to make PHP edits to Wordpress, and even some Visual C++. I more than doubled my income from that job to my next job, propelling me to the middle class, and have since achieved consistently high pay raises over the last seven years without much difficulty. As someone who dropped out of high school due to family issues and lack of motivation, I hope free resources like Codeacademy always exists on the internet and will be a pathway for those who have the aptitude to learn to code. For my personally it totally transformed my life as I was basically destitute before I got my first job as a web developer.

AlwaysRock 5y ago
100%. I met an AWS architect who told me his story of learning to code. He was a cab driver who took a software executive home one night and on the drive asked the guy what he did. He said he ran software teams/products and the taxi driver got some advice on how to move industries. The executive said check out a coding bootcamp. The taxi driver did, saw the cost, and decided he would learn on his own. He basically pulled the listed skills that the bootcamp taught and found free courses that focused on each of those. He did it all via self learning. Obviously this individual was special and most people wouldnt be able to teach themselves how to code entirely on their own but these types of courses exist and will continue to exist as a free or low cost option for those people. Then there are the rest of us who have 15 paid courses that we will never start :)
- teh_klev 5y ago
  > Obviously this individual was special and most people wouldnt be able to teach themselves how to code entirely on their own I'd disagree. Sure online learning tools such as CodeAcademy and free videos on YouTube are useful and can provide a great leg up. But I know quite a few folks who pivoted their careers from non-programming jobs back in the 90's and none of these learning aids were available. We just used books, vendor documentation and whatever random stuff was available on the fledgling web and usenet groups to get us going. I don't think it takes a "special individual", it just takes a bit of willpower and attention.

jeanloolz 5y ago

I learnt coding with Codecademy back in 2013. I was 32 years old with a career in marketing. Their Python class was the perfect introduction to coding in general and I got hooked instantly. I took my first job as a software developer 6 years ago after an intense 2 years of self learning following the codecademy class . I'm now senior data engineer in a pretty big company in Europe. I feel blessed for discovering Codecademy. A big thanks to them. I owe them my new career.

frankfrankfrank 5y ago

I get a feeling that the comments here read like eulogies. Maybe that's just me due to exposure to skillsoft over the years.

darkwizard42 5y ago
Took them as validation anecdotes -- sort of like thank yous to the team. Kind of really like these threads! That being said, I've now asked a few folks about Skillsoft and they weren't that bullish about it. Kind of just hoping for a good return for the employees at Codecademy who worked hard to get to this stage (an exit).
- jeofken 5y ago
  For me it’s certainly a big thank you to the Codecademy team!
- temikus 5y ago
  At this price the deal probably minted quite a few new millionaires, so I think it’s a good thing for people who worked on something for 10+ years. It’s no S1 but for a lot of early contributors it’s probably a ticket to never having to work again.

zds 5y ago

Co-Founder and CEO here. We started Codecademy and launched on HN 10 years ago. I'm so thankful to this community for helping us to get started and to see up the momentum! We're committed to making sure that the product stays as great as the one you've used for years (and gets even better!).

shippintoboston 5y ago
I was a freshman in college in Fall of 2011 and took the python course because I was starting to regret majoring in business. 10 years later I'm a senior engineer and can take care of my family for life. I wouldn't be where I am today without the start you and the company gave me. Thank you and best of luck in whatever you choose to do in the future.
- zds 5y ago
  this (and every other story in this thread!) really makes everything worth it. would love to hear as much as you're comfortable sharing over email!
vm 5y ago
Congrats! I've watched your 10+ year journey from afar and been inspired by the impact you've had on this industry & and your persistence during the ups/downs. Excited for your and the great acquisition.
- zds 5y ago
  thank you!
ijustwanttovote 5y ago
Congrats! It's been great to watch your journey. I've always recommended Codecademy to my friends who wanted to learn to program. I can safely say you helped three people get into the industry.
vhiremath4 5y ago
Congrats Zach to you + Ryan! I was just talking to my co-founder (Shahed Khan) yesterday and you came up in conversation as someone he really admires. :) Best of luck in this new chapter for your company, your team, your loved ones, and your life.

hobofan 5y ago

I'm glad for all the people in this thread, for whom Codecademy worked, but I strongly suspect it worked for them because of their drive, and not because of the quality of Codecademy. ~1 year ago I pointed some friends that wanted to learn Python towards Codecademy (because it's just the most prominent example of it's kind of platform). Just out of curiosity, I looked over their shoulders, and I'm glad I did. From what I could the tell the course offered very little beyond a Python REPL in terms of guidance. It didn't teach the difference between a variable name `foo` and a string `"foo"` (one of the most common struggles for newbies), at a point in the course where it assumed that knowledge to complete a step. And all it gave as feedback were bad error messages (IIRC 1:1 the one of the Python interpreter, which are very hard to interpret for newcomers). I was baffled that the flagship learn-to-code-platform had that level of quality after ~10 years of operation.

rmbyrro 5y ago
I was baffle the first time I realised differentiating a variable from string was a thing for beginners, but it's true, a lot struggle with it at start...
- flor1s 5y ago
  In my experience code highlighting that differentiates strings helps a lot to create intuition for this.
ravenstine 5y ago
Although I still think services like Codeacademy and Exercism are really useful, what you've said describes my main gripe with them, which is that these services are seemingly designed for people who have already maneuvered their way into programming to some extent. Someone who wants to learn programming from scratch probably won't get much out of having a "hello world" exercise thrown at them followed by FizzBuzz. Not only does the value of such exercises not necessarily translate to someone who has yet to fool with computers themselves, but these systems overall fail to educate new programmers on the many things that matter besides language constructs for a particular language. In my opinion, these are tools designed by programmers for programmers. Not that there's anything wrong with that... but not once have I become proficient in a language by doing online code challenges in a REPL; I always learn by doing, as was recently the case for me delving into C++ via an Arduino project. The C++ skills I momentarily learned online didn't stick because FizzBuzz isn't really applicable to anything (obviously I'm kind of oversimplifying things here).

nicative 5y ago

I learned python through codecademy back in 2016 and today I work with development professionally

oschvr 5y ago

I learnt to program using codecademy !

chux52 5y ago

Along with others I joined Codecademy shortly after launch after seeing it on HN (2012). My coding journey started much earlier, having no direction and trying to learn from one of those giant Visual Basic books I talked my parents into buying from a bookstore in the mall in the 90's. Went to college (early 00's) with hopes of learning there, but I was too far behind and not really interested in the focus, so switched to a business degree. Graduated and started work as an Accountant and hated the repetitiveness, so picked up some VBA and Access. Real breakthrough for me was the Codecademy Python class and the benefits of the short form format. Get frustrated, take a break and come back fresh the next day or two. That along with seeing Wes McKinney's Intro to Pandas talk around the same time ('13?) changed my career.

darkwizard42 5y ago

Congratulations to the whole Codecadamey team! Know lots of folks there who have worked very hard and I hope this exit is beneficial to them. I wish them nothing but success (and hope Skillsoft can retain and grow the talent)!

thekevan 5y ago

Welp, I signed up with the service in January of 2012 but I'm done with Codecademy now. When Skillsoft bought Element K, it did not go well for the majority of us there. Not only that, but they were my biggest competitor in sales. So not only was I not impressed with how they treated a company after buying it, but it's almost out of principle that I wouldn't support a company that has been such a barrier to success for me.

SamBam 5y ago
Having not used Codecademy, I'm curious: were you really able to get nearly 10 years of value out of it? My understanding was that it was mostly to teach people how to code to an intermediate level.
- thekevan 5y ago
  I feel like it was. It used it as tool to learn intermittently along with many others.

neonate 5y ago

https://www.wsj.com/articles/skillsoft-strikes-525-million-deal-to-acquire-ed-tech-rival-codecademy-11640178188 https://www.wsj.com/articles/skillsoft-strikes-525-million-d... https://archive.md/O0MLo https://archive.md/O0MLo

imwillofficial 5y ago

I started my IT career with Skillsoft training for A+ certification nearly 20 years ago. Good times. Thanks Skillsoft, good luck with the transition Code Academy

mehlmao 5y ago

So how are the new owners going to squeeze more than $525 million out of it?

choward 5y ago
Another thing that makes me suspicious is that Skillsoft just went through chapter 11 bankrupty summer of 2020. It's near the start of a pandemic and people are at home yet these guys struggle? Also look how many owners skillsoft has passed through.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lotsofpulp 5y ago
Same way they all plan to, ads and selling data.
majani 5y ago
Jack up the price, reduce the free content, develop b2b packages

plondon514 5y ago

Congratulations to the Codecademy team! I always really wanted to join Codecademy and wrote about my experience being rejected 3 times over the past 7 years in a recent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025401 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025401. I've always rooted for them and wished them great success, their product has helped millions learn to code, including myself.

safdeep 5y ago

Congrats! Codecademy intro'ed me to coding. Glad there's a good outcome for you all.

zds 5y ago
thank you! i'm glad you trusted us as a place to start. i hope it's helped you level up your career!

davidsawyer 5y ago

I emailed contact@codecademy.com back in September of 2011 with ideas for the site, and Zach got back to me in no time. Been cheering for Codecademy ever since. Congrats, guys!

visarga 5y ago

How is Codecademy pronounced correctly, "code academy" or "code cademy"?

dragonwriter 5y ago
“Codec ademy"

evancoop 5y ago

With each new opportunity to learn to code without the expense of a four-year degree in Computer Science, don't we reach a point at which either: 1) The four-year degree in CS is actually seen as something of a negative indicator 2) We acknowledge the silent part out loud, e.g. "the college degree is a signal, not a delivery mechanism for professional skills." ?

lsalvatore 5y ago
I'm saddened that we're comparing a degree in CS to a subscription to Codecademy. I am curious if you've gotten a degree yourself, and whether that degree was from a reputable school. My CS degree is one of my proudest and most difficult accomplishments in my life. The difference in someone with a 4 year CS degree and a bootcamp graduate is jarringly apparent and one that I have uncomfortable experience with. My following statement will cause me to be downvoted, because the truth makes people uncomfortable. Computer Science education is a rite of passage, like getting a black belt, becoming a priest, doctor or anything else that requires intense study with peers for extended period of time. The CS degree at a top school is more than a signal, its a badge of honor and respect. You may choose to ignore it to your own peril.
- Siira 5y ago
  A badge of honor and respect is also known as a “signal.” Not that signaling is inherently bad, quite the opposite, signaling is essential. But it would be great if we could discover cheaper and more accessible ways to signal. PS: I don’t think a CS degree is just signaling, but it could be improved an order of magnitude if the incentives of the professors and the institutions were aligned with teaching people marketable skills.
  - lsalvatore 5y ago
    Yes I totally understand your point of view. I spent almost a decade paying off a six figure debt for my CS degree. The funniest part? I learned almost nothing about web development in school. No marketable skills that would have really helped me when I first started my actual job! How can I argue this is a good thing? Well, the best analogy I can think of is a black belt in karate. It takes 10 years or whatever to get that. It has no marketable purpose. Why do it? The answer is more than "to get a job". It's about Discipline. Focus. Intense research into fundamentals. Stretching your limit if what you can learn in a weekend. Writing half a page of assembly code on a piece of paper. Debugging a C program. Red black trees. These have no purpose, but when reflecting on these experiences, I would not trade them for a second for "Intro to Javascript and HTML".

black_13 5y ago

Does codeacdemy hire codecademy?

tim-- 5y ago

Off topic, but what is the point of having a cookie consent dialog come up on the site, when on a mobile device, you can't press 'accept' when choosing required cookies only? Seems very hostile, and a way to have users agree to all the cookies regardless. On a Samsung S9.

paul7986 5y ago

In 2011 (April) at a Baltimore Hackathon I unsuccessfully pitched the same idea that is Codeacademy (Codacademy launched in June, July or August i think) for others to join/help me work on. Later creating CodePupil(dot)com but like everything I started it was pretty much solo and within a few years would lose steam. My comment is more so to tell others never to give up or at least try not to. Many who don't see great reward ...monetarily or as Zach is seeing here and has seen people being gracious for helping them learn an invaluable skill/changing and enriching their lives.

nshntarora 5y ago

Since my university's curriculum was stuck in the 90s, I used Codecademy to teach myself JS, and Ruby. Thank you Zach, and everyone who has been part of the team!

BossingAround 5y ago

I signed up for Codeacademy, apparently, a long time ago to check it out. I say apparently because I have 0 recollection of ever using the platform. However, Codeacademy became incredibly spammy with their emails and reminded me of their existence. In the recent weeks, I started getting 2-3 marketing emails a week. I got angry and deleted my account. This posed an interesting experience: 1. To prove it was me who requested the account deletion, I had to sign out and sign back in. 2. Upon signing out and signing back in, I navigated back through the menus to delete my account. 3. I discovered I had to prove that it was me who is requesting to delete the account by signing out and signing back in. This was an infuriating infinite loop. After browsing through the forums, I figured out the problem was that I hadn't signed in for so long that my password was probably expired. So, I changed my password and viola, I could delete my account. With my account deleted, I happily went on my marry way. Next day, a Codeacademy marketing email arrived. I was absolutely furious. Turns out they retain your email for marketing purposes even after you delete your account. So, I issued a GDPR request and finally, the emails stopped. Codeacademy, I ask you from the bottom of my heart, What. The. Fuck?

lanecwagner 5y ago

I've been working an an alternative to codeacademy, particularly one focused on closing skills gaps before job placement, and on building a tighter knit community. from a business perspective, this is great news for me I think xD

debi3523 5y ago