…simply because they didn’t exist yet.

Codecademy.

About 6 years ago, I decided I was going to go back to school to learn how to code. I had very casually dabbled with some simple stuff ranging from HTML to C++, but decided I needed a more formal setting to truly learn. I was wrong.

It’s not that I didn’t learn anything going back to school — I did. But I was wrong that I needed to learn in a formal school setting. As any programmer will tell you, you’ll learn a lot more by doing things on the fly. 

In the years since I used my web development skills to become a writer (naturally), I’ve met a ton of devs who are self-taught using books or the web. All of them swear by that method, and there is no question that if you have some strong prerequisites (logic, math, etc), you can do this and be successful. But for 99.9% of people, that’s never going to happen. That’s why people like me pay thousands of dollars to go back to school. 

And that’s why the world needs something like Codecademy. It makes this type of learning accessible to just about anyone. It’s also a hell of a lot cheaper (free) than going back to school. And, to be honest, it’s just a much better way to learn. It’s not just about the taking the teaching and moving it online, it’s about making the learning process compelling. 

The lessons right now are just a sliver of what they will be, they’ll get more robust over time for more advanced users. But the key really may be those 99.9%. Fred Wilson explains this well:

Another great reason to “get technical” is so that you can work better with technical people. If you understand at least some of what they are doing, if you can look at their work product (the code) and understand what it is doing, if you can pick up a ticket and contribute when time is tight, then you will be seen as part of the team. And that is critical.

I also can’t tell you how key being able to at least understand some of the technical concepts thanks to my (limited) coding background was for me as a writer in this industry. And it extends beyond the tech industry as well. Tech is becoming a vital part of every industry. Schools should be teaching “intro to programming” courses alongside math as a requirement.

Or they should just recommend Codecademy.

All of this is why CrunchFund invested in Codecademy alongside Union Square and others. Mike shared some of his own thoughts from a slightly different perspective, but with the same basic hypothesis. This is a powerful, game-changing way to learn. 

I would have killed for this 6 years ago.