Codecademy Teaches a New Generation of Computer Programmers

When former Columbia University classmates Zach Sims and Ryan Bubinski started a project earlier this year and got into Y Combinator, the prestigious funding and training program for innovative young entrepreneurs, the two quickly found that their biggest problem was a gap in programming skills. Bubinski, a web developer easily surpassed Sims, who majored in Political Science at Columbia, in coding ability. Books, videos and other learning materials only frustrated Sims further. “We built Codecademy for people like me,” Sims said. Sims and Bubinski's early project – a business idea matching programmers with jobs based on programming challenges according to

– eventually turned out to be

, an innovative website that allows people to learn programming lessons for free. According to Sims, the website has been used by over 800,000 people and received over $2.5 million in venture funding in late October, led by notable venture capital firms such as Union Square Ventures, O'Reilly Ventures and CrunchFund. Codecademy offers hundreds of programming lessons, mainly in JavaScript, and offers award incentives to motivate its users to progress into more advanced programming exercises. With the fresh infusion of financing, the company hopes to offer additional content in JavaScript and other programming languages such as Ruby and Python, while continuing to expand user-generated content and adding more interactive features to ensure Codecademy users stay motivated, Sims said. “We are hoping people will eventually be able to be talented web developers after completing the lessons on our site,” Sims said. “What we have now is just a start.” The idea of democratizing programming for everyone is gaining appeal.

, a start-up which launched on November 7, offers videos and quizzes to teach web design skills such as CSS and HTML in addition to web development and iOS lessons. According to

, the company is already profitable, charging users $29 to $49 a month for its web-based lessons. As employers in a variety of fields now expect job applicants to come in with some programming experience, Codecademy, Treehouse and other start-ups aiming to cash in on programming education will likely gain more users, and competitors too. “Coding is incredibly important, it's why we're working on Codecademy,” Sims said. “I think it will be important in a ton of fields such as journalism, law and finance as it can just simplify everyday tasks.”