6 ms·

Show HN: LearnStreet - The Best Place to Learn How to Code

101 points by teamls 14y ago

Hey HN - We’ve built a site where you can learn Python, Ruby, and JavaScript in a fun, engaging and interactive way. How is LearnStreet different from other learn-to-code sites you ask? UI/UX: A key aspect of LearnStreet’s courses is its distinct UI/UX. In order to see this, simply sign up! Multi-modal: Our courses are designed for beginners, and we have multiple ways to help you learn, including live chat, Twitter, Q&A, hints, videos and background material. If you don’t know which language you want to pick up, check out our teaser videos in the Courses page! http://www.learnstreet.com/lessons/languages/javascript Code Garage: If you already know how to code, check out Code Garage where you can try your hand at cool coding projects like building a Mastermind game or a Sudoku Solver. http://www.learnstreet.com/cg/simple/projects/javascript Dev Tool: We’ve culled the web to provide some key resources beyond the core programming language that will help you gain a better understanding of what it takes to become a competent coder. http://www.learnstreet.com/dev_tools/ We just launched about a week ago and would love to get your feedback. We are looking for expert coders to help build out our other courses so check out the Contribute section on our site as well. Coding Starts Here! -The LearnStreet Team

teamls 14y ago
Hey HN - We’ve built a site where you can learn Python, Ruby, and JavaScript in a fun, engaging and interactive way. How is LearnStreet different from other learn-to-code sites you ask? UI/UX: A key aspect of LearnStreet’s courses is its distinct UI/UX. In order to see this, simply sign up! Multi-modal: Our courses are designed for beginners, and we have multiple ways to help you learn, including live chat, Twitter, Q&A, hints, videos and background material. If you don’t know which language you want to pick up, check out our teaser videos in the Courses page! http://www.learnstreet.com/lessons/languages/javascript http://www.learnstreet.com/lessons/languages/javascript Code Garage: If you already know how to code, check out Code Garage where you can try your hand at cool coding projects like building a Mastermind game or a Sudoku Solver. http://www.learnstreet.com/cg/simple/projects/javascript http://www.learnstreet.com/cg/simple/projects/javascript Dev Tool: We’ve culled the web to provide some key resources beyond the core programming language that will help you gain a better understanding of what it takes to become a competent coder. http://www.learnstreet.com/dev_tools/ http://www.learnstreet.com/dev_tools/ We just launched about a week ago and would love to get your feedback. We are looking for expert coders to help build out our other courses so check out the Contribute section on our site as well. Coding Starts Here! -The LearnStreet Team
- moistgorilla 14y ago
  Nice job it looks really good.
- shaufler 14y ago
  This looks great guys! I especially like the tutorial flow. Some criticism: You should show JS syntax errors instead just showing a generic error message. I understand you don't want to scare newbies away with compiler errors, but your solution just makes debugging more difficult. You should show syntax errors, but translate the default JS error messages into something friendlier. Codecademy does this for their intro lessons.
- techpeace 14y ago
  That Heroku video you link to on the Dev Tools page is about 4 years old, and is demoing a version of the product that no longer exists (their attempt at an online IDE of sorts). Looks like a great product, though! Keep it up.
- intellegacy 14y ago
  I don't understand why we cant skip around the lessons in the python tutorial. I don't need to start at lesson 1; i want to skip around to different lessons.
  - lutusp 14y ago
    > I don't need to start at lesson 1; i want to skip around to different lessons. There's a good reason for this, which I will explain with an analogy: Lesson 1: Write the Great American Novel. Lesson 2: Learn how to write engaging, readable short stories. Lesson 3: Learn how to write internally consistent essays. Lesson 4: Learn how to write coherent paragraphs. Lesson 5: Learn how to structure grammatically correct sentences. Lesson 6 Learn how to use and spell common English words. Lesson 7: Learn how to enter text on a keyboard. Get it? Lessons have a natural order, and each lesson requires what was learned beforehand.
    - intellegacy 14y ago
sdesai 14y ago
LearnStreet coming out with a bold statement, but from a quick review of the site, they are offering something different. This is going to be a big market for the service that cracks the code...pun intended.
swagv 14y ago
Liking the Code Garage stuff at least. Not your typical "hello world" fodder, which I never found too practical.
swanson 14y ago
I'll be "that guy". You should change your Github OAuth permissions. I'm never giving you access to private repos - and would only give you access to public repos if you were creating a repo for me to do the Code Garage stuff (it isn't clear if you do that or not). I'm happy to auth with Github if you just request my public profile.
- msarchet 14y ago
  Same here, it was a instant nope.
  - catshirt 14y ago
    +1 for feedback's sake. i'm not trying to save anything to my github. i just want to try a garage demo so i can see if it's worth sharing with anyone.
eranation 14y ago
I like it, I agree with the GH comment, I used twitter, your tutorial is great, though a bit long, didn't wait till the end. I would add a "skip the basics" option for people who already know adding numbers. but besides that looks great, but how are you different from all the others? (See partial list here http://eranmedan.com/post/22359967135/codeschools http://eranmedan.com/post/22359967135/codeschools)
JPonczek 14y ago
LearnStreet is a great introduction to the world of coding. They have a bunch of really awesome Code Garage projects, and I especially like making the games, and Conway's Game of Life. Their teaching methods are very welcoming to someone who hasn't been exposed to this stuff yet, and I recommend anyone who is even remotely interested in learning how to code to give it a try, you won't regret it.
kyro 14y ago
Although these types of sites (Codecademy, etc) are great and teach absolute beginners all the basics of programming, they've left me lost as to how to continue developing my skill set. I've hit a wall for some time and am stuck in this strange better-than-a-beginner-but-still-terribly-amateur middleground where the resources I keep coming across are either tailored for fresh beginners or more advanced programmers. Does anyone have any suggestions or good resources that are tailored to my level?
- teamls 14y ago
  We're coming out with some "intermediate" level content soon ;)
- allsystemsgo 14y ago
  I'm not quite at your point yet, but I'm getting close. I've taken a class in Java, built some simple programs like an address book etc. Then I journeyed into python, ruby etc. Nothing really struck a chord with me until python. In any case, I'm still plugging away, but I have learned about doing basic math, variables, etc etc quite a lot. I'll keep going but, in the end, what I want to make is a fully functioning and actually USEFUL web app that LOOKS and FEELS professional. So many of these online resource just take you half way. They try to be SO user friendly and approachable, but in doing so the tutorials are filled with too much useless fluff. "We are different because we make learning FUN!" Or, the tutorials are just far too advanced.
- pendext 14y ago
  This might be an obvious suggestion, but have you tried building something useful? I have found myself in that strange in between space before when learning a new language, and by starting to build something I am able to quickly move past that middle ground.
  - allsystemsgo 14y ago
    I think that's part of the problem though. These courses really don't give me the confidence or the framework to develop projects around. That said, I'm just doing a bunch of different courses until I get that AHA moment.
aaronbrethorst 14y ago
Admittedly IANAL, but I'm very confused about how this doesn't infringe on Amazon's trademark for "TeachStreet": http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:ir2pel.2.1 http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:ir... http://www.geekwire.com/2012/exclusive-amazoncom-buys-teachstreet/ http://www.geekwire.com/2012/exclusive-amazoncom-buys-teachs...
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
jfarmer 14y ago
Disclaimer: I'm a teacher at Dev Bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com http://devbootcamp.com). Everything I say comes from love -- if I didn't care about this deeply I wouldn't bother to remark in the first place. :) Very nice! We can always use more absolute-beginner tutorials in the world. Just started the Ruby tutorial: "Great! So what just happened here? To begin with, let's define what you typed 2 + 2 as instructions. The ruby console reads your typed instructions, interprets it, and then acts on the instructions the way you gave it. This step is called evaluation. Instruction when complete are called an expression. If the instructions you have typed are incomplete (for example, if you typed 2 + and hit enter), this console will show an error message. The instruction you typed, 2 + 2 is an expression. It is important to remember that evaluation of an expression always returns a value. This value is what is shown as result on the console. In this case, 4 was the result of the evaluation." If someone honestly knows nothing about coding, you've probably just lost them right there. Questions a beginner would ask: * What is a "ruby console?" * What instructions? I typed "2+2." * What does "interprets" mean? * How can instructions be complete? Were they ever incomplete? How do I know when they're complete? * "Returns?" "Value?" "Result?" In a few sentences, with jargon highlighted: I type instructions into a console which turn into expressions when they're complete. The console evaluates the expression and returns a value, which is shown as a result on the console. A beginning programmer won't have the mental models necessary to make sense any of that. It's context-free. Most of those words have no prior associations, and those that do will lead them astray. Metaphor is your friend. For reading, I recommend Bret Victor's essay on Learnable Programming: (http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/ http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/) and Mindstorms by Seymour Papert (http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful-Ideas/dp/0465046746 http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful...).
- teamls 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback! We're always iterating on our course content, so we'll keep this in mind.
  - bromang 14y ago
    please stop using "iterating" in this way
alexholehouse 14y ago
Looks great, really nice. Minor point, I have a feeling (and can't find evidence to the contrary) that Twitter's stack is actually Java, not Ruby [1]. They may have changed back since then, but I can't find anything about it. Maybe I'm totally off though, and other parts of their stack are rails. I don't know - I'm not really a webdev guy... [EDIT] - any reason for the downvote? I'm totally fine with being wrong, or have I just completely missed something? The reason I brought it up was because when you select Ruby, one of the motivational messages opens with, "Twitter uses Ruby to power 400M incredible tweets every day." http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/04/twitter-drops-ruby-for-java.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/04/twitter-drops-ruby...
- jitl 14y ago
  Twitter runs a whole range of different technologies, as you can see from their Github page [1]. Much of their performance-sensitive code is Scala, but they also run Python, Ruby, C, and Javascript tools. Their front-end, however, remains Ruby. The link you posted is just about search infrastructure. [1]: http://twitter.github.com/ http://twitter.github.com/
quad_copter_cat 14y ago
It wouldn't work for me in Safari 6.0 / OSX 10.7.5. Never made it past the green progress bar.
justjimmy 14y ago
Still waiting for a code teaching site that actually explains how everything fits together. What's HTML used for? What's CSS? What's the bigger picture? What's the difference between java and javascript? Why are there so many languages. What are all these terms you are spitting out? Can we get some real world analogies so we can grasp some concepts? But every single lesson from all these startups starts with type 'this' in or 1+1. I don't think coding lessons should start with 1+1. It should start what coding is, what the language is, why I am learning it and what I could do with it and most importantly, what is different about it compared to rest of the languages. You got Python, Java, HTML, CSS, Ruby, C+ and the list goes on. I think it'd be very beneficial to have a map, that shows every day stuff that people use and list how it was built. ie: iPhone are built on 'X', Android are built on 'Y', Websites are normally built with 'Z', but you can add 'A', 'B' and 'C' to make it even better etc. To me, the approach taken by these sites are almost identical. And they're all missing something…
- hluska 14y ago
  I see what you're saying and there are some sites that do a pretty decent job of what you're saying. For example, Opera has some amazing documents on their site. The much maligned w3schools even does a pretty decent job of showing how everything fits together (in the context of web development). The problem that I see with your approach is that it is really hard to explain certain concepts to people without any experience. For example, if I wanted to explain the difference between Java and Python, I would likely have to get into the difference between static and dynamic typing. I can't think of a way to explain a type system to someone who can't write a basic program. Another concern I have is that too comprehensive a resource could actually teach bad habits. If I would have learned from one source, I wouldn't have learned how to debug via Google. I can't tell you how many times knowing how to answer questions with a search engine has saved me! Great comment though - I bet the developers love reading feedback like this!!
  - rickdale 14y ago
    You know, the problem is you are smart and you are not aware of how people are approaching computer programming topics. IMHO, sorta like a startup pitch, if you can't explain the difference (to a beginner) between two languages in less than 4 sentences, you probably lost them.
bromang 14y ago
the indentation the code editor shows does not always reflect the actual indentation of the code. so i had to c+paste it into another window and then back again to get the code to run...
- teamls 14y ago
  We will be releasing changes to the code editor which will resolve the indentation issue in Python.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
bazookaBen 14y ago
here's a suggestion: start immediately with a cool project, like a game or a web server. Beats the "here's 2+2" type problems.
zio99 14y ago
I'm logging in with Facebook but I keep getting this error: The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.
- teamls 14y ago
  Hey, please email us at hello@learnstreet.com and we'll help you out!
noirman 14y ago
It's like Codecademy for Builders/Makers. LOVE IT.
rurounijones 14y ago
Comments: When I log in with Github why do I have to enter my name and email on the sign-up form? You guys already got permission to read that from github, if you want to offer flexibility then at least put in the defaults and let me edit them. Also "Email Id" could be named better.
jkeesh 14y ago
If you are looking for a new approach in learning how to code, check out CodeHS. While LearnStreet is an amazing tool, and another great way to be introduced to programming, the site immediately feels very similar to Codecademy. A responsive console is very cool, but I don't think it is the best way to connect with absolute beginners. Our philosophy is that the key to teaching beginners is on providing help from real people, and that is what we are doing at CodeHS. Would be grateful for any feedback from the HN community.
JosephHatfield 14y ago
I'd like to see a course that teaches new languages by first teaching me how to read existing code before asking me to write a single program.
- lutusp 14y ago
  The argument is often made that understanding a language comes more quickly by writing and executing small examples than by reading examples.
DGCA 14y ago
I can't play around with code after the lesson is over. As a UX analyst, this bothers me. The interpreter shouldn't just shut down after the lesson is complete.

101 points by teamls 14y ago

teamls 14y ago

Hey HN - We’ve built a site where you can learn Python, Ruby, and JavaScript in a fun, engaging and interactive way. How is LearnStreet different from other learn-to-code sites you ask? UI/UX: A key aspect of LearnStreet’s courses is its distinct UI/UX. In order to see this, simply sign up! Multi-modal: Our courses are designed for beginners, and we have multiple ways to help you learn, including live chat, Twitter, Q&A, hints, videos and background material. If you don’t know which language you want to pick up, check out our teaser videos in the Courses page! http://www.learnstreet.com/lessons/languages/javascript http://www.learnstreet.com/lessons/languages/javascript Code Garage: If you already know how to code, check out Code Garage where you can try your hand at cool coding projects like building a Mastermind game or a Sudoku Solver. http://www.learnstreet.com/cg/simple/projects/javascript http://www.learnstreet.com/cg/simple/projects/javascript Dev Tool: We’ve culled the web to provide some key resources beyond the core programming language that will help you gain a better understanding of what it takes to become a competent coder. http://www.learnstreet.com/dev_tools/ http://www.learnstreet.com/dev_tools/ We just launched about a week ago and would love to get your feedback. We are looking for expert coders to help build out our other courses so check out the Contribute section on our site as well. Coding Starts Here! -The LearnStreet Team

moistgorilla 14y ago
Nice job it looks really good.
shaufler 14y ago
This looks great guys! I especially like the tutorial flow. Some criticism: You should show JS syntax errors instead just showing a generic error message. I understand you don't want to scare newbies away with compiler errors, but your solution just makes debugging more difficult. You should show syntax errors, but translate the default JS error messages into something friendlier. Codecademy does this for their intro lessons.
techpeace 14y ago
That Heroku video you link to on the Dev Tools page is about 4 years old, and is demoing a version of the product that no longer exists (their attempt at an online IDE of sorts). Looks like a great product, though! Keep it up.
intellegacy 14y ago
I don't understand why we cant skip around the lessons in the python tutorial. I don't need to start at lesson 1; i want to skip around to different lessons.
- lutusp 14y ago
  > I don't need to start at lesson 1; i want to skip around to different lessons. There's a good reason for this, which I will explain with an analogy: Lesson 1: Write the Great American Novel. Lesson 2: Learn how to write engaging, readable short stories. Lesson 3: Learn how to write internally consistent essays. Lesson 4: Learn how to write coherent paragraphs. Lesson 5: Learn how to structure grammatically correct sentences. Lesson 6 Learn how to use and spell common English words. Lesson 7: Learn how to enter text on a keyboard. Get it? Lessons have a natural order, and each lesson requires what was learned beforehand.
  - intellegacy 14y ago

sdesai 14y ago

LearnStreet coming out with a bold statement, but from a quick review of the site, they are offering something different. This is going to be a big market for the service that cracks the code...pun intended.

swagv 14y ago

Liking the Code Garage stuff at least. Not your typical "hello world" fodder, which I never found too practical.

swanson 14y ago

I'll be "that guy". You should change your Github OAuth permissions. I'm never giving you access to private repos - and would only give you access to public repos if you were creating a repo for me to do the Code Garage stuff (it isn't clear if you do that or not). I'm happy to auth with Github if you just request my public profile.

msarchet 14y ago
Same here, it was a instant nope.
- catshirt 14y ago
  +1 for feedback's sake. i'm not trying to save anything to my github. i just want to try a garage demo so i can see if it's worth sharing with anyone.

eranation 14y ago

I like it, I agree with the GH comment, I used twitter, your tutorial is great, though a bit long, didn't wait till the end. I would add a "skip the basics" option for people who already know adding numbers. but besides that looks great, but how are you different from all the others? (See partial list here http://eranmedan.com/post/22359967135/codeschools http://eranmedan.com/post/22359967135/codeschools)

JPonczek 14y ago

LearnStreet is a great introduction to the world of coding. They have a bunch of really awesome Code Garage projects, and I especially like making the games, and Conway's Game of Life. Their teaching methods are very welcoming to someone who hasn't been exposed to this stuff yet, and I recommend anyone who is even remotely interested in learning how to code to give it a try, you won't regret it.

kyro 14y ago

Although these types of sites (Codecademy, etc) are great and teach absolute beginners all the basics of programming, they've left me lost as to how to continue developing my skill set. I've hit a wall for some time and am stuck in this strange better-than-a-beginner-but-still-terribly-amateur middleground where the resources I keep coming across are either tailored for fresh beginners or more advanced programmers. Does anyone have any suggestions or good resources that are tailored to my level?

teamls 14y ago
We're coming out with some "intermediate" level content soon ;)
allsystemsgo 14y ago
I'm not quite at your point yet, but I'm getting close. I've taken a class in Java, built some simple programs like an address book etc. Then I journeyed into python, ruby etc. Nothing really struck a chord with me until python. In any case, I'm still plugging away, but I have learned about doing basic math, variables, etc etc quite a lot. I'll keep going but, in the end, what I want to make is a fully functioning and actually USEFUL web app that LOOKS and FEELS professional. So many of these online resource just take you half way. They try to be SO user friendly and approachable, but in doing so the tutorials are filled with too much useless fluff. "We are different because we make learning FUN!" Or, the tutorials are just far too advanced.
pendext 14y ago
This might be an obvious suggestion, but have you tried building something useful? I have found myself in that strange in between space before when learning a new language, and by starting to build something I am able to quickly move past that middle ground.
- allsystemsgo 14y ago
  I think that's part of the problem though. These courses really don't give me the confidence or the framework to develop projects around. That said, I'm just doing a bunch of different courses until I get that AHA moment.

aaronbrethorst 14y ago

Admittedly IANAL, but I'm very confused about how this doesn't infringe on Amazon's trademark for "TeachStreet": http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:ir2pel.2.1 http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/showfield?f=doc&state=4008:ir... http://www.geekwire.com/2012/exclusive-amazoncom-buys-teachstreet/ http://www.geekwire.com/2012/exclusive-amazoncom-buys-teachs...

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

jfarmer 14y ago

Disclaimer: I'm a teacher at Dev Bootcamp (http://devbootcamp.com http://devbootcamp.com). Everything I say comes from love -- if I didn't care about this deeply I wouldn't bother to remark in the first place. :) Very nice! We can always use more absolute-beginner tutorials in the world. Just started the Ruby tutorial: "Great! So what just happened here? To begin with, let's define what you typed 2 + 2 as instructions. The ruby console reads your typed instructions, interprets it, and then acts on the instructions the way you gave it. This step is called evaluation. Instruction when complete are called an expression. If the instructions you have typed are incomplete (for example, if you typed 2 + and hit enter), this console will show an error message. The instruction you typed, 2 + 2 is an expression. It is important to remember that evaluation of an expression always returns a value. This value is what is shown as result on the console. In this case, 4 was the result of the evaluation." If someone honestly knows nothing about coding, you've probably just lost them right there. Questions a beginner would ask: * What is a "ruby console?" * What instructions? I typed "2+2." * What does "interprets" mean? * How can instructions be complete? Were they ever incomplete? How do I know when they're complete? * "Returns?" "Value?" "Result?" In a few sentences, with jargon highlighted: I type instructions into a console which turn into expressions when they're complete. The console evaluates the expression and returns a value, which is shown as a result on the console. A beginning programmer won't have the mental models necessary to make sense any of that. It's context-free. Most of those words have no prior associations, and those that do will lead them astray. Metaphor is your friend. For reading, I recommend Bret Victor's essay on Learnable Programming: (http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/ http://worrydream.com/LearnableProgramming/) and Mindstorms by Seymour Papert (http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful-Ideas/dp/0465046746 http://www.amazon.com/Mindstorms-Children-Computers-Powerful...).

teamls 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback! We're always iterating on our course content, so we'll keep this in mind.
- bromang 14y ago
  please stop using "iterating" in this way

alexholehouse 14y ago

Looks great, really nice. Minor point, I have a feeling (and can't find evidence to the contrary) that Twitter's stack is actually Java, not Ruby [1]. They may have changed back since then, but I can't find anything about it. Maybe I'm totally off though, and other parts of their stack are rails. I don't know - I'm not really a webdev guy... [EDIT] - any reason for the downvote? I'm totally fine with being wrong, or have I just completely missed something? The reason I brought it up was because when you select Ruby, one of the motivational messages opens with, "Twitter uses Ruby to power 400M incredible tweets every day." http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/04/twitter-drops-ruby-for-java.php http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/04/twitter-drops-ruby...

jitl 14y ago
Twitter runs a whole range of different technologies, as you can see from their Github page [1]. Much of their performance-sensitive code is Scala, but they also run Python, Ruby, C, and Javascript tools. Their front-end, however, remains Ruby. The link you posted is just about search infrastructure. [1]: http://twitter.github.com/ http://twitter.github.com/

quad_copter_cat 14y ago

It wouldn't work for me in Safari 6.0 / OSX 10.7.5. Never made it past the green progress bar.

justjimmy 14y ago

Still waiting for a code teaching site that actually explains how everything fits together. What's HTML used for? What's CSS? What's the bigger picture? What's the difference between java and javascript? Why are there so many languages. What are all these terms you are spitting out? Can we get some real world analogies so we can grasp some concepts? But every single lesson from all these startups starts with type 'this' in or 1+1. I don't think coding lessons should start with 1+1. It should start what coding is, what the language is, why I am learning it and what I could do with it and most importantly, what is different about it compared to rest of the languages. You got Python, Java, HTML, CSS, Ruby, C+ and the list goes on. I think it'd be very beneficial to have a map, that shows every day stuff that people use and list how it was built. ie: iPhone are built on 'X', Android are built on 'Y', Websites are normally built with 'Z', but you can add 'A', 'B' and 'C' to make it even better etc. To me, the approach taken by these sites are almost identical. And they're all missing something…

hluska 14y ago
I see what you're saying and there are some sites that do a pretty decent job of what you're saying. For example, Opera has some amazing documents on their site. The much maligned w3schools even does a pretty decent job of showing how everything fits together (in the context of web development). The problem that I see with your approach is that it is really hard to explain certain concepts to people without any experience. For example, if I wanted to explain the difference between Java and Python, I would likely have to get into the difference between static and dynamic typing. I can't think of a way to explain a type system to someone who can't write a basic program. Another concern I have is that too comprehensive a resource could actually teach bad habits. If I would have learned from one source, I wouldn't have learned how to debug via Google. I can't tell you how many times knowing how to answer questions with a search engine has saved me! Great comment though - I bet the developers love reading feedback like this!!
- rickdale 14y ago
  You know, the problem is you are smart and you are not aware of how people are approaching computer programming topics. IMHO, sorta like a startup pitch, if you can't explain the difference (to a beginner) between two languages in less than 4 sentences, you probably lost them.

bromang 14y ago

the indentation the code editor shows does not always reflect the actual indentation of the code. so i had to c+paste it into another window and then back again to get the code to run...

teamls 14y ago
We will be releasing changes to the code editor which will resolve the indentation issue in Python.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

bazookaBen 14y ago

here's a suggestion: start immediately with a cool project, like a game or a web server. Beats the "here's 2+2" type problems.

zio99 14y ago

I'm logging in with Facebook but I keep getting this error: The page you are looking for is temporarily unavailable. Please try again later.

teamls 14y ago
Hey, please email us at hello@learnstreet.com and we'll help you out!

noirman 14y ago

It's like Codecademy for Builders/Makers. LOVE IT.

rurounijones 14y ago

Comments: When I log in with Github why do I have to enter my name and email on the sign-up form? You guys already got permission to read that from github, if you want to offer flexibility then at least put in the defaults and let me edit them. Also "Email Id" could be named better.

jkeesh 14y ago

If you are looking for a new approach in learning how to code, check out CodeHS. While LearnStreet is an amazing tool, and another great way to be introduced to programming, the site immediately feels very similar to Codecademy. A responsive console is very cool, but I don't think it is the best way to connect with absolute beginners. Our philosophy is that the key to teaching beginners is on providing help from real people, and that is what we are doing at CodeHS. Would be grateful for any feedback from the HN community.

JosephHatfield 14y ago

I'd like to see a course that teaches new languages by first teaching me how to read existing code before asking me to write a single program.

lutusp 14y ago
The argument is often made that understanding a language comes more quickly by writing and executing small examples than by reading examples.

DGCA 14y ago

I can't play around with code after the lesson is over. As a UX analyst, this bothers me. The interpreter shouldn't just shut down after the lesson is complete.