There are many online platforms in the modern day that help you learn how to code.
Before the 2010s, you would either have to learn to code from books or pay a lot for expensive courses in order to learn the art of coding to any good degree, but is Codecademy good?
Luckily, this is no longer the case, and many websites offer to help you learn to code on the cheap or for free.
Codeacademy is one of these institutions, but the thing with online learning is knowing when something is a good deal and when something is not worth your time, especially if it is a steep learning curve to overcome.
With this in mind, we decided to take a look at Codeacademy and see if it is worth learning from this online platform or not.
What is Codeacademy?
As we said earlier, Codeacademy is an online learning platform that allows anyone subscribed to it to learn a variety of coding languages with an account on its site.
These languages include HTML, CSS, Python, Java, SQL, and 9 other languages– depending on what exactly the customer wished to learn.
Codecademy (see also ‘Does Codecademy Give Certificates?‘) offers three types of courses for individuals: basic, pro lite, and pro. Depending on which course you subscribe to, you will receive different course materials.
This can be seen on the pricing page.
Basic is free and offers only basic courses, pro lite is $11.99 a month and offers basic courses, pro courses, members-only content, and skill paths as well as other things, while the pro is $15.99 a month and offers all this and interview prep and career paths help.
As with many online platforms, you can try Codecademy for a week if you want for free before you have to pay anything for it. If you don’t like it, then you can quit after a week and not have spent a penny.
Currently, Codecademy has over 45 million users and has gone from strength to strength, being named the Best Education Startup in the 2012 Crunchy awards and winning a Skillies Technology award in 2015.
Is Codecademy any good?
To understand whether Codeacademy is any good or not, it is important to look at the pros and cons of the service offered. With that in mind, we have put down what we like and dislike about Codecademy below:
Pros
Great for beginners
Codeacademy is a fantastic way to start your coding journey. Often, coding languages can appear overwhelming and inaccessible with many people thinking that they will never be able to learn to code, due to not knowing where to start.
Every course in Codecademy starts with the basics of coding and then takes you through to more in-depth aspects as you progress through the course.
After you have completed each course, you are tested to see whether the knowledge has stuck with you, helping you to retain the knowledge you have gained.
It is interactive
Each lesson requires input from you. You will have to actually do the points set out in the lesson. If you are required to write code to put an image on a website, you will be required to do it after learning about it.
This makes it very easy to replicate and understand what you are meant to do. It also makes it easier to understand mistakes as you can compare them to the actions in the example lesson.
Easy to use
While many would complain that Codeacademy’s website and front pages are generic, this is actually quite a good thing, as they are all very easy to navigate.
The course buttons do not have a ton of buttons, only presenting what courses they represent. When you click on them, you go to the course page, which gives you more information.
This is the same for the whole website, which means that you are not trying to process a lot of information thrust upon you at different times.
There are also not many distractions or things that will make the website slow to load. It is very bare bones, and that is perfect for a learning experience.
Cons
The courses are too fast
People have complained that when they go on a course, it moves too quickly. You will learn an aspect of a coding language, you will then deal with a challenge set out by the course, and then you will move on.
There is no revision of the topic until the end of the course, and you may have to go back to learn things you may have forgotten.
While the information is great, you will be required to do some outside learning from Codeacademy to make any of the information stick.
Application
Codecademy teaches you the syntax and grammar of a coding language, but not necessarily the application of it.
If we take this in the context of other languages, then this would be like learning all the words of Spanish, but never forming a sentence with them.
You could make a sentence based on your knowledge of English sentences, but you would never get the structure right, and it might not make sense.
Codeacademy is like this, for example, it teaches you JavaScript, but not how to compile the code in order to run it, or it doesn’t give you tips for 7cleaner code. As such, some users struggle to actually apply the code they’ve learned when it comes to using it.
So, Is Codecademy any good?
Yes, Codeacademy is good, especially for beginners or those that need to brush up on basic knowledge. However, if you want to learn to code properly (see also ‘Is App Academy Legit?‘), you will need to do some outside revision, or you will need to go to another coding institution.
Conclusion
Codeacademy is a great place to start learning to code, and that might seem like a bit of condemnation, but it isn’t.
Coding is difficult to get into and having a place like a coding academy that can get you off the starting line with coding is fantastic as it means you will be able to constantly learn more after completing their courses.
