Zach Sims
Co-founder and CEO of codecademy
Discussion
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zach sims
@zsims · co-founder and ceo, codecademy
Hi, I'm Zach Sims, the cofounder and CEO of Codecademy. We teach more than 25 million people around the world the technology skills they need to find new jobs. I'm lucky enough to wake up every morning to thank you notes from our learners, each of whom is joining the digital economy we're all a part of. Looking forward to your questions!
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William Ting
@williamdjting · Student
Hey Zach, thanks for taking the time.
When you first began coding did you find it to be a struggle to learn it yourself? What strategies did you use to persevere and how long would you say it took before you felt truly competent in your coding abilities.
@williamdjting Hey William, thanks for asking a question! Codecademy actually was started in order to help me learn to program. My cofounder @ryanbubinski studied Computer Science (among other things) in college and had taught plenty of people to program while we were in college. I, meanwhile, had studied Political Science and was learning to code on the side. When we first started working on Codecademy, Ryan was helping me learn. That experience helped lead to the eventual product we created: something focused around bite-size learning that was interactive and provided you with immediate feedback. My experience with learning and Ryan's with teaching led us to make Codecademy the way it is today.
Fortunately, I think I'm never done learning, so I use the product pretty often to keep getting better!
Sina Pilehchiha
@sinapilehchiha
@zsims Hey Zack,
I'm the co-founder of a startup in Iran named codelearnr. me and my team are trying to promote the knowledge of programming and coding skills in Iran and in schools via teaching coding kills in n interactive way an in persian language. and we're also a nonprofit. we wanted to know do you guys @ codecademy support projects like this or would you accept our invitation to come to Iran and pay us and projects alike a visit or even give us the honour to collaborate?
@sinapilehchiha Hey Sina! Awesome to see you promoting education in Iran. We absolutely support products around the world that help teach more people to program.
Sina Pilehchiha
@sinapilehchiha
@zsims @sinapilehchiha
Awesome! how can we contact you personally?! like CEO:CEO? for we tried to reach you on linkedIn and you didn't reply back to our messages.
Sina Pilehchiha
@sinapilehchiha
@zsims @sinapilehchiha
thank you so much dear Zack!
absolutely! I guess it's zach@codecademy.com; right?
and also another question. we have developed a C++ course in our website and I wanted to know why you haven't published a course of a low-level language like C++ on codecademy? was it because of a particular reason or... maybe you're developing one right now?
and again, i guess you're too busy to accept any invitation from us or startup accelerators in Iran for you paying a visit, right? or we can test our chances of you accepting our invitation via e-mail?
thanks again! it meant a lot to me and my team receiving answers from you!
Jonny Cohen
@jonnycohen616 · GreenShields
@zsims Yo Zach! Are you planning on offering any offline content? It seems like Codecademy could be very useful for NGO's distributing laptops with preloaded content.
@jonnycohen616 Hey, Jonny! We'd love to offer offline content, but it's often challenging as the interactivity we pride ourselves on is dependent on running your code in the cloud. It's something we're working on, though, and we do work with nonprofits already!
jack rometty
@rometty_ · student
Hey Zach! Codeacademy's python course was my first coding experience and it inspired me to study software engineering! you're an inspiration :)
Coding education is available at every intensity imaginable ranging from serious bootcamps to youtube videos. What will the 'learn to code' landscape look like in 2020, and where will codeacademy fit?
Louis Svugr
@louis_sugar · I make and market stuff.
Hi Zach, how and when did you start to learn to code?
@louis_sugar Hi Louis! I had been trying to truly learn to program since I was in high school, but was frustrated by how hard it was to get started. I took an Intro to CS class while I was in college, but it wasn't until @ryanbubinski and I started the company that it became urgent for me to learn to actually create things (and I'm still learning!).
Harry Stebbings
@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC
@zsims thanks so much for joining us today Zach. Big fan of yours, my question is; what has been the single biggest determinant of CodeAcademy's success? Also what have been your biggest takeaways from the experience? P.S Would love to have you on @twentyminutevc and share your story!
@harrystebbings It's hard to choose a single thing that's been helpful, other than never giving up. It's easy to make startup life seem glamorous, but the unfortunate truth is that it's a slog. It took Ryan and I 6+ months until we settled on the first iteration of Codecademy and decided to show it to the world. Nearly everyone we talked to thought it would never work, but we persevered and decided to find out for ourselves. Oftentimes the thing that separates successes and failures in the startup world is that the successes didn't give up and continued to press onwards.
Hrishi
@hrishi_mcmaster
@zsims ... Thanks for creating Codecademy ... I just started to learn programming (python) from scratch. As a beginner, what you will recommend me to proceed ? I would like to build apps for future .. which program you will recommend to learn for that ? Thanks !.
@hrishi_mcmaster Hey Hrishi! Hope you're starting your journey with us. I'd recommend getting started with JavaScript, a language versatile enough to teach you basic concepts but also advanced enough to be used to create nearly anything you want on the web!
Junius
@juniusfree
Hey @zsims
My question is related to product development. How will you spend your time if you've got one hour to solve a user problem/need?
Thanks!
@juniusfree Hey, Junius! If I'm working on product development, it's important to understand user needs. Talking to users and matching anecdotes with data is critical to make sure you understand the need/problem before embarking on a solution!