Co-Founder and CEO here. We started Codecademy and launched on HN 10 years ago. I'm so thankful to this community for helping us to get started and to see up the momentum! We're committed to making sure that the product stays as great as the one you've used for years (and gets even better!).
I taught myself Python using Codecadamy in 2010 and I've since increased my salary 720%. Wanted to just say thank you for all of your team's efforts that touched so many lives like my own.
I started out as a sysadmin for a tiny software company and I was barely doing any automation. I started to realize through forums, etc that I needed to get into this scripting thing if I didn't want to be drowning in work so I was fiddling with batch/powershell stuff for the Windows servers. However, I was stuck on the few Linux boxes so I started poking around for what language I should learn for that and landed on Python. Spent a bunch of time going through the CA course and got fairly comfortable with the language but still hadn't really done anything with it.
I always wanted to work for a big company so I managed to land a role at a large network provider and when they found out I was interested in scripting they dubbed me the automation guy so I started writing a huge python/expect script that could do automated troubleshooting on these vendor systems that previously could only be navigated with SSH commands. Basically I truly learned Python doing this along with reading "Fluent Python" cover to cover. I recall days of frustration chasing bugs when I finally tracked it down to copying variables from lists without doing deepcopy() and having them modified later. My coworkers complained about speed to load data so I had to learn about multithreading and GIL so I could lazy load data. Then an old coworker reached out about a snazzy new startup so I went there to do this newfangled DevOps thing.
The DevOps role is where I was forced to round out my overall language awareness (not exactly learning the languages) so I could help manage the CI/CD pipelines and supporting infrastructure. For example, I had to learn that C# was compiled and developer machines were special snowflakes that compiled things differently. Days of frustration digging into to "compiles on my machine, your TeamCity is broke" type stuff. I had to use a lot of my sysadmin knowledge to prep machine images and do VMWare bootstrapping stuff which requires some healthy scripting. I was one of a few Linux guys so I was dubbed Hadoop dude (bought an O'Reily Hadoop book and read cover to cover) and my python scripting came in handy here plus had to buff up on bash. Started getting frustrated with the dynamic nature of Python and not being able to hand a script off to someone and expect it to work on their machine so I did some googling and learned that I needed to learn a compiled language. Golang sounded cool so I started teaching myself this. Startup life was getting to be a drag so I took an opportunity and another massive corporation doing Cloud stuff (new hotness, right?).
Massive Corporation was trying to govern triple digit AWS accounts with a newly hired team of 4 people--what could go wrong? The only way to be successful at this is to code automation. At this point I had to live and breath Golang/Python/AWS-SDK to survive. At this point I was being nudged into taking a people manager role and I'd been around the block enough to know in my bones that bad leadership was the source of a lot of engineer frustration so I felt obligated to at least try it. Now I'm pretty much full time leader and haven't coded anything in about a year but my job now is to spot talent, call BS, and nip bad ideas/programs in the bud.
I can't tell you how many stupid, pointless technologies I dug into and then fixed that provided no immediate benefit whatsoever but I learned to spot patterns which is invaluable. For example, I screwed around with Artifactory as a result of left-pad-gate [1] at DevOps job and got a working system together so now at massive corporation I'm helping some teams learn basics of artifact management even though it's not really part of my job. All of these experiences add up to value for a technology company.
I learned most of my skills from making the "mistake" of curiously trying to help someone fix something and then ending up three days later at 2AM writing some script and thinking to myself "What the hell was I thinking?" but it's always provided more value for me than them in the end.
None of this would be possible if I didn't live in the trenches and absorb systems into my bones via programming. Best advice I can give is to be curious, then be helpful, and then be stubborn. Throw in a few dashes of RDD [2] for self-preservation.
Congrats Zach! I owe you a lot. I started using Codecademy in 2011 or 2012 when I was in high school and it was one of the main tools I used to teach myself programming. Fell in love with the hobby/profession and it's what I'm doing (and still love doing) 10 years later!
I was a freshman in college in Fall of 2011 and took the python course because I was starting to regret majoring in business.
10 years later I'm a senior engineer and can take care of my family for life. I wouldn't be where I am today without the start you and the company gave me. Thank you and best of luck in whatever you choose to do in the future.
I discovered Codecademy in late fall 2011, while miserable in my first semester of law school. I had no idea how to code, and had only found it after stumbling on PG's essays for the first time (which led me to google "learn to program"). I dropped out of law school after a year and ended up a self-taught data scientist. Codecademy was only a part of my journey, but you kicked it off. Congrats, and thank you.
Congrats! I've watched your 10+ year journey from afar and been inspired by the impact you've had on this industry & and your persistence during the ups/downs. Excited for your and the great acquisition.
Hi Zach, I owe a great deal of thanks to you and the rest of the Codecademy team for providing me (and millions of others) with the tools to make a career transition. Hope this is just the beginning, can't wait to see what's next!
(Also, great to see someone from my high school class doing huge things. Well done!)
Congrats Zach to you + Ryan! I was just talking to my co-founder (Shahed Khan) yesterday and you came up in conversation as someone he really admires. :)
Best of luck in this new chapter for your company, your team, your loved ones, and your life.
It actually turned my life around. I was in school and wasn't feeling challenged, but we had a web design class by a shaggy haired, bearded metalhead in his 50s who did it as a part time job, he started his career with punch cards, had seen just about everything. I was a depressed kid in a poor area and no parents, I didn't really have the attention span for learning to program the classic way so I loved what I learned from Codecademy, it was really engaging.
I got an internship at the guy's old company and dropped out of school shortly after to work there full time, since then I've done so many things, moved to the US to work for Microsoft, built some really cool software, worked at all these places I couldn't even imagine 10 years ago. It's crazy to think that it all started in a small classroom going through Codecademy, I don't think anything else would've captured my interest in the way your website did. Thank you.
I started learning HTML/CSS on Codecademy about 8 years ago when I was in early highschool. Now about to graduate from college with my CS degree. Thanks for making a great service that helped shape my life
I remember the thread. Reading about it on HN back then I started programming stuff outside of game scripting. I had just finished high school. At a meetup it led to my first job. It’s been a good 10 year career and couldn’t have gone better in this regard. Thank you for Codecademy which was life changing for me.
Your courses in Java and python were some of my first introductions to programming in middle school and I now work as a full time software engineer. Thank you sincerely for all your contributions. I hope codecademy continues to flourish.
Thank you and congrats! I took a Python course on codecademy and it led to a career change and basically a complete life transformation. You convinced me, and I’m sure a lot of others “Yes, I can do this.”
Congrats! It's been great to watch your journey. I've always recommended Codecademy to my friends who wanted to learn to program. I can safely say you helped three people get into the industry.
I'm thinking back to the first time I cracked open a Java 101 book, which was a truly impenetrable and frustrating experience. I didn't even get the tooling stable enough to print hello world. It took me a few years later to engage with Code Academy to realize that programming is accessible and enjoyable.
So many of us owe you all a huge debt of gratitude. I have a stable career and lifestyle in part to your work which made programming accessible to people like me.
I know the opportunity to grab half a billion dollars was nearly impossible to pass up, almost all of these acquisitions result in the destruction of the original business and the abuse of the employees and customers involved.
Thanks a lot and congrats to you and the team for this big milestone! I accelerated my webdev journey via Codecademy, even learned Python I believe. It's a wonderful platform that I still recommend to folks who come to me for advise.
Congratulations, Zach! Codecademy was a huge inspiration for me and a whole generation of edtech founders. It’s been amazing watching the company transition from a wildly viral consumer company to an enterprise powerhouse.
This feels a bit strange. I remember Codecademy as the first wow moment where I saw items being discussed here also being discussed "in the real world".
You're also reminding me that I've been on here for 10 years.
Congratulations Zack! I learned to program at Codecademy and it has played a very important role in my life/career. I'm working as an Engineer in an ed-tech company. This was all enabled by you and your team!
Like everyone else in this thread. You changed the trajectory of my life for the better. Came across your website as a business major fall of 2013 and never looked back!
Codecademy | ONSITE | Senior Full Stack Engineer | New York, NY
We’re looking for a versatile full-stack senior software engineer who bring new ideas and experience from new areas, such as including information retrieval, distributed computing, large-scale system design, networking and data storage, graphics, artificial intelligence, natural language processing, UI design and mobile.
As a senior software engineer, you will help lead projects critical to Codecademy’s needs with opportunities to switch projects as you and our fast-paced business grow and evolve. We need our engineers to be versatile, display leadership qualities and be enthusiastic about tackling new problems across the full-stack as we continue to push technology forward.
Codecademy’s team is passionate about teaching technical skills to millions of people across the world, and building the best online learning environment. If you value creating polished digital experiences, building scalable systems, and understanding customer and business needs to create awesome web and mobile products, Codecademy is the place for you!
we've fixed a lot of the issues - would love for you to give it a shot again and let me know if there's anything i can do to make your experience better!
apigee and webshell courses are created and maintained by those companies (our platform lets anyone create courses), so it's unfortunately up to them to edit -- we'll ping them regardless.
Maybe adding a disclaimer to the API section would help then. those were fairly prominently displayed when I first started them and I couldn't finish either of them.
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!
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).
It would be helpful if the blog post would say that explicitly. Or maybe I just missed it? I spent a while on the website trying to figure out how to access the new content because I felt the blog post implied the content was up already.
which are you finding errors in? we keep a pretty vigilant watch on broken exercises (there's a dashboard in our office and we respond to bug reports as well) -- would love to fix these ASAP. thanks!
I just tried the CSS Buttons course on a lark, because I felt I'd be able to breeze through it. I may have hit "Reset Code" at some point, because around checkpoint 4 or 5, the CSS was wiped out and the HTML was back to square one.
I quickly retyped everything, but... only the HTML changes seemed to take effect. I tried targeting the CSS to a class I put on the HTML, then to an id, then to the div itself, and a bunch of different simple litmus tests for whether or not it was working like just applying a color, but nothing worked.
After each change, the preview pane would re-render, so it was picking up the changes. I tried viewing the preview in full screen and refreshing, but nothing got the CSS to apply again.
Anyway, the site looks great. Congratulations on the revamp regardless of nitpicky bugs.
I did the CSS Buttons project earlier this week and had the same issue you described. After checking the Q&A Forum, I realized I needed to include the stylesheet. That fixed the issue. I don't think this is a bug with that project.
Apigee API (2/21) and WebShell API (5/7) are throwing random errors. By the way, I have reported these 2 times before and no one had replied or even acknowledged my reports.
thanks for all of this feedback. we're launching some stuff next week that will help you get even closer to realizing all of this -- it gets you out of the terminal (the main UX now for users) and explains a lot more about the concepts you're learning.
would love to hear your feedback when this goes live!
Since you're listening... I've emailed you guys before about a bug I found while working through your ruby module and hit radio silence at your contact@codecademy.com address.
