This is akin to greeting Google's launch with:

"LARRY PAGE this is lame in that it's a crummy featureless version of http://www.yahoo.com

You are using the same internet to search on.

Yahoo makes you actually log into a nice portal and had search capability long before you guys."

Just because there's a competing product in the marketplace doesn't devalue what Ryan's doing here.

In fact, I think Treehouse is already outstripping Codeacademy on breath of education and video quality.

It's like saying CODEACADEMY is lame because its an expensive version of http://www.lynda.com or http://www.showmedo.com . Get a life dude!

Actually, I think Codecademy used badges after Rails for Zombies did...so everyone must be copying Greg and crew right?

Who cares...no one really cares about badges anyway...except of course, VC's, who are already out of touch.

OK, so I lied. Badges are surprisingly addicting. I've spent the past hour and a half unlocking them on Treehouse.

tryruby had the in-browser coding before codecademy. I'm pretty sure codecademy uses the jq-console plug in which was around before: https://github.com/replit/jq-console

Badges have been around in video games and educational games for a while and Rails for Zombies already used them.