6 ms·

Codecademy introduces API lessons with YouTube, SoundCloud, Parse, and more

215 points by theunquietone 14y ago

zbruhnke 14y ago
This is cool. Twilio is one of the first API's I fell in love with strictly because of their docs and how easy it was to learn everything, there are some other API's that took me longer to get used to working with (Google Maps comes to mind) but with something like this my progress would have come along so much faster. I feel more and more like now is one of the best times to want to learn anything, programming included. But you guys really are making it so easy for the next generations of programmers to learn the right way. Thanks for this. I hope it makes the kind of impact it is capable of.
SanjayUttam 14y ago
This is going to be super helpful for one of the projects I'm working on...researching APIs is always a bit time consuming due to the huge discrepancy in documentation quality/location/formatting/examples/etc.
physcab 14y ago
It took me a while to figure out what this was. At first I thought Codecademy was providing lessons VIA API. I thought, "wow, they've essentially built a framework for education...pretty cool". Then I went to the actual website and saw that it just teaches you how to program OTHER APIs. Maybe their title should more accurately be "Learn How to Program APIs" instead.
- epaga 14y ago
  Seems to me like it was simply an (understandable) misread of a clear title. It's "API lessons", not "lessons API". :)
- slaundy 14y ago
  Thanks for the feedback. We'll be sure to make the wording super clear.
aorshan 14y ago
I'm curious as to why they wouldn't include lessons on the Facebook and Twitter APIs. I would think that would be a primary example of APIs to be familiar with.
- edowling 14y ago
  The Facebook API is hugely varied and wide, so I'm guessing they want to try it with simpler APIs first before going after something huge like FB or Twitter (which is complicated by OAuth).
- jamesgpearce 14y ago
  Working on it. There are some specific challenges around the way the Facebook SDK for JavaScript works in this context, but we'll get there.
- caseysoftware 14y ago
  The fastest way to annoy someone is for the docs/examples to be out of date. Previously Facebook has introduced API breaking changes pretty regularly, so it would be challenging at best. They've made a commitment for 2013 that breaks will only happen quarterly so it should be safer for Codecademy to commit soon.
FredFredrickson 14y ago
Codeacademy is a great site... it makes it fun to brush up on the basics or try out a new language. It helped me learn some Javascript recently, and I really enjoyed the course. I'd love to see them do something on OAuth / Twitter. I find that stuff very confusing.
- d0gsbody 14y ago
  Not an API, but I think they should also add classes on PHP/MySQL.
- mhurron 14y ago
  OAuth would be very much appreciated.
- slaundy 14y ago
  Great idea—we'd love to host it!
nanook 14y ago
I remember really struggling with cross-domain AJAX requests. I wish they'd talked about that. Also, its quite likely that one would be using jQuery (or some other lib.) to do all of this in practice.
- slaundy 14y ago
  Good points, thanks for the ideas. Keep an eye on this—today is just day 1!
sergiotapia 14y ago
All of these examples further solidify my hapiness in switching from C# to Ruby as my primary language. It's so beautiful! The project I'm working on wants to send SMS messages to clients, but we postponed that for v2. But after seeing the example for Twilio I'll heavily recommend we implement this feature now, as it seems very straightforward and will be a major upsell for our startup. My brother is studying Comp Sci (well in Bolivia it's called Ingenieria de Sistemas - less b-tress more ASP.Net), and I really want him to learn Ruby and become happier with his work.
- jonmarkgo 14y ago
  Hey Sergio, That's so awesome to hear (I worked on the Twilio Codecademy lessons) - if you have any more questions feel free to drop me an e-mail at jonmarkgo@twilio.com and I'll be happy to help.
- crazysaem 14y ago
  It seems like you really enjoy Ruby, that’s great to hear. I just started CS169.1x on edx, which will be using ruby as the language of choice, and have never touched ruby. (Except in the stripe ctf where I did not fully understand the code, just enough to progress to the next levels.) Now I'm even more excited to learn ruby!
- dysoco 14y ago
  I live in Argentina and most of people are doing Ingenieria de Sistemas, although it seems to be a Computer Science degree in Bs. Aires, let's hope it's a good one.
- numo16 14y ago
  I've done quite a bit of work in both C# and ruby and I haven't had any more or less difficulty in developing against APIs with either of them. Development speed is about the same either way. Working against a well built API helps. In a previous project at work I developed a mobile web services back-end in java and integrated Twilio into it in less than a day. Twilio is super easy to work with, so implement it now! :)
maximem 14y ago
It seems for beginners in code but really nice initiative!... UI . I've stumbled upon webshelll.io recently on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728671 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728671. Quite a good tool for learning fastly how to use and script apis. Seems to be made for developer bored with finding , learning and scripting API.
jonathanjaeger 14y ago
Started Codecademy recently and really like the lessons. In terms of gamification, the badges do nothing for me, but the points and day streak are great. I had a 15 day streak and it really gave me the extra incentive to do just 10 minutes a day even when I was particularly busy. I forgot one day and now I have to start the clock over again, haha. Will dig into API stuff once I actually finish the other basics.
d0gsbody 14y ago
applause I also wish they would fix their current classes. A couple of bugs are keeping me from finishing their Jquery and web(original) tracks. I emailed them about it, but still doesn't work.
- slaundy 14y ago
  Sorry about that. Could you send me the links and more info? I'll look into it. sasha at codecademy dot com. thanks.
toprxsavings 14y ago
Dear and Valuable Customers and Friends, Receive greetings from our company, through this post we want to maintain a good communication with each and every one of you, and inform you more about us, our company has successfully delivered medications through all the globe for the last 6 years with no inconvenient, we have become one of the most reliable company’s in the internet. We want to let you know about our shipping offer: Buy medications with NO prescription. Xanax, Alprazolam, Diazepam, Clonazepam, Phenobarbital, Etc…. Benzos, Sleeping Problems Aids, Weigth Loss, ambien, Pain Relief .etc... Url Website: https://secure.icomstec.com/savings/store/src https://secure.icomstec.com/savings/store/src ... Customer Service: toprxsavings@yahoo.com If you don’t find a medication or drug enlisted please mail us. 1-3 Business day delivery Most Discreet packaging you ever seen, no one will think you are receiving medications. Thanks in advance for your purchases. Greetings Customer Service
toprxsavings 14y ago
Dear and Valuable Customers and Friends, Receive greetings from our company, through this post we want to maintain a good communication with each and every one of you, and inform you more about us, our company has successfully delivered medications through all the globe for the last 6 years with no inconvenient, we have become one of the most reliable company’s in the internet. We want to let you know about our shipping offer: Buy medications with NO prescription. Xanax, Alprazolam, Diazepam, Clonazepam, Phenobarbital, Etc…. Benzos, Sleeping Problems Aids, Weigth Loss, ambien, Pain Relief .etc... Url Website: https://secure.icomstec.com/savings/store/src https://secure.icomstec.com/savings/store/src ... Customer Service: toprxsavings@yahoo.com If you don’t find a medication or drug enlisted please mail us. 1-3 Business day delivery Most Discreet packaging you ever seen, no one will think you are receiving medications. Thanks in advance for your purchases. Greetings Customer Service
6thSigma 14y ago
This got me thinking - anyone know of an API or open source project that implements a browser-based IDE where you can make your own programming challenges or tutorials? Perhaps Codeacademy is working on something like that?
- slaundy 14y ago
  We launched it a year ago :) http://www.codecademy.com/create/creator http://www.codecademy.com/create/creator Based on open source repl.it
  - 6thSigma 14y ago
    Thanks! I'll definitely try it out.
jnotarstefano 14y ago
I'm a fairly fanatical Codecademy user, so this is not news to me: I've been testing these courses since at least two weeks :) Unfortunately this means I'm having all sorts of data integrity issues: for example, I can't access the third lesson in the Parse track, which is showing 9/4 exercises done. I'm also having trouble finishing several exercises in these courses, due to puzzling errors and, possibly, flawed tests. But, wrinkles aside, I think these lectures are a brilliant way to generate leads: I subscribed to pretty much every service that has course on its API (Parse, Twilio, NPR...).
- slaundy 14y ago
  thanks for testing! so glad to hear you like the lessons and are signing up for the APIs! Could you try the Parse course again? I fixed an issue a few minutes ago that may have cleared up your problem. And please continue sending in tester reports on the other bugs you mentioned. We & our API partners would love to fix them up.
  - sailfast 14y ago
    I was also experiencing an issue with session three earlier (sent along a bug fix). Works like a charm now. Thanks for the quick fix!
  - jnotarstefano 14y ago
    I can report that the Parse course is now correctly working. Thank you! I'll check tomorrow if I'm still having issues with Twilio. I also got my provision rejected from Sendgrid, but I'm trying to solve this on my own. EDIT: Solved! Thank you again for these wonderful courses!
    - slaundy 14y ago
      Yay! Glad to hear it all got resolved. Be in touch if you hit any more problems. And let us know what you build!
allbombs 14y ago
very cool!
Crake 14y ago
I really love Codeacademy. Keep up the good work, guys!

215 points by theunquietone 14y ago

This is cool. Twilio is one of the first API's I fell in love with strictly because of their docs and how easy it was to learn everything, there are some other API's that took me longer to get used to working with (Google Maps comes to mind) but with something like this my progress would have come along so much faster. I feel more and more like now is one of the best times to want to learn anything, programming included. But you guys really are making it so easy for the next generations of programmers to learn the right way. Thanks for this. I hope it makes the kind of impact it is capable of.

SanjayUttam 14y ago

This is going to be super helpful for one of the projects I'm working on...researching APIs is always a bit time consuming due to the huge discrepancy in documentation quality/location/formatting/examples/etc.

physcab 14y ago

It took me a while to figure out what this was. At first I thought Codecademy was providing lessons VIA API. I thought, "wow, they've essentially built a framework for education...pretty cool". Then I went to the actual website and saw that it just teaches you how to program OTHER APIs. Maybe their title should more accurately be "Learn How to Program APIs" instead.

epaga 14y ago
Seems to me like it was simply an (understandable) misread of a clear title. It's "API lessons", not "lessons API". :)
slaundy 14y ago
Thanks for the feedback. We'll be sure to make the wording super clear.

aorshan 14y ago

I'm curious as to why they wouldn't include lessons on the Facebook and Twitter APIs. I would think that would be a primary example of APIs to be familiar with.

edowling 14y ago
The Facebook API is hugely varied and wide, so I'm guessing they want to try it with simpler APIs first before going after something huge like FB or Twitter (which is complicated by OAuth).
jamesgpearce 14y ago
Working on it. There are some specific challenges around the way the Facebook SDK for JavaScript works in this context, but we'll get there.
caseysoftware 14y ago
The fastest way to annoy someone is for the docs/examples to be out of date. Previously Facebook has introduced API breaking changes pretty regularly, so it would be challenging at best. They've made a commitment for 2013 that breaks will only happen quarterly so it should be safer for Codecademy to commit soon.

FredFredrickson 14y ago

Codeacademy is a great site... it makes it fun to brush up on the basics or try out a new language. It helped me learn some Javascript recently, and I really enjoyed the course. I'd love to see them do something on OAuth / Twitter. I find that stuff very confusing.

d0gsbody 14y ago
Not an API, but I think they should also add classes on PHP/MySQL.
mhurron 14y ago
OAuth would be very much appreciated.
slaundy 14y ago
Great idea—we'd love to host it!

nanook 14y ago

I remember really struggling with cross-domain AJAX requests. I wish they'd talked about that. Also, its quite likely that one would be using jQuery (or some other lib.) to do all of this in practice.

slaundy 14y ago
Good points, thanks for the ideas. Keep an eye on this—today is just day 1!

sergiotapia 14y ago

All of these examples further solidify my hapiness in switching from C# to Ruby as my primary language. It's so beautiful! The project I'm working on wants to send SMS messages to clients, but we postponed that for v2. But after seeing the example for Twilio I'll heavily recommend we implement this feature now, as it seems very straightforward and will be a major upsell for our startup. My brother is studying Comp Sci (well in Bolivia it's called Ingenieria de Sistemas - less b-tress more ASP.Net), and I really want him to learn Ruby and become happier with his work.

jonmarkgo 14y ago
Hey Sergio, That's so awesome to hear (I worked on the Twilio Codecademy lessons) - if you have any more questions feel free to drop me an e-mail at jonmarkgo@twilio.com and I'll be happy to help.
crazysaem 14y ago
It seems like you really enjoy Ruby, that’s great to hear. I just started CS169.1x on edx, which will be using ruby as the language of choice, and have never touched ruby. (Except in the stripe ctf where I did not fully understand the code, just enough to progress to the next levels.) Now I'm even more excited to learn ruby!
dysoco 14y ago
I live in Argentina and most of people are doing Ingenieria de Sistemas, although it seems to be a Computer Science degree in Bs. Aires, let's hope it's a good one.
numo16 14y ago
I've done quite a bit of work in both C# and ruby and I haven't had any more or less difficulty in developing against APIs with either of them. Development speed is about the same either way. Working against a well built API helps. In a previous project at work I developed a mobile web services back-end in java and integrated Twilio into it in less than a day. Twilio is super easy to work with, so implement it now! :)

maximem 14y ago

It seems for beginners in code but really nice initiative!... UI . I've stumbled upon webshelll.io recently on HN http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728671 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728671. Quite a good tool for learning fastly how to use and script apis. Seems to be made for developer bored with finding , learning and scripting API.

jonathanjaeger 14y ago

Started Codecademy recently and really like the lessons. In terms of gamification, the badges do nothing for me, but the points and day streak are great. I had a 15 day streak and it really gave me the extra incentive to do just 10 minutes a day even when I was particularly busy. I forgot one day and now I have to start the clock over again, haha. Will dig into API stuff once I actually finish the other basics.

d0gsbody 14y ago

applause I also wish they would fix their current classes. A couple of bugs are keeping me from finishing their Jquery and web(original) tracks. I emailed them about it, but still doesn't work.

slaundy 14y ago
Sorry about that. Could you send me the links and more info? I'll look into it. sasha at codecademy dot com. thanks.

toprxsavings 14y ago

Dear and Valuable Customers and Friends, Receive greetings from our company, through this post we want to maintain a good communication with each and every one of you, and inform you more about us, our company has successfully delivered medications through all the globe for the last 6 years with no inconvenient, we have become one of the most reliable company’s in the internet. We want to let you know about our shipping offer: Buy medications with NO prescription. Xanax, Alprazolam, Diazepam, Clonazepam, Phenobarbital, Etc…. Benzos, Sleeping Problems Aids, Weigth Loss, ambien, Pain Relief .etc... Url Website: https://secure.icomstec.com/savings/store/src https://secure.icomstec.com/savings/store/src ... Customer Service: toprxsavings@yahoo.com If you don’t find a medication or drug enlisted please mail us. 1-3 Business day delivery Most Discreet packaging you ever seen, no one will think you are receiving medications. Thanks in advance for your purchases. Greetings Customer Service

toprxsavings 14y ago

6thSigma 14y ago

This got me thinking - anyone know of an API or open source project that implements a browser-based IDE where you can make your own programming challenges or tutorials? Perhaps Codeacademy is working on something like that?

slaundy 14y ago
We launched it a year ago :) http://www.codecademy.com/create/creator http://www.codecademy.com/create/creator Based on open source repl.it
- 6thSigma 14y ago
  Thanks! I'll definitely try it out.

jnotarstefano 14y ago

I'm a fairly fanatical Codecademy user, so this is not news to me: I've been testing these courses since at least two weeks :) Unfortunately this means I'm having all sorts of data integrity issues: for example, I can't access the third lesson in the Parse track, which is showing 9/4 exercises done. I'm also having trouble finishing several exercises in these courses, due to puzzling errors and, possibly, flawed tests. But, wrinkles aside, I think these lectures are a brilliant way to generate leads: I subscribed to pretty much every service that has course on its API (Parse, Twilio, NPR...).

slaundy 14y ago
thanks for testing! so glad to hear you like the lessons and are signing up for the APIs! Could you try the Parse course again? I fixed an issue a few minutes ago that may have cleared up your problem. And please continue sending in tester reports on the other bugs you mentioned. We & our API partners would love to fix them up.
- sailfast 14y ago
  I was also experiencing an issue with session three earlier (sent along a bug fix). Works like a charm now. Thanks for the quick fix!
- jnotarstefano 14y ago
  I can report that the Parse course is now correctly working. Thank you! I'll check tomorrow if I'm still having issues with Twilio. I also got my provision rejected from Sendgrid, but I'm trying to solve this on my own. EDIT: Solved! Thank you again for these wonderful courses!
  - slaundy 14y ago
    Yay! Glad to hear it all got resolved. Be in touch if you hit any more problems. And let us know what you build!

allbombs 14y ago

very cool!

Crake 14y ago

I really love Codeacademy. Keep up the good work, guys!