[LINK] Codecademy, learn to program for free
stephen at melbpc.org.au
stephen at melbpc.org.au
Sun Oct 30 02:20:00 AEDT 2011
Codecademy Lands $2.5 Million From Investors
By JENNA WORTHAM www.nytimes.com October 27, 2011
http://www.codecademy.com
Codecademy is an online tool designed to give computer science newbies a
crash course in the basics.
Codecademy, a Web site that teaches people how to program for free, just
got a lift for its lesson plan: $2.5 million in venture financing.
On Thursday, the start-up announced that it raised a Series A round of
cash from a bevy of noted venture capital firms ..
Our main goal is to hire people to help manage content and add new
features, said Zach Sims, who co-founded Codecademy with Ryan Bubinski,
a developer and former classmate at Columbia University.
Right now, there are still only two of us working on the company.
Codecademy was introduced over the summer and has attracted a flurry of
interest since then. More than half a million people have used the site
and close to 1,000 developers submitted sample lessons to help others
learn how to program. The new venture financing will help the company
sustain that early traction, Mr. Sims said.
Were starting to build a community around our lessons, he said. In
addition, the company said it would use the money to establish its
headquarters, which Mr. Sims said wouldl most likely be in New York.
Part of Mr. Simss and Mr. Bubinskis vision for the start-up is to give
the average person a crash course in computer science with built-in
rewards to keep them motivated either to help jump-start their career
as an entrepreneur or help them be a more competitive job candidate in
their field. Currently, the coding exercises on Codecademy are largely
limited to JavaScript. It would be challenging for anyone to be able to
build the next Facebook or Foursquare after completing the lessons on the
site. Mr. Sims says the fresh infusion of cash will help the founders
flesh out their course offerings, nudging that notion closer to reality.
Were pushing out more JavaScript courses and getting close to releasing
more languages, like Ruby and Python, Mr. Sims said.
As soon as we have more content, this site becomes a very deep
experience and way to make basic coding knowledge available to people for
free.
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Cheers,
Stephen
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