9 ms·

Codecademy Partners With Twitter, Evernote, and Others To Offer New API Lessons

98 points by pclark 14y ago

aashaykumar92 14y ago
This is extremely helpful for aspiring programmers/entrepreneurs!
mehrzad 14y ago
Because learning to program obviously means you're making a Twitter or Evernote enabled app.
- knassy 14y ago
  I found even after becoming competent in HTML/CSS and learning enough JS to do UI stuff, using APIs was still a mystery to me. Most API documentation is aimed at a more advanced audience. I could use cURL to make a request, but I couldn't work out how to fit all the pieces together in a web app. API tutorials which are truly for the beginner are a great idea.
  - mehrzad 14y ago
    Yeah I agree. But I'm not a big fan of having programming revolve around the "big guys." My two cynical cents.
    - markisonfire 14y ago
      I think it is easier to "test" these types of API calls for beginners with the biggest names. Understanding how to connect to Twitter is simple, and those same principles can be used to connect to a wide range of other things. I think, more than anything, connecting to Twitter or Evernote is "safe". Which is good for beginners.
dizzystar 14y ago
I think this is pretty good news, but I've also heard lots of bad things about Code Academy's lesson quality. Will Twitter, Evernote, et.al. have better QA systems in place?
- knowaveragejoe 14y ago
  They are user-generated lessons for the most part, so there's that. In my experience most of the lessons are fine, but occasionally you'll come across one that is too vague or has a very strict expectation of output.
- zds 14y ago
  I'm the cofounder of Codecademy - we've done a lot of work on our platform for a while and our lessons are community generated (but occasionally edited in-house). The lessons by Twitter, Evernote, etc. have been created by those companies and QA'd both by our community (in beta) and in-house. Let us know if you see anything amiss!
  - paulwithap 14y ago
    Since you're here, I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents on the API lessons: There seems to be a pretty big knowledge gap from the HTML/CSS/JS tracks to the API tracks. It's nice that you give some basic info on HTTP requests and responses, but after that we're sort of left hanging without really knowing what to do with the material we've been presented. The Youtube lesson, for example, shows you how to retrieve JSON with the top videos for a given query and insert it into an HTML file, but what good does that do? Honestly, most of them seem more like advertising space for the company making the lesson than anything else.
  - pkteison 14y ago
    I wish that error handling would be a front-and-center part of any API instruction. There are a few obvious spots in the Evernote lesson I looked at where a sentence or two and a link to more info about how a remote network call might fail or a call could kick out errors due to input validations would really help someone who really wants to learn.
knowaveragejoe 14y ago
They've had API lessons for a while, IIRC(http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/apis http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/apis), I guess the news here is they've added some more big names to the list.
pshin45 14y ago
What does everyone think the ultimate goal and vision of Codecademy will/should be? i.e. do you think Codecademy will ever be able to evolve into a platform that churns out new batches of legitimately competent hackers? Or is it destined to forever be a mere gateway i.e. a "A more interactive W3Schools/Wikipedia for coding" providing a minimum level of programming literacy for lifelong non-engineers? In my case, as a non-technical co-founder, Codecademy lessons help me gain a minimum practical understanding of the Web in a more time-efficient way, ultimately allowing me to better communicate with my more technical co-founders. I just wonder if Codecademy will ever be able to become more than that.
- mtgx 14y ago
  Well I for one hope they eventually offer Android programming tutorials (with some tutorials on basic Java first, for the complete beginner), if that would be possible in this format at all.
- alaskamiller 14y ago
  It's the current modern equivalent of those yellow "... for Dummies" books. It gives a nicely presented introductory content, but these days the stuff you learn off CodeAcademy is the equivalent of an office worker mastering Microsoft Office VB scripting. Which is to say, it's an absolute necessity to stay competitive considering the majority of modern office work, and in turn people, are replaceable by an Excel spreadsheet script. This is the case especially when you go to somewhere like Google where outside the engineering roles it's just a bunch of highly accredited people being overpaid and overstimulated creating and babysitting automated processes. That culture will slowly creep over to every other industry at the inverse rate of a that industry's keeping around a fax machine. The gameification is only good for entertainment purposes, considering every credible higher education institution don't recognize online classes as credible crediting. So how can CodeAcademy get beyond being a fad? Distribution and then vertical integration. They probably already know that. Reach as many kids as soon and as early as possible then start going deeper with the content, the more highly specific the knowledge the more you can charge for it. They're really in the disruption of tech publishers, like O'Reilly or Safari or Apress. When they have a full library charging for a monthly subscription will keep them going for quite awhile.
niggler 14y ago
Does Codecademy do any sort of QA or provide editing services for user-contributed courses?
- goronbjorn 14y ago
  Before your course gets published it goes through a 'beta' period where Codecademy users who have volunteered to be beta testers go through the courses.
juanbyrge 14y ago
Lol building an app on twitter is one of the stupidest mistakes a developer can make. They are one of the most hostile companies to developers. Anyone building anything on twitters API should assume their app will be banned if it gets any kind if usage.
- lnanek2 14y ago
  I have to agree. I've had apps banned by Twitter just because they let people tweet their scores easily via the API. Looks too much like a Twitter client, boom, your API access is dead. Wasn't there a successful client on Windows 8 recently, a platform where there wasn't even an official client, and they refused to forgo the API limits on the number of users you can have? Using the Twitter API is setting yourself up for failure.
- bgilroy26 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure that it's a win for Codecademy whether Twitter changes their API or not. The brand name will motivate students to learn, and the point is to find out how to work with APIs in general.
  - wilfra 14y ago
    Why are you making logical, rational statements in the middle of a twitter-hating party?
  - lnanek2 14y ago
    I've heard a lot of people say the Codeacademy lesson quality just isn't that good yet, so teaching people to use an API that will shoot them in the foot isn't going to help. And honestly, if they want to teach Twitter, they should just teach asking the user for a username and password and pretending to be a web browser, because that's the best practice for using it nowadays. Saw foursquare doing that the other day.
- wallflower 14y ago
  Building an app that shows a public timeline is the Hello, World app of 2013. Back in my day, we had a lame Java Pet Store. I'm jealous.
AznHisoka 14y ago
Unfortunately, the ones that needs to learn API lessons the most is Twitter, themselves... not us.
ux-app 14y ago
Congrats to the codecademy team for continuing to hit home runs with their service. As a high school teacher, I find it to be an amazing resource for teaching students from age 13 to 17. So far I've put a few hundred students through the HTML and JS sections and they all love the self directed nature of codecademy. The badge system also works surprisingly well. It's really great to hear kids one-up each other with their badge count and daily streaks. Codecademy is one of those amazing tech companies that I'd love to work for. They have great technology, they're changing the world and their execution is fantastic.
neya 14y ago
Partnering with Twitter? Good luck running a sustainable, reliable business! The idea by itself is brilliant, but the reality is so harsh, when it comes to consuming Twitter's API, especially given the fact that the company's decisions regarding their API usage is highly unstable.

98 points by pclark 14y ago

aashaykumar92 14y ago

This is extremely helpful for aspiring programmers/entrepreneurs!

mehrzad 14y ago

Because learning to program obviously means you're making a Twitter or Evernote enabled app.

knassy 14y ago
I found even after becoming competent in HTML/CSS and learning enough JS to do UI stuff, using APIs was still a mystery to me. Most API documentation is aimed at a more advanced audience. I could use cURL to make a request, but I couldn't work out how to fit all the pieces together in a web app. API tutorials which are truly for the beginner are a great idea.
- mehrzad 14y ago
  Yeah I agree. But I'm not a big fan of having programming revolve around the "big guys." My two cynical cents.
  - markisonfire 14y ago
    I think it is easier to "test" these types of API calls for beginners with the biggest names. Understanding how to connect to Twitter is simple, and those same principles can be used to connect to a wide range of other things. I think, more than anything, connecting to Twitter or Evernote is "safe". Which is good for beginners.

dizzystar 14y ago

I think this is pretty good news, but I've also heard lots of bad things about Code Academy's lesson quality. Will Twitter, Evernote, et.al. have better QA systems in place?

knowaveragejoe 14y ago
They are user-generated lessons for the most part, so there's that. In my experience most of the lessons are fine, but occasionally you'll come across one that is too vague or has a very strict expectation of output.
zds 14y ago
I'm the cofounder of Codecademy - we've done a lot of work on our platform for a while and our lessons are community generated (but occasionally edited in-house). The lessons by Twitter, Evernote, etc. have been created by those companies and QA'd both by our community (in beta) and in-house. Let us know if you see anything amiss!
- paulwithap 14y ago
  Since you're here, I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents on the API lessons: There seems to be a pretty big knowledge gap from the HTML/CSS/JS tracks to the API tracks. It's nice that you give some basic info on HTTP requests and responses, but after that we're sort of left hanging without really knowing what to do with the material we've been presented. The Youtube lesson, for example, shows you how to retrieve JSON with the top videos for a given query and insert it into an HTML file, but what good does that do? Honestly, most of them seem more like advertising space for the company making the lesson than anything else.
- pkteison 14y ago
  I wish that error handling would be a front-and-center part of any API instruction. There are a few obvious spots in the Evernote lesson I looked at where a sentence or two and a link to more info about how a remote network call might fail or a call could kick out errors due to input validations would really help someone who really wants to learn.

knowaveragejoe 14y ago

They've had API lessons for a while, IIRC(http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/apis http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/apis), I guess the news here is they've added some more big names to the list.

pshin45 14y ago

What does everyone think the ultimate goal and vision of Codecademy will/should be? i.e. do you think Codecademy will ever be able to evolve into a platform that churns out new batches of legitimately competent hackers? Or is it destined to forever be a mere gateway i.e. a "A more interactive W3Schools/Wikipedia for coding" providing a minimum level of programming literacy for lifelong non-engineers? In my case, as a non-technical co-founder, Codecademy lessons help me gain a minimum practical understanding of the Web in a more time-efficient way, ultimately allowing me to better communicate with my more technical co-founders. I just wonder if Codecademy will ever be able to become more than that.

mtgx 14y ago
Well I for one hope they eventually offer Android programming tutorials (with some tutorials on basic Java first, for the complete beginner), if that would be possible in this format at all.
alaskamiller 14y ago
It's the current modern equivalent of those yellow "... for Dummies" books. It gives a nicely presented introductory content, but these days the stuff you learn off CodeAcademy is the equivalent of an office worker mastering Microsoft Office VB scripting. Which is to say, it's an absolute necessity to stay competitive considering the majority of modern office work, and in turn people, are replaceable by an Excel spreadsheet script. This is the case especially when you go to somewhere like Google where outside the engineering roles it's just a bunch of highly accredited people being overpaid and overstimulated creating and babysitting automated processes. That culture will slowly creep over to every other industry at the inverse rate of a that industry's keeping around a fax machine. The gameification is only good for entertainment purposes, considering every credible higher education institution don't recognize online classes as credible crediting. So how can CodeAcademy get beyond being a fad? Distribution and then vertical integration. They probably already know that. Reach as many kids as soon and as early as possible then start going deeper with the content, the more highly specific the knowledge the more you can charge for it. They're really in the disruption of tech publishers, like O'Reilly or Safari or Apress. When they have a full library charging for a monthly subscription will keep them going for quite awhile.

niggler 14y ago

Does Codecademy do any sort of QA or provide editing services for user-contributed courses?

goronbjorn 14y ago
Before your course gets published it goes through a 'beta' period where Codecademy users who have volunteered to be beta testers go through the courses.

juanbyrge 14y ago

Lol building an app on twitter is one of the stupidest mistakes a developer can make. They are one of the most hostile companies to developers. Anyone building anything on twitters API should assume their app will be banned if it gets any kind if usage.

lnanek2 14y ago
I have to agree. I've had apps banned by Twitter just because they let people tweet their scores easily via the API. Looks too much like a Twitter client, boom, your API access is dead. Wasn't there a successful client on Windows 8 recently, a platform where there wasn't even an official client, and they refused to forgo the API limits on the number of users you can have? Using the Twitter API is setting yourself up for failure.
bgilroy26 14y ago
I'm pretty sure that it's a win for Codecademy whether Twitter changes their API or not. The brand name will motivate students to learn, and the point is to find out how to work with APIs in general.
- wilfra 14y ago
  Why are you making logical, rational statements in the middle of a twitter-hating party?
- lnanek2 14y ago
  I've heard a lot of people say the Codeacademy lesson quality just isn't that good yet, so teaching people to use an API that will shoot them in the foot isn't going to help. And honestly, if they want to teach Twitter, they should just teach asking the user for a username and password and pretending to be a web browser, because that's the best practice for using it nowadays. Saw foursquare doing that the other day.
wallflower 14y ago
Building an app that shows a public timeline is the Hello, World app of 2013. Back in my day, we had a lame Java Pet Store. I'm jealous.

AznHisoka 14y ago

Unfortunately, the ones that needs to learn API lessons the most is Twitter, themselves... not us.

ux-app 14y ago

Congrats to the codecademy team for continuing to hit home runs with their service. As a high school teacher, I find it to be an amazing resource for teaching students from age 13 to 17. So far I've put a few hundred students through the HTML and JS sections and they all love the self directed nature of codecademy. The badge system also works surprisingly well. It's really great to hear kids one-up each other with their badge count and daily streaks. Codecademy is one of those amazing tech companies that I'd love to work for. They have great technology, they're changing the world and their execution is fantastic.

neya 14y ago

Partnering with Twitter? Good luck running a sustainable, reliable business! The idea by itself is brilliant, but the reality is so harsh, when it comes to consuming Twitter's API, especially given the fact that the company's decisions regarding their API usage is highly unstable.