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.
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!
First time I ever programmed was using Codecademy around 2013.
I was always an average student in school. Never had the motivation/curiosity to study since I felt it was all pointless. Never had any programming/computer classes in school.
I completed the python course that was available at the time that eventually guides you to build your own version of battleship with 2 players. It was an eye-opening experience for me.
I started to view all my math/chemistry/physics problems as “programming problems”, it really made learning fun for me. My grades changed drastically for the better with little extra effort. And more importantly Im now working as a SWE years later.
I learned the very basics to become a developer from Codeacademy. Back in 2015 I was a front line support technician at a small hardware startup who did Codeacademy in my free time, which was considerable. My first daughter had just been born and that really gave me motivation to learn and achieve my full potential. My boss was the only software engineer at our company and so was often overloaded with work, so he gave me small tasks to do, starting with learning regular expressions to massage a few thousand lines of data into something useful, and then getting to make PHP edits to Wordpress, and even some Visual C++.
I more than doubled my income from that job to my next job, propelling me to the middle class, and have since achieved consistently high pay raises over the last seven years without much difficulty.
As someone who dropped out of high school due to family issues and lack of motivation, I hope free resources like Codeacademy always exists on the internet and will be a pathway for those who have the aptitude to learn to code. For my personally it totally transformed my life as I was basically destitute before I got my first job as a web developer.
I'm glad for all the people in this thread, for whom Codecademy worked, but I strongly suspect it worked for them because of their drive, and not because of the quality of Codecademy.
~1 year ago I pointed some friends that wanted to learn Python towards Codecademy (because it's just the most prominent example of it's kind of platform). Just out of curiosity, I looked over their shoulders, and I'm glad I did.
From what I could the tell the course offered very little beyond a Python REPL in terms of guidance. It didn't teach the difference between a variable name `foo` and a string `"foo"` (one of the most common struggles for newbies), at a point in the course where it assumed that knowledge to complete a step. And all it gave as feedback were bad error messages (IIRC 1:1 the one of the Python interpreter, which are very hard to interpret for newcomers). I was baffled that the flagship learn-to-code-platform had that level of quality after ~10 years of operation.
I remember using codecademy the day they launched, January 2012, to start learning Javascript. The interactive CLI based courses were a breath of fresh air from the old school W3 style tutorials that I had gotten stuck on. It sent me down the path of building a serious career and making a six figure salary that I could have never dreamed of otherwise as a high school dropout.
Congratulations to the Codecademy team! I always really wanted to join Codecademy and wrote about my experience being rejected 3 times over the past 7 years in a recent post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025401. I've always rooted for them and wished them great success, their product has helped millions learn to code, including myself.
I learnt coding with Codecademy back in 2013. I was 32 years old with a career in marketing. Their Python class was the perfect introduction to coding in general and I got hooked instantly. I took my first job as a software developer 6 years ago after an intense 2 years of self learning following the codecademy class . I'm now senior data engineer in a pretty big company in Europe. I feel blessed for discovering Codecademy.
Along with others I joined Codecademy shortly after launch after seeing it on HN (2012). My coding journey started much earlier, having no direction and trying to learn from one of those giant Visual Basic books I talked my parents into buying from a bookstore in the mall in the 90's. Went to college (early 00's) with hopes of learning there, but I was too far behind and not really interested in the focus, so switched to a business degree.
Graduated and started work as an Accountant and hated the repetitiveness, so picked up some VBA and Access.
Real breakthrough for me was the Codecademy Python class and the benefits of the short form format. Get frustrated, take a break and come back fresh the next day or two.
That along with seeing Wes McKinney's Intro to Pandas talk around the same time ('13?) changed my career.
In 2011 (April) at a Baltimore Hackathon I unsuccessfully pitched the same idea that is Codeacademy (Codacademy launched in June, July or August i think) for others to join/help me work on. Later creating CodePupil(dot)com but like everything I started it was pretty much solo and within a few years would lose steam.
My comment is more so to tell others never to give up or at least try not to. Many who don't see great reward ...monetarily or as Zach is seeing here and has seen people being gracious for helping them learn an invaluable skill/changing and enriching their lives.
Since my university's curriculum was stuck in the 90s, I used Codecademy to teach myself JS, and Ruby. Thank you Zach, and everyone who has been part of the team!
I emailed [email protected] back in September of 2011 with ideas for the site, and Zach got back to me in no time. Been cheering for Codecademy ever since.
With each new opportunity to learn to code without the expense of a four-year degree in Computer Science, don't we reach a point at which either:
1) The four-year degree in CS is actually seen as something of a negative indicator
2) We acknowledge the silent part out loud, e.g. "the college degree is a signal, not a delivery mechanism for professional skills."
?
I've been working an an alternative to codeacademy, particularly one focused on closing skills gaps before job placement, and on building a tighter knit community. from a business perspective, this is great news for me I think xD
Off topic, but what is the point of having a cookie consent dialog come up on the site, when on a mobile device, you can't press 'accept' when choosing required cookies only?
Seems very hostile, and a way to have users agree to all the cookies regardless.
[+] [-] zds|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dang|4 years ago|reply
Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901156 - Aug 2011 (232 comments)
Codecademy Surges To 200,000 Users, 2.1 Million Lessons Completed In 72 Hours - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2914854 - Aug 2011 (75 comments)
[+] [-] d0gsg0w00f|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] maverick2007|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shippintoboston|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] the_watcher|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vm|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NickC25|4 years ago|reply
(Also, great to see someone from my high school class doing huge things. Well done!)
[+] [-] vhiremath4|4 years ago|reply
Best of luck in this new chapter for your company, your team, your loved ones, and your life.
[+] [-] sweaty|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] surfingninja|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeofken|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thefunnyman|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeremymims|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stevenking86l|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ijustwanttovote|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ferdowsi|4 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jbuild|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] silexia|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tannhauser23|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sangeeth96|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2arrs2ells|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Robelius|4 years ago|reply
You're also reminding me that I've been on here for 10 years.
[+] [-] steelbrain|4 years ago|reply
Thanks again
[+] [-] jtouri|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] varelse|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] naomeux|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithnz|4 years ago|reply
very cool
[+] [-] unobatbayar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] PureSin|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axiosgunnar|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wara23arish|4 years ago|reply
I was always an average student in school. Never had the motivation/curiosity to study since I felt it was all pointless. Never had any programming/computer classes in school.
I completed the python course that was available at the time that eventually guides you to build your own version of battleship with 2 players. It was an eye-opening experience for me.
I started to view all my math/chemistry/physics problems as “programming problems”, it really made learning fun for me. My grades changed drastically for the better with little extra effort. And more importantly Im now working as a SWE years later.
So thank you Codecademy :)
[+] [-] wincy|4 years ago|reply
I more than doubled my income from that job to my next job, propelling me to the middle class, and have since achieved consistently high pay raises over the last seven years without much difficulty.
As someone who dropped out of high school due to family issues and lack of motivation, I hope free resources like Codeacademy always exists on the internet and will be a pathway for those who have the aptitude to learn to code. For my personally it totally transformed my life as I was basically destitute before I got my first job as a web developer.
[+] [-] hobofan|4 years ago|reply
~1 year ago I pointed some friends that wanted to learn Python towards Codecademy (because it's just the most prominent example of it's kind of platform). Just out of curiosity, I looked over their shoulders, and I'm glad I did.
From what I could the tell the course offered very little beyond a Python REPL in terms of guidance. It didn't teach the difference between a variable name `foo` and a string `"foo"` (one of the most common struggles for newbies), at a point in the course where it assumed that knowledge to complete a step. And all it gave as feedback were bad error messages (IIRC 1:1 the one of the Python interpreter, which are very hard to interpret for newcomers). I was baffled that the flagship learn-to-code-platform had that level of quality after ~10 years of operation.
[+] [-] ramesh31|4 years ago|reply
Thanks codecademy.
[+] [-] frankfrankfrank|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mehlmao|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] plondon514|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jeanloolz|4 years ago|reply
A big thanks to them. I owe them my new career.
[+] [-] visarga|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chux52|4 years ago|reply
Real breakthrough for me was the Codecademy Python class and the benefits of the short form format. Get frustrated, take a break and come back fresh the next day or two.
That along with seeing Wes McKinney's Intro to Pandas talk around the same time ('13?) changed my career.
[+] [-] paul7986|4 years ago|reply
My comment is more so to tell others never to give up or at least try not to. Many who don't see great reward ...monetarily or as Zach is seeing here and has seen people being gracious for helping them learn an invaluable skill/changing and enriching their lives.
[+] [-] nshntarora|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidsawyer|4 years ago|reply
Congrats, guys!
[+] [-] evancoop|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neonate|4 years ago|reply
https://archive.md/O0MLo
[+] [-] oschvr|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nicative|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lanecwagner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tim--|4 years ago|reply
Seems very hostile, and a way to have users agree to all the cookies regardless.
On a Samsung S9.