CodeCombat founder here. This is really at the forefront of our minds, and although I agree with you that it's overselling to some extent to say that the curren

CodeCombat founder here. This is really at the forefront of our minds, and although I agree with you that it's overselling to some extent to say that the current site teaches people to code, it's just a disconnect between the limited reality of the present content and our eventual goal/aims. Some of our harder levels do teach CS fundamentals like data structures, and our users recently added a series of 3 sort algorithm tutorials. Even on the next few months, I think we'll be able to put a serious dent in expanding our content and getting closer to our claim. In the end, I do think there will be things we can't teach. Like choosing an editor, compiling code, working with APIs, etc, etc. But I wouldn't consider things of that nature to be "coding." That's practical software development, and isn't something taught at most "computer science" programs in the US (it certainly wasn't taught at my alma mater). We could argue the semantics of "learning to code," but in our experience, it's the closest approximation to what we're doing. For the sake of argument, I don't think it would be feasible or helpful for the newbies on the site to change our homepage text to something like "Learn the fundamentals of formal notation, logic structure, and procedural execution." To someone that doesn't know what the terms variable, object, and parameter are, the distinction between "learning to code" and the first (arguably more accurate statement) would be lost. And if we can spark an interest in a few more people by over generalizing a bit, I'm willing to do it.