Karl Marx once said that the more people know about where their products come from, the more fulfilled they are. Take websites: one of the products we use most, but many of us know so little about how they work that they might as well be magic.
After all, if you don’t know how a thing works, you’re powerless to change it, fix it, or even know if you’re getting value for money.
That’s where Codecademy comes in. This new online service gives free lessons in JavaScript, Python and Ruby – the three most common web languages. Lessons start out simple and game-like, assuming no prior knowledge; it’s not even obvious you’re being taught a language. A social element spurs you into completing more courses than your friends.
It’s early days yet – all you can take so far are basic JavaScipt lessons – but Codecademy has enough support behind it to deliver a lot more. It won’t magically turn you into a trained programmer, but at the very least it’ll make the web a less mysterious place.
At best, Codecademy will teach casual web users to build their own sites and apps from scratch. Which would be, as Karl would say, revolutionary. Click here to get started.
