Before I offer any critical feedback, I want to first say that the first line of code I ever wrote, my "Hello world", was on Codecademy almost immediately after you launched. Since then I've learned how to use programming not only at my job (as a product manager at a web startup), but also to develop full web apps using several of the popular frameworks (flask, django, rails). I credit Codecademy for breaking down the initial barrier to entry (what is control flow, how do you tell a computer what to do, etc). I am a huge fan, but I think there are a few ways you guys could improve.
1) Put the courses into perspective as part of the onboarding process. Why do I need to learn HTML, CSS, JS, or Python? Most people who want to learn have no clue how everything fits together. If you can provide a high level guide as to how and why someone should work through specific codecademy courses you will likely increase satisfaction and completion of courses (just a hypothesis, but this is the most common criticism I hear).
2) I wish codecademy would cover database basics. What is SQL? How should you think about storing data? Until I started researching outside of Codecademy it hadn't even occurred to me that storing and structuring data was a huge part of creating useful applications (I was totally nontechnical). This is the largest hole in terms of actual content.
3) Your classes are already great at teaching newbies the syntax. The big missing component (as some have pointed out), is turning this syntax into real world solutions for real world problems. How do you get past this? You have to break into an area that you aren't comfortable in: Content Production. Unless you can come up with a way to show people how to create and run scripts on their local computer (or maybe a remote server?) through the browser this will continue to be a pitfall of the Codecademy experience. There is probably the potential for you to create some new software that does this (maybe a desktop app), but if you took a codeschool or treehouse approach, only for this stage of the learning, you would be able to truly offer an end to end solution. In your case video content scales just as well as the software. If you were to combine your superior browser interface with high quality video production you would be in a fantastic position to win the "Learn to code online" market. This sets you up with not only a differentiated product offering (your interface is the best), but a future revenue stream. Both of the aforementioned companies are making some serious cash... And thats without even mentioned the real juggernaut (Lynda).
Overall I love the product and think there is a lot of potential. If you have any questions or any of my points require clarification please feel free to shoot me an email (in profile).
As non-coding Product Manager here is some feedback:
The issue at the moment seems to be that Codecademy focuses on syntax rather than problem solving. For example most of the JS exercises, if I remember correctly, focus on the command line rather than effect on the DOM (the vast use case).
Aside from that, the environment doesn't really give a great feel for how these languages map to their hardware counterparts.
For example Python runs on a server but how does one get a python instance running on a server? How does one even acquire as server? What IS a server?
HTML/CSS/JS run partly on a server and mostly in the DOM. What is the nature of when to run what where and why?
These questions are answered by running through a full stack product problem like starting a website by getting the server ready, pushing code to it, ensuring its live, ensuring you aren't working on the live version, etc.
I'd imagine it would be wonderful if a set of icons functioned as a dashboard and active parts of what you are working in the hardware-stack on are lit up. When code is run, arrows clearly point to where the code is running and where information is being sent. For example when running some webcode you could see it being pushed from the server to the DOM, the DOM running it then displaying the content. When actions are then performed, you could see them being sent back to the server, the server processing it, then sending a result back.
This would go a long way to helping people understand how code really functions to make the products they use every day.
Regarding your first bit of feedback, there is a Javascript track which focuses on the language itself and then there is a JQuery track which teaches DOM manipulation, events, animation.
It's great, but as you have both domains now, you should really just run with codeAcademy.com if at all possible (which is what everyone remembers it as) rather than orienting your branding to deal with the name confusion (box around the code etc).
Just a nitpick:
Hovering over any of the "About Us | We're hiring | Blog" or "Help | Privacy Policy | Terms" links in the footer also underlines the separators.
Hi zds thank you for making codeacademy I've learnt a lot, started building, contributing to hackdays and generally taken my first step forward. No feedback right now just thanks.
It looks great, modern and slick. Somebody else mentioned the fact that you guys are coming out with something that'll take users out of the console. Can you elaborate on that?
on monday, we've got a new learning experience coming that you'll see has an increased emphasis on learning concepts in addition to syntax. more on that then!
1) Put the courses into perspective as part of the onboarding process. Why do I need to learn HTML, CSS, JS, or Python? Most people who want to learn have no clue how everything fits together. If you can provide a high level guide as to how and why someone should work through specific codecademy courses you will likely increase satisfaction and completion of courses (just a hypothesis, but this is the most common criticism I hear).
2) I wish codecademy would cover database basics. What is SQL? How should you think about storing data? Until I started researching outside of Codecademy it hadn't even occurred to me that storing and structuring data was a huge part of creating useful applications (I was totally nontechnical). This is the largest hole in terms of actual content.
3) Your classes are already great at teaching newbies the syntax. The big missing component (as some have pointed out), is turning this syntax into real world solutions for real world problems. How do you get past this? You have to break into an area that you aren't comfortable in: Content Production. Unless you can come up with a way to show people how to create and run scripts on their local computer (or maybe a remote server?) through the browser this will continue to be a pitfall of the Codecademy experience. There is probably the potential for you to create some new software that does this (maybe a desktop app), but if you took a codeschool or treehouse approach, only for this stage of the learning, you would be able to truly offer an end to end solution. In your case video content scales just as well as the software. If you were to combine your superior browser interface with high quality video production you would be in a fantastic position to win the "Learn to code online" market. This sets you up with not only a differentiated product offering (your interface is the best), but a future revenue stream. Both of the aforementioned companies are making some serious cash... And thats without even mentioned the real juggernaut (Lynda).
Overall I love the product and think there is a lot of potential. If you have any questions or any of my points require clarification please feel free to shoot me an email (in profile).
Best of luck!