Codecademy, a startup that uses interactive online lessons to turn anyone into a computer programmer, has signed up 97,000 students in less than 48 hours for its New Year’s resolution class Code Year. That’s more than twice as many students as were enrolled in the 150 U.S. computer science undergraduate programs that the Computer Research Association surveyed last year.
Anyone who adds their email address to the class list will receive new programming lessons in an email each week. All Codecademy users already have access to these free lessons, which turn learning JavaScript into a game and will soon expand to other programming languages. The class emails will serve as reminders and guidance, putting individual lessons together in a cohesive curriculum.
“One of the biggest complaints we get is that people will learn one lesson and then say, ‘what’s next?’ or ‘where do I get to go from here?’,” Codecademy founder Zach Sims tells Mashable about the startup’s self-directed learning format.
The New Year’s resolution class answers those questions and makes the program even more appealing in the process. In its first 72 hours after launching this summer, Codecademy signed up 200,000 people for coding lessons. Now it’s signing them up for a year-long commitment at a similar rate.
When those who have signed up get their first email on Monday, they’ll be starting their computer science education with at least 97,000 classmates. So far Codecademy hasn’t announced any features that might let those classmates interact with each other, but it seems like a fine opportunity to add social incentives to the learning motivation it has so far maintained with game mechanics.
More About: Codeacademy, coding lessons, programming
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