In Defense of Codecademy
I recently had a long conversation with a college roommate of mine (an Art History major) who expressed interest in learning a bit of coding to help organize some artwork-related data. Not really sure how serious she was about it, I pointed her to CodeYear (run by Codecademy), and was thrilled to receive this email from her the next day:
“Thank you for sending this! I signed up and have already completed the lessons for week one. It was exciting and challenging, but the emotional reward of discovering where I had left out a semicolon or parenthesis was extraordinary.”
I’ve been reading a lot of blog posts lately about how Codecademy is not going to make serious coders, and how it’s flawed in this way and that, but honestly, it’s a start, and more importantly, it’s something that was accessible enough that she actually started doing it. I know and she knows and you all know that Codecademy by itself is not going to make her a software engineer. But maybe she’ll finish a bunch of exercises in Codecademy and feel confident enough to learn more herself or take a class. Maybe she’ll learn Python and be able to write some simple scripts to help automate some tasks. Hopefully she’ll even build the artwork-related webapp she envisions so clearly (I think this is actually the greatest motivation for learning how to code).
Instead of picking apart Codecademy because it’s not a silver bullet that teaches everyone how to code, I’d like to thank the people who made it for making programming (however basic) accessible to people who I would have called completely non-technical. It has also brought a lot of much-needed exposure to what programming is and what amazing things you can do with it, especially to people outside of Silicon Valley and other tech communities. People are learning that programming is not tech support or typing in binary all day. In fact, according to CNN, “Mayor Bloomberg tweeted his intent to learn computer code by the end of the year.” Hey, it’s a start.
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Comments (11)
I give them props for trying to tackle the issue. I also acknowledge there are flaws. If anything, the best I’ve seen for non-technical folks, may just be the CS106A course by Stanford. It actually slowly breaks down fundamentals, something I think is missing from Codecademy and all its competitors, also from other coding websites and pretty much every book I’ve come across.
If you’re from a technical background, its totally different. But if you’re completely clueless, the fundamental explanations are severely lacking. The Stanford course amazingly covers many of these things well, in plain English.
As an occasional reader of your blog, really wanted to thank you for this post. We hope we’re able to bring programming to an entirely new demographic and so far the feedback from our users has been immensely positive. We’re checking out what everyone has to say online as well, and we’re only a few months old so we’ll keep getting better. Would love to hear from you if you have any feedback or suggestions or well (or if your friend does!). Thanks!
Thanks Zach! I’ll let you know if I hear anything from my friends trying it out!
You might also want to check out CodePupil
We are complimentary, yet different to Codecademy.
Complimentary, as we have the same goal in making this stuff fun & easier to learn for the masses. Different in the way our games & exercises teach.
Thanks Ryan, I’ll check it out too! I think it’s awesome that there are so many more resources now that decrease that initial barrier.
Good post Jean, I agree. I think it can remove some the mystique of what code is and just give people a little view of this world they know nothing about.
Thumbs up to them for the marketing hype they generated for so little content, but what is there is really excellent in my opinion. Couple of lessons and they have you writing recursive functions, and making it fun!
Thanks Caroline! It’s also a startup, so I imagine things are iterating quickly as they get feedback. It’s not a curriculum set in stone =)
I’d be more inclined to say that with any sort of skill –whether it’s sports, music or otherwise– the initial first steps are the hardest. The difficulties are compounded with the sheer amount of obstacles being presented.
Although codeacademy might not produce the most hardcore devs, it gives beginners a stepping stone. It boosts their morale and offers an insight to programming which they can then decide whether they want to pursue further.
Totally agree with your article. It has also improved a lot in the past couple months.
I recently made live my own interactive Javascript tutorial – http://codeavengers.com is a similar style site but with a little more variety. Initial users have commented that they have found it more fun and effective than CodeCademy for Javascript novices. Would love to hear what others think
I think the Codecademy model does a much needed service for developers as a whole, via the exposure factor – it helps shed some light on what developers/programmers do and how they do it. Anything that makes it easier for the general public to gain a better understanding of the underpinnings of industrial STEM fields gets a +1 in my book.
I know this is an old post, but I just came across it,
Malcolm Gladwell wrote an article about why Twitter and social networking in general weren’t revolutionary tools like going to a rally or standing defiantly in a square. Maybe he was just agitating to get a reaction, but like folks who point out that codeacademy doesn’t make you a master, he’s missing the point.
Twitter, etc aren’t revolutionary tools. They’re communication tools that revolutions can benefit from. And Codeacademy is not a tool for mastering code, it’s a gateway drug to an interest in it.
B