8 ms·

Codecademy adds jQuery lessons and scratchpad

118 points by pkrein 15y ago

hansef 15y ago
I love what Codeacademy is doing, but hope they'll be rolling out some meatier lesson content with that 2m round before too long. The entire venturebeat-post-worthy jQuery lessons take about 3 minutes to go through (http://www.codecademy.com/courses/jquery-and-the-dom/1#!/exercise/0 http://www.codecademy.com/courses/jquery-and-the-dom/1#!/exe...)
- zds 15y ago
  I'm the co-founder of Codecademy - we'll definitely be rolling out meatier content soon. This is just a peek at what some of our beta users have created. If you'd like to create a course, sign up - we're rolling out access to the course creator slowly to make sure our content is all high quality. Let me know if you have any other feedback!
  - hansef 15y ago
    +1 - I love your guys' model, just looking forward to seeing some bigger course projects!
  - daeken 15y ago
    I've been watching Codecademy off and on for a while and I think your comment finally touched on something that I seem to have missed this whole time: you're not focusing on creating the content, you're focusing on making it easy for people to create and find high-quality content. I see you have a signup form for course creators, but I'm not seeing any data on what exactly you want to focus on (is reverse-engineering out of scope, for instance?), whether or not course creators are paid, etc. I'd love to be involved, but just don't have enough information to go on yet; if you could fill in the blanks, I'd greatly appreciate it. Keep up the good work.
    - zds 15y ago
      Hi daeken - you're right. We're going to be a lot more than a content company. I'd love to share what we're working on with you - feel free to send me an email at contact(at)codecademy(dot)com and I'll fill you in.
      - deleted 15y ago
        [deleted]
  - tekromancr 15y ago
    Very cool! I just put in an application to create a novice python course. If I like the experience of creating a course, I hope to make more.
  - eogas 15y ago
    I haven't read a whole lot about your guys' operation, in fact I didn't even know the content was user submitted, but I'm wondering how you're moderating content for quality. I ask because as I was checking out the site last night, I was noticing typos and grammatical errors here and there. There are also technical downfalls, which are probably not as easy to fix. If anything, a lazy way to get information on this would be to 'robustify' the feedback tool. If I notice a typo, or a bug, am I happy? No, not really. But I'm not confused either. The feedback tool should also act as a quality assurance tool IMHO.
    - zds 15y ago
      We're editing the content in house at the moment. We react to feedback in real time so any bugs you saw last night have likely been fixed (we saw a few on the courses that were fixed around 20 minutes after the course was released). We'll work on fixing the feedback tool too.
josh_miller 15y ago
Loving this product. Especially the fact that you jump right into a lesson when you arrive at the homepage. Deliver value before asking the user for anything. Awesome.
grombert11 15y ago
i'm really digging this, but is this related to http://codeacademy.org/ http://codeacademy.org/ ?
- zds 15y ago
  we're not related to codeacademy.org.
  - inconditus 15y ago
    It took me a few tries to remember your website. Codecedemy, Codemy, Codeacademy, codecademy. Hopefully a useful data point.
  - xiaoma 15y ago
    Why buy the .com version of their domain? Or, I suppose the better question is why go after their name to begin with? It makes you guys look pretty bad and a little of that smears off on YC. http://howilearnedeverything.com/2011/10/30/clearing-the-air/ http://howilearnedeverything.com/2011/10/30/clearing-the-air...
vaksel 15y ago
I like the product, but I wish it was a bit more involved. Right now, all you do is 1 simple exercise...and it's really simple stuff. i.e. they give you an example of how to use jQuery to change the color to yellow...and the "practical" experience, is changing the color to red. I think something a bit complicated where you have 10 different examples for each step(progressively complicated), so that people would really learn this stuff.
- zds 15y ago
  Hi vaksel, thanks for the comments. This lesson is our "alpha" release of jQuery...we're working on more improvements (and supplementary exercises) based on your feedback. Would love to hear more - we're contact(at)codecademy(dot)com.
chefsurfing 15y ago
“It really takes people back to the exciting part of programming, which is building things, breaking things, and seeing how they work,” - reminds me about what I loved about playing with Legos, Logo and BASIC as a child. Way to go Codecadamy team!
- zds 15y ago
  thanks!
paul9290 15y ago
Did you guys see teamtreehouse.com that launched today? This space is an interesting one, as the material can be taught thru videos & code quizzes or through gaming type systems. Though I wonder which is the best way to teach this material in a broad sense; gaming or videos with coding quizzes?
j2labs 15y ago
I hope they add some Python stuff soon. I'd love to help write Python lessons.

118 points by pkrein 15y ago

I love what Codeacademy is doing, but hope they'll be rolling out some meatier lesson content with that 2m round before too long. The entire venturebeat-post-worthy jQuery lessons take about 3 minutes to go through (http://www.codecademy.com/courses/jquery-and-the-dom/1#!/exercise/0 http://www.codecademy.com/courses/jquery-and-the-dom/1#!/exe...)

zds 15y ago
I'm the co-founder of Codecademy - we'll definitely be rolling out meatier content soon. This is just a peek at what some of our beta users have created. If you'd like to create a course, sign up - we're rolling out access to the course creator slowly to make sure our content is all high quality. Let me know if you have any other feedback!
- hansef 15y ago
  +1 - I love your guys' model, just looking forward to seeing some bigger course projects!
- daeken 15y ago
  I've been watching Codecademy off and on for a while and I think your comment finally touched on something that I seem to have missed this whole time: you're not focusing on creating the content, you're focusing on making it easy for people to create and find high-quality content. I see you have a signup form for course creators, but I'm not seeing any data on what exactly you want to focus on (is reverse-engineering out of scope, for instance?), whether or not course creators are paid, etc. I'd love to be involved, but just don't have enough information to go on yet; if you could fill in the blanks, I'd greatly appreciate it. Keep up the good work.
  - zds 15y ago
    Hi daeken - you're right. We're going to be a lot more than a content company. I'd love to share what we're working on with you - feel free to send me an email at contact(at)codecademy(dot)com and I'll fill you in.
    - deleted 15y ago
      [deleted]
- tekromancr 15y ago
  Very cool! I just put in an application to create a novice python course. If I like the experience of creating a course, I hope to make more.
- eogas 15y ago
  I haven't read a whole lot about your guys' operation, in fact I didn't even know the content was user submitted, but I'm wondering how you're moderating content for quality. I ask because as I was checking out the site last night, I was noticing typos and grammatical errors here and there. There are also technical downfalls, which are probably not as easy to fix. If anything, a lazy way to get information on this would be to 'robustify' the feedback tool. If I notice a typo, or a bug, am I happy? No, not really. But I'm not confused either. The feedback tool should also act as a quality assurance tool IMHO.
  - zds 15y ago
    We're editing the content in house at the moment. We react to feedback in real time so any bugs you saw last night have likely been fixed (we saw a few on the courses that were fixed around 20 minutes after the course was released). We'll work on fixing the feedback tool too.

josh_miller 15y ago

Loving this product. Especially the fact that you jump right into a lesson when you arrive at the homepage. Deliver value before asking the user for anything. Awesome.

grombert11 15y ago

i'm really digging this, but is this related to http://codeacademy.org/ http://codeacademy.org/ ?

zds 15y ago
we're not related to codeacademy.org.
- inconditus 15y ago
  It took me a few tries to remember your website. Codecedemy, Codemy, Codeacademy, codecademy. Hopefully a useful data point.
- xiaoma 15y ago
  Why buy the .com version of their domain? Or, I suppose the better question is why go after their name to begin with? It makes you guys look pretty bad and a little of that smears off on YC. http://howilearnedeverything.com/2011/10/30/clearing-the-air/ http://howilearnedeverything.com/2011/10/30/clearing-the-air...

vaksel 15y ago

I like the product, but I wish it was a bit more involved. Right now, all you do is 1 simple exercise...and it's really simple stuff. i.e. they give you an example of how to use jQuery to change the color to yellow...and the "practical" experience, is changing the color to red. I think something a bit complicated where you have 10 different examples for each step(progressively complicated), so that people would really learn this stuff.

zds 15y ago
Hi vaksel, thanks for the comments. This lesson is our "alpha" release of jQuery...we're working on more improvements (and supplementary exercises) based on your feedback. Would love to hear more - we're contact(at)codecademy(dot)com.

chefsurfing 15y ago

“It really takes people back to the exciting part of programming, which is building things, breaking things, and seeing how they work,” - reminds me about what I loved about playing with Legos, Logo and BASIC as a child. Way to go Codecadamy team!

zds 15y ago
thanks!

paul9290 15y ago

Did you guys see teamtreehouse.com that launched today? This space is an interesting one, as the material can be taught thru videos & code quizzes or through gaming type systems. Though I wonder which is the best way to teach this material in a broad sense; gaming or videos with coding quizzes?

j2labs 15y ago

I hope they add some Python stuff soon. I'd love to help write Python lessons.