On the Usability of Codecademy

Re:On the Usability of Codecademy by Shenglong on Monday January 16, 2012 @11:48AM (#3471342)

A large part of learning to program is testing, then debugging. If 2+3 didn't work, my natural course of action would be to read the instructions again, and then try 2+2.

CodeAcademy is trying to teach people to code, and I think a big part of that, is learning to navigate small problems, debug, and follow instructions. If they just gave instructions that said "type the following", that would take away these problems - but what would that achieve? That would be like a professor not giving repeat questions on an exam, and a student complaining he wasn't clear enough.

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Re:On the Usability of Codecademy by bpm140 on Monday January 16, 2012 @03:05PM (#3472199)

Talk about a quick opportunity for improvement! Instead of displaying:

"Oops, try again."

Code Academy could type your statement:

"A large part of learning to program is testing and debugging. Please see if you can figure out what went wrong and try again."

It's all about setting expectations.

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Re:On the Usability of Codecademy by r0dica on Monday January 16, 2012 @03:26PM (#3472271)

I very much agree with this. But I still think that if someone types in 2+3 at that second exercise, the program should compute it properly and not error out :)

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