[coreyhaines]

With the rise and popularity of 'teach to code' services, it remains to be seen which model works best. Taking a person from 0 (or very, very little) knowledge and experience to the point where they can be at all effective as a software developer is difficult. Expecting a matter of weeks to turn someone such as this into hireable material is a dangerous attitude to have. I'm very curious to see the graduates of these courses and even more curious to see how their skills are represented to possible hiring companies.

[nealsales]

It's all about what the needs and expectations of the individual is - and properly setting them. As one of the founders of http://codeacademy.org I can say first-hand that it is possible to get people to a point where they are happy with their progress. But rather than asserting - our students' own perspectives is the actual evidence: http://codeacademy.org/culture

If anyone would like to know more about our experience starting and running this program - I'd love to help you however I can. It's great that there are so many people getting passionate about the issue of educating more people on how to solve problems through software.

Drop me a line at neal at codeacademy dot org.

[ZenBrent]

Love codecademy Neal. Just finished the initial rollout of the tool and can't wait for the next programs.

[sosayweall]

You have to be kidding me. How hard is it to distinguish Code Academy from codecademy in Neal's comment? Neal just referenced Code Academy multiple times in this comment, but you put codecademy?

Not only that, but the two companies couldn't be anymore different. If you truly love what Neal is doing, you would know that you have not completed the program, because that would mean that you are a student in Chicago who is currently 8 weeks through the Code Academy program.

We can disagree about what approach is the best to take when teaching people how to code, but we can at get the names of companies and what they do right.