Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Recommended Resources Codecademy (learning to program in Javascript)

Codecademy http://www.codecademy.com is a free site for learning to program in JavaScript. You do the programming exercises online -- there is nothing to download. My 8yo likes it. Forbes has an article
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/03/22/codecademy/ about it.

ETA: An article mentioning Codecademy and other sites is
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/28/t...net-computer-code-gains-a-following.html
Even Non-Techies Aim to Learn the Internet’s Language
by JENNA WORTHAM
New York Times
March 27, 2012

Thanks very much for the post--I'll check that out. We had tried the Alice program with DD at the end of last year, but there were some bugs and she got discouraged (because it wasn't working the way it was supposed to--not what I wanted her to learn!). I had also bought the "Hello, World" book about programming and had worked through the first chapter or two with her but it's hard for me to find time to work ahead of DD to make it interesting for her (i.e., not waiting for me to figure it out in real time, as I am not a computer whiz).

DS likes it. Thank you. HS tried to teach him Python 1 year ago. He gave up after two weeks and has never touched it. Now he wants to learn coding again.

Thank you so much! I teach the younger grades and this would be a wonderful resource to use as an introduction to programming.

I do not consider Java a real programming language.

Its fine to learn the ideas, but C and its Object Oriented supersets is where the meat is at.

A good basic course in C# based on MS .NET using MS Visual Studio is a good place to start.

Java is one of the most used programming languages and is also used in the AP Computer Science exam and many intro college CS courses. Are you saying that JavaScript (not Java) is not a real programming language? I don't know much about it, but it is one of the ten most popular languages.

Once a kid learns to program he will decide for himself what language he likes most. Getting him or her started is more important than choosing the "best" language, IMO.

Java is a marketing tool.

Many fatal compromises were made in its design and in its various implementations. Whether it runs at all is highly dependent on the java engine (jvm) interpreting it. Many java programs will not run when jvm updates occur. I could go on and on.

But nobody was talking about Java until you mentioned it. Javascript is an unrelated language.

+1 ColinsMum
Why are we talking about Java here when codeacademy.com teaches JavaScript, which is a completely different beast?

That said...


I have seen C++ programs break with updates to the compiler. This is not a purely Java issue, Java simply pushed it farther down the release path.

True, it was JS not Java. Sorry.

Which makes it far worse.

JS is even more of a marketing tool. And even less of a language. And even more buggy.

Well, yes. But if you are writing web apps it is pretty much the name of the game.

Java actually has a good record of backwards compatibility, and such considerations are not a good way to choose an instructional programming language anyway. Java is not merely "a marketing tool"-- such statements should be ignored.

Nor is C# an object-oriented superset of C; its syntax is far more Java-like than anything else. Javascript is not "less of a language", but merely a different beast, a much more loosely typed browser scripting language.

Austin, I'm guessing you work in a Microsoft shop, am I right? Broaden your focus a bit. Bostonian is right in any event about the choice of a child's first language being unimportant in terms of long-term programming choice. What's more important is that the instruction is clear and provides a strong conceptual foundation.

Khan Academy will be teaching JavaScript as a first programming language, for reasons explained at http://ejohn.org/blog/javascript-as-a-first-language/ . A recent book with good Amazon reviews on teaching programming with JavaScript is "Eloquent JavaScript: A Modern Introduction to Programming" by Marijn Haverbeke.

CodingBat http://codingbat.com/ has online exercises in Java and Python. "CodingBat is a free site of live coding problems to build coding skill in Java, and now in Python (example problem), created by Nick Parlante who is computer science lecturer at Stanford. The coding problems give immediate feedback, so it's an opportunity to practice and solidify understanding of the concepts. The problems could be used as homework, or for self-study practice, or in a lab, or as live lecture examples. The problems, all listed off the CodingBat home, have low overhead: short problem statements (like an exam) and immediate feedback in the browser. The idea for CodingBat came from my experience teaching CS at Stanford combined with seeing how student's used unit-tests in more advanced courses, and crystalized when I saw an Owen Astrachan demo of a unit-testing thing he uses with his Duke students."

Google Code University http://code.google.com/edu/languages/index.html has tutorials for several programming languages.

MS .NET is the only valid competitor in the field with Java for "run on any platform" apps, except that full functionality dot-net only runs on one platform, which makes it the total joke of this conversation. It's just another marketing tool by MS to try to maintain itself as a proprietary monopoly, and they "borrowed" heavily from the Java design.

Enterprise application architecture has been moving slowly but inexorably to web services-based interfaces for the last decade or so, and the overwhelming majority of those services are running on a JVM... which is why Java programmers are a hot commodity at the moment.

Now Python has been added http://www.codecademy.com/tracks/python . AOPS also offers Python courses, for a fee. For the adventurous, try Haskell http://tryhaskell.org/ . I found it interesting but already have some programming experience.

Thanks for the reference, DS6 has poked around with Scratch and got a book on BASIC he was into. Python would be an awesome start for him (and I've been wanting to pick it up myself.)

Just remembered Logo and the turtle, was popular back in 80s when I worked at the education computer lab in college when we used Super Pilot to make CAI programs.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/21/education/mechanical-mooc-to-rely-on-free-learning-sites.html
Free Online Course Will Rely on Multiple Sites
By TAMAR LEWIN
New York Times
August 21, 2012

A group of online-learning ventures is collaborating on a new kind of free class to be offered this fall, known as a mechanical MOOC (for “massive open online course”), that will teach a computer-programming language by patching together existing resources from open-learning sites.

Unlike courses already available online, the new class will not require a traditional instructor, or a large start-up investment.

The new course, “A Gentle Introduction to Python,” will blend content from M.I.T.’s OpenCourseWare, instant-feedback exercises and quizzes from Codecademy, and study groups organized by OpenStudy, and will be coordinated through an e-mail list operated by Peer 2 Peer University.

*********************************************

I will mention this to my son, and if he learns from the MOOC, great. But a compiler/interpreter, a book, motivation, and brains is all that is really needed to learn programming.

Thought I'd pop back into the thread as DS6 has finally got his hands on the codecademy Python unit. What I thought might be a pop in and out thing, had him tied to the PC for hours over the weekend. Along with basics of programming, his keyboarding was improving, and he wrapped his head around the concept of variables and exponents.

Two minor criticisms on their Python course is the onsite interpreter is a little sluggish and unresponsive at times (tried on Chrome and Firefox) and some of the explanation texts are a little bit sprawly for a younger learner. On the other hand DS would skim to the exercise and have to go back and read more carefully when the exercise wasn't going right.

Thanks again for the reference.

The NYT has an article

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/...-icons-promote-youth-coding-in-new-film/
FEBRUARY 26, 2013
Gates, Zuckerberg, Other Tech Icons Promote Youth Coding in New Film
By NICK WINGFIELD

mentioning the site code.org , which seems to be an aggregator of other programming sites, including Codecademy .

Thanks for the heads up; code.org looks like a nice aggregator.

Codea for iPad development looks interesting, and some other nice bits there. Hopefully they don't overpopularize the field and undermine DS's future earning potential.

I'm looking for something very introductory for my DD10 who loves Minecraft but has shown no interest in computers or programming.

Have any of you heard of or used CodeSpells?
https://sites.google.com/a/eng.ucsd.edu/codespells/home

I was reading this bit of PR, and it seems like something that might catch her interest.
http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelea...velop_first_person_player_video_game_tha

This thread seemed to be the best place to ask for some opinions.

My DS9 has gotten into Codeacademy recently. When I was a kid, I had a book with a bunch of simple BASIC computer programs you could type in and play around with. It was called "What to do after you hit 'Return'".

I'd love to get him a book like that for Christmas (but ideally for a modern language yet beginner friendly language like Python or Javascript). Any ideas?

It was before Grails, at least. Never liked it myself, frankly.

For learning variables, flow of control and modularity almost any computer language will do the job. I have always liked the parsimony of C but each to their own.

I think that Code Academy looks like an interesting site - thanks Bostonian.

JavaScript is Not the same as Java the programming language. Java is a fine place to start learning to program, there is not need to start with C. In fact it's the language many universities use as a first language.

However JavaScript is a scripting language, used in HTML to add programming functionality to web-pages. They are NOT the same thing and learning one won't help learning the other.

Python is a great choice for a first programming language. There isn't as much ramp up learning all the nitty gritty details. It is in fact the language first introduced to Engineers at Berkley who have had no previous programming experience.

By the way this week is The Hour of Code... The idea being everyone should take an hour this week to learn a bit of coding. Many of the various code learning sites are offering free tutorials. Here's a good jump off point:
http://csedweek.org/

Even parents with no experience might like to try the Start link on that page and follow the first course which has video tutorials and uses a drag and drop language to solve tasks.

Thanks for posting this Zen Scanner!

DS7 has already done some basic coding before, but he just finished the Hour of Code a few minutes ago and really enjoyed it. It re-ignited his interest in learning to code. I know many of our kids are interested in learning to code, so I wanted to post again to make sure everyone knows about the Hour of Code Week!

Pi22

My son is currently doing codecademy. He is 8 and homeschooled. He chose to learn Python even though I thought he would want to do javascript (because of Minecraft?)
He really did not want to learn another visual block language, he wants to Type it in!

Anyway, I think it seems well designed. We just signed up and jumped in! He got his first two badges...

FYI, Minecraft is in Java, not Javascript. As mentioned before, they're very different languages entirely.

Javascript, originally developed by Netscape (now Mozilla), can basically be thought of as an add-on to HTML. It only runs in a browser, and it adds limited functionality to web pages.

Java, originally developed by Sun (acquired by Oracle), is a full-function, object-oriented programming language that can be used to write entire applications from the ground up. It runs within its own java virtual machine (JVM), which abstracts the application code from the OS and hardware of the machine it's running on. This makes any Java application fully portable from one machine type to another with no changes to the program code. You just have to install the correct JVM, and it interprets the program calls into the appropriate system calls.

Java is a pretty complicated beast to tackle, and as a first programming language, I'd recommend your DS's choice of Python over it.

And big kudos to him for deciding to learn to actually write programs!