I think babarock phrased it poorly but he's not entirely wrong. I learned to program (like many others of my generation) by futzing around on my C=64's repl. It wasn't a great system by any stretch of the imagination, but actually playing with it (and failing) got me to learn it so well. I think the C=64's repl was simpler for users than Javascript's, which certainly helped. The goal should be to get people to play with it, not to get them to type "Ken".length and press return.
The things we know best are the things we play around with. The things I know the least well are those where I only learned the happy-path through some training procedure. I learned to read and speak and cook breakfast and ride a bike and program and everything else mainly by trying and failing.
(The bicycle is actually an interesting case, because we try to teach the happy-path with training wheels, though this essentially inverts the controls we're trying to learn. It's a confidence-builder, not a skill-builder.)
Last year I took a class to learn a new skill. The teacher was great: he was enthusiastic, and after each teaching point he got us to try it by saying "Now let's go screw it up and learn!" We spent a lot more time screwing it up than being lectured, thankfully.
I don't know much about "Codecademy", but based on this I would say it's not really going to help most people, but not because of these minor usability gripes. The goal shouldn't be to create an 'intuitive tutorial'. You're trying to teach people a new way of thinking. The goal should be to provide an environment where the essence (type something, get result) is completely obvious, and where more information is always available upon request, and where they are encouraged to play around. What I'm seeing is an environment where there's a right and a wrong. It makes programming look like a 1980's MS-DOS adventure game but harder.
The things we know best are the things we play around with. The things I know the least well are those where I only learned the happy-path through some training procedure. I learned to read and speak and cook breakfast and ride a bike and program and everything else mainly by trying and failing.
(The bicycle is actually an interesting case, because we try to teach the happy-path with training wheels, though this essentially inverts the controls we're trying to learn. It's a confidence-builder, not a skill-builder.)
Last year I took a class to learn a new skill. The teacher was great: he was enthusiastic, and after each teaching point he got us to try it by saying "Now let's go screw it up and learn!" We spent a lot more time screwing it up than being lectured, thankfully.
I don't know much about "Codecademy", but based on this I would say it's not really going to help most people, but not because of these minor usability gripes. The goal shouldn't be to create an 'intuitive tutorial'. You're trying to teach people a new way of thinking. The goal should be to provide an environment where the essence (type something, get result) is completely obvious, and where more information is always available upon request, and where they are encouraged to play around. What I'm seeing is an environment where there's a right and a wrong. It makes programming look like a 1980's MS-DOS adventure game but harder.