Community reviews for Codecademy

The site is organized well and covers a lot of specific topics. They offer many learning tools like articles, cheatsheets, and videos. The articles are simple and to the point and offer hyperlinks to explain various concepts covered like methods and data structures. I could see myself using this as a reference for my CS classes to break down concepts. I like that the courses are self-paced and interactive, allowing you to practice code related to a new topic. This site caters towards older students as well. They offer code challenges for technical interview preparation and Q&A’s for career advice.

I think Codecademy is a great resource for learning different coding languages for free or for a small price. They provide many videos and lessons that help students understand concepts about coding, making learning more interesting. Overall, I recommend this product as it is a great way of learning code!

Codecademy recently switched to the unfortunate business tactic of having brand new users enter their credit card info before even getting to TRY the pro courses, aka the courses that would actually help them and near what is being taught in classrooms. Basically, that way they bag a few extra dollars from anyone who tries the class, would otherwise decide against purchasing their service and forgets to go through the process to un-enroll. Furthermore, they “recommend” and by default select you on the pay for one year option, and offer no refunds. So imagine on day 8 you get charged hundreds of dollars for a site you are just trying out? These extra dollars from those who would otherwise not continue are the reason for this despicable business decision. Those interested will still buy pro, which I have always recommended in the past, and the freeloaders will just cancel same as they did before. This goes to show you how codecademy has changed over the years, putting more and more in the paid Pro section, even some just basic programming languages now, and now this. I teach an entry level data science course and used to recommend codeacademy to all my students, many of which I’m sure went on to pay for excellent content that exists on this site. However, I can’t justify even one of my students coming up to me asking why they lost out on hundreds of dollars and can’t get a refund. These are busy students! And sometimes they don’t listen so well. However, this blatantly greedy business practice will lead myself and other teachers to steer people away from codeacademy on this and other forums.

Needs to be consistent.

Overall, I think this tool worked well in our Code Club where students had some interest in learning or continuing coding skills. I don't know that I would start with this site if I were trying to 'hook' kids with the idea of coding. Might be a little dry for that, especially for middle school students and younger.

Codecademy is a great teaching and learning tool. The challenges: It is difficult to say how much we really learn from the site. As I only have the students for a year, I am not sure how many of them continue with the site and how many of them make progress in their programming education(s). For myself, as a learner, I still don't know how much of the information I am retaining. I go on to the next level but there are not enough opportunities for me to try from scratch or to build programs or fix bugs. This is one drawback to the fact that the site doesn't require any software downloads. You can't do much more than fill in the blanks and try to remember the codes and symbols. I am not sure how useful this is if you want to code and design web and mobile apps of your own. Like learning a language, you need opportunities to practice outside of the application or else, I think you end up getting stuck with a superficial understanding of how the code works but a lack of skills in creating code for yourself. All in all a great introductory tool and i hope that in the future you can do even more with the program.

I like that the courses do not require any software downloads. The editor runs entirely online.

For this website, I would highly recommend it. I knew nothing about coding before I started and before my students started. I now have already gained skills in both HTML and CSS and am able to understand and read code. I caution using this in middle school as you may as well tell the students the name of the lesson is Hacking 101. I feel this way about all coding websites. Codecademy is a great tool to use in the high school level in programming classes and computer classes. Overall I have been very satisfied with the use of codecademy. I will keep working with it and using it as an introductory tool but I will still need to introduce basic concepts and information to any new coding language. I will also need to continue to design new units and projects since codecademy doesn't allow for individual students to create their own projects.

I love this product and think it is a place to start learning basic coding. I like how it walks you through the basics starting with the least level skill and moves toward a higher level skill. This will give the students skills to build their own pages, make portfolios electronically, etc. I have nothing bad to say about this program, it is absolutely awesome for those who want to learn or teach coding.

Don't leave the teaching to webtools, but do use this for extending practice and as a reference for learners. The codebit feature is terrific because it allows students to create mockups of their web designs and easily share them with each other and with you.