Ask HN: What's missing from “learn code in browser” sites?

2 points by zxcvvcxz 11y ago ↗ HN

I think increasing programming literacy is an incredibly important problem to solve. At the very least I want to help my friends in the process of career transitions consider retraining to be a programmer. So I looked online to find some examples of these "learn code in browser" sites, which should be a very convenient way to get started. Here's an example list: http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/21/5-ways-to-learn-code-from-the-comfort-of-your-own-browser/

For people with more experience using these, and teaching programming in general, what do you think is missing from these services? What would you do to improve them?

Cheers

2 comments

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orionblastar 11y ago ↗

I think you need to teach them debugging and have someone who can examine their code to find bugs and help them learn from their mistakes and failures.

Human feedback is always valuable. Requires common sense that cannot be programmed into a computer.

edoceo 11y ago ↗

Server side stuffs, configs, installing, checking logs &c