Winter Quarter choice-- CodeAcademy or school? | Hacker News Reader

Winter Quarter choice-- CodeAcademy or school?

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Hey all, So I have a question that my friend suggested I pose here, and I'd appreciate your input because I've read so many wonderful responses here before. I'm an undergrad and interested in startups as a way of life, and have this cool idea for a social network, among others. But I've never taken a single programming class and am not techy-- my background is in math and economics. Ultimately I don't hope to do the bulk of the technical work for this idea but I definitely need to know what's going on with the coders I will work with, so I need some technical background if I'm to pursue this idea (which I think is pretty cool, but I'll post that as an idea to evaluate on here as another question!) I'm in Chicago at Northwestern, which costs $13k per quarter. I'm almost done with my majors and can definitely graduate on time; I'd just be taking classes to "round out my education", including an intro programming class taught in Python. So my question is, I'm thinking of either taking courses next quarter, or doing this thing called Code Academy: http://www.codecademy.com/, where I pay $6k for a web development course, or $12k for that and a design course. What would you choose?

THANKS SO MUCH FOR YOUR HELP!

tldr; for a non-techie, Code Academy (www.codeacademy.com) or classes at school to learn tech stuff?

My name is Mike McGee and I am one of the co-founders of Code Academy here in Chicago.

"I've never taken a single programming class and am not techy-- my background is in math and economics."

No problem at all. We are a "beginner-focused" program, because that's where we were last year when we started to learn how to program. We have one of the best Ruby on Rails instructors in the world (http://codeacademy.org/staff), and his passion is to teach beginners how to build applications in RoR.

"I'm an undergrad and interested in startups as a way of life"

Our program has an entrepreneurial bent, so if you want to learn about startups, this is one of the best places to be. In our current program we have CEOs of startups and people who want to work for startups. We also have people who want jobs in companies and people who want to become professional software developers. We have connections with most of the major entrepreneurs and VCs in the Chicago community (http://codeacademy.org/community). The diversity is amazing and something that you can only learn from.

"Ultimately I don't hope to do the bulk of the technical work for this idea but I definitely need to know what's going on with the coders I will work with, so I need some technical background if I'm to pursue this idea"

We have students with this same exact goal at Code Academy. They know becoming a software developer is not in their future, but they want to understand the software development process and be able to communicate in as much technical detail as possible to work with their developers. If you would like to talk with some of our students let me know.

Also, you can only take one program at a time. I graduated from Northwestern, so I understand the urge to want to pile on and see if I can take both classes, but this class is pretty intense, especially for people who are new to programming. One program will be more than enough for you to handle for 12 weeks.

If you have anymore questions, please contact me at mike at codeacademy dot org

I'd say it doesn't cost you anything to learn to code, Getting a formal introduction to it in school is a great addition to your education as it surrounds you with other people interested in it and you will have mentors that you can learn from side-by-side.

You can certainly advance yourself further under your own efforts outside of class too.

If you've got an idea that you want to build, I'd certainly spec out the idea as much as you can first, even if it's just pen & paper to start with. features, ideas, demographic/target market. Build up a swipe file with ideas, images, text of things that will be useful in projects in future.

Great comment! You are right in the fact that it doesn't cost you anything (or much) to learn to code, but what we would argue is what is the most effective way to learn? We started out down this path 18 months ago. We exhausted all the books, tutorials, screencasts, and workshops you could find, and while we learned a lot, we still weren't where we wanted to be.

If we decided to keep fighting through I am sure we would have gotten to a proficient level, but we just stopped and wondered, "why isn't there a better way to do this?" So that is why we created Code Academy. There are many ways to learn how to code, but we strongly believe that offer the best learning environment for people who want to learn how to build web applications.

I've tried Code Academy for myself and I love it.

It's great that there is a more structured way to learning to code out side of a class, beyond just hitting the books and hoping it sticks. It's like the perfect mix of formal and informal learning.

I wish you guys great success for the future!

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