[HN Gopher] Skillsoft Buys Codecademy for $525M
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Skillsoft Buys Codecademy for $525M
Author : boeingUH60
Score : 321 points
Date : 2021-12-22 14:28 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.skillsoft.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.skillsoft.com)
| evancoop wrote:
| With each new opportunity to learn to code without the expense of
| a four-year degree in Computer Science, don't we reach a point at
| which either: 1) The four-year degree in CS is actually seen as
| something of a negative indicator 2) We acknowledge the silent
| part out loud, e.g. "the college degree is a signal, not a
| delivery mechanism for professional skills." ?
| lsalvatore wrote:
| I'm saddened that we're comparing a degree in CS to a
| subscription to Codecademy.
|
| I am curious if you've gotten a degree yourself, and whether
| that degree was from a reputable school. My CS degree is one of
| my proudest and most difficult accomplishments in my life.
|
| The difference in someone with a 4 year CS degree and a
| bootcamp graduate is jarringly apparent and one that I have
| uncomfortable experience with.
|
| My following statement will cause me to be downvoted, because
| the truth makes people uncomfortable. Computer Science
| education is a rite of passage, like getting a black belt,
| becoming a priest, doctor or anything else that requires
| intense study with peers for extended period of time.
|
| The CS degree at a top school is more than a signal, its a
| badge of honor and respect. You may choose to ignore it to your
| own peril.
| black_13 wrote:
| Does codeacdemy hire codecademy?
| nicative wrote:
| I learned python through codecademy back in 2016 and today I work
| with development professionally
| frankfrankfrank wrote:
| I get a feeling that the comments here read like eulogies. Maybe
| that's just me due to exposure to skillsoft over the years.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Took them as validation anecdotes -- sort of like thank yous to
| the team. Kind of really like these threads!
|
| That being said, I've now asked a few folks about Skillsoft and
| they weren't that bullish about it. Kind of just hoping for a
| good return for the employees at Codecademy who worked hard to
| get to this stage (an exit).
| jeofken wrote:
| For me it's certainly a big thank you to the Codecademy team!
| temikus wrote:
| At this price the deal probably minted quite a few new
| millionaires, so I think it's a good thing for people who
| worked on something for 10+ years.
|
| It's no S1 but for a lot of early contributors it's probably
| a ticket to never having to work again.
| darkwizard42 wrote:
| Congratulations to the whole Codecadamey team! Know lots of folks
| there who have worked very hard and I hope this exit is
| beneficial to them. I wish them nothing but success (and hope
| Skillsoft can retain and grow the talent)!
| thekevan wrote:
| Welp, I signed up with the service in January of 2012 but I'm
| done with Codecademy now. When Skillsoft bought Element K, it did
| not go well for the majority of us there. Not only that, but they
| were my biggest competitor in sales. So not only was I not
| impressed with how they treated a company after buying it, but
| it's almost out of principle that I wouldn't support a company
| that has been such a barrier to success for me.
| SamBam wrote:
| Having not used Codecademy, I'm curious: were you really able
| to get nearly 10 years of value out of it? My understanding was
| that it was mostly to teach people how to code to an
| intermediate level.
| thekevan wrote:
| I feel like it was. It used it as tool to learn
| intermittently along with many others.
| wara23arish wrote:
| First time I ever programmed was using Codecademy around 2013.
|
| I was always an average student in school. Never had the
| motivation/curiosity to study since I felt it was all pointless.
| Never had any programming/computer classes in school.
|
| I completed the python course that was available at the time that
| eventually guides you to build your own version of battleship
| with 2 players. It was an eye-opening experience for me.
|
| I started to view all my math/chemistry/physics problems as
| "programming problems", it really made learning fun for me. My
| grades changed drastically for the better with little extra
| effort. And more importantly Im now working as a SWE years later.
|
| So thank you Codecademy :)
| bredren wrote:
| Thanks for sharing this. Do you still have your code for your
| battleship game?
|
| All of my earliest programming projects have been lost to time.
| 300bps wrote:
| One of my few regrets is leaving old computers/disks at my
| parents house when I moved out. I didn't value them at all at
| the time - they were old crappy computers.
|
| So my Commodore 64 and 128 and all the software I spent my
| childhood writing were thrown away. I had a full BBS program
| that I wrote when I was 14 along with a half dozen BBS games.
| Would love to see that code!
| datavirtue wrote:
| I lost all my youth code to a monkey virus (nasty boot
| sector propegator that someone placed on a computer in the
| college where my mom was studying nursing). Before I knew
| what was going on it had spread to every floppy and hard
| drive that I had and had destroyed all the data. Three
| years of work gone. At that age it felt like most of my
| life had evaporated.
|
| It was almost ten years before I started building serious
| personal projects again.
| JCharante wrote:
| Maybe that's for the better... my code from when I was 15
| years old haunts my GitHub, and that's not even my first
| GitHub account.
| WoahNoun wrote:
| My first major programming project was in high school circa
| 2005. A basic graphing calculator written in JAVA with Spring
| and all the UI elements made in MS Paint.
|
| I wish I still had that code.
| starwind wrote:
| Another thanks to Codeacademy :)
|
| I got my feet wet and learned basic Python through them. Really
| got me over my fear of programming being crazy hard and the my
| fear doing something "wrong" to mess up my computer. Took a
| couple more years before I really got invested, but codeacademy
| cracked opened a door which led to a few more.
|
| The other day I had the top down after cutting out of work
| early to go flying, and thought "life is good."
| plondon514 wrote:
| Congratulations to the Codecademy team! I always really wanted to
| join Codecademy and wrote about my experience being rejected 3
| times over the past 7 years in a recent post:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29025401. I've always rooted
| for them and wished them great success, their product has helped
| millions learn to code, including myself.
| neonate wrote:
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/skillsoft-strikes-525-million-d...
|
| https://archive.md/O0MLo
| safdeep wrote:
| Congrats! Codecademy intro'ed me to coding. Glad there's a good
| outcome for you all.
| wincy wrote:
| I learned the very basics to become a developer from Codeacademy.
| Back in 2015 I was a front line support technician at a small
| hardware startup who did Codeacademy in my free time, which was
| considerable. My first daughter had just been born and that
| really gave me motivation to learn and achieve my full potential.
| My boss was the only software engineer at our company and so was
| often overloaded with work, so he gave me small tasks to do,
| starting with learning regular expressions to massage a few
| thousand lines of data into something useful, and then getting to
| make PHP edits to Wordpress, and even some Visual C++.
|
| I more than doubled my income from that job to my next job,
| propelling me to the middle class, and have since achieved
| consistently high pay raises over the last seven years without
| much difficulty.
|
| As someone who dropped out of high school due to family issues
| and lack of motivation, I hope free resources like Codeacademy
| always exists on the internet and will be a pathway for those who
| have the aptitude to learn to code. For my personally it totally
| transformed my life as I was basically destitute before I got my
| first job as a web developer.
| Taylor_OD wrote:
| 100%. I met an AWS architect who told me his story of learning
| to code. He was a cab driver who took a software executive home
| one night and on the drive asked the guy what he did. He said
| he ran software teams/products and the taxi driver got some
| advice on how to move industries. The executive said check out
| a coding bootcamp. The taxi driver did, saw the cost, and
| decided he would learn on his own. He basically pulled the
| listed skills that the bootcamp taught and found free courses
| that focused on each of those.
|
| He did it all via self learning. Obviously this individual was
| special and most people wouldnt be able to teach themselves how
| to code entirely on their own but these types of courses exist
| and will continue to exist as a free or low cost option for
| those people. Then there are the rest of us who have 15 paid
| courses that we will never start :)
| teh_klev wrote:
| > Obviously this individual was special and most people
| wouldnt be able to teach themselves how to code entirely on
| their own
|
| I'd disagree. Sure online learning tools such as CodeAcademy
| and free videos on YouTube are useful and can provide a great
| leg up. But I know quite a few folks who pivoted their
| careers from non-programming jobs back in the 90's and none
| of these learning aids were available. We just used books,
| vendor documentation and whatever random stuff was available
| on the fledgling web and usenet groups to get us going.
|
| I don't think it takes a "special individual", it just takes
| a bit of willpower and attention.
| datavirtue wrote:
| For people without mentors or exposure to the craft, they
| often have no idea why or where to start. They don't even
| know enough to select a book to start with. Add to that the
| immense complexity they face just to get python or .net
| working.
|
| When I started all I had to do was turn on the computer
| (booted to a BASIC interpreter), type a few lines, and hit
| F2.
| teh_klev wrote:
| > For people without mentors or exposure to the craft,
| they often have no idea why or where to start.
|
| I think you missed my point. My point was that it doesn't
| take being a "special" person to get started. These days
| all you do is type "How do I learn to be a programmer"
| into google and you'll get a general gist of where to
| begin. The assumption that people are that utterly
| helpless makes my mind boggle.
|
| > Add to that the immense complexity they face just to
| get python or .net working.
|
| Ok, I'll let you get away with .NET, but getting python
| installed and starting it from the command line is not
| immensely complex. Even my brother who is technology
| averse managed to do this without even asking for my
| help.
|
| > When I started all I had to do was turn on the computer
| (booted to a BASIC interpreter), type a few lines, and
| hit F2.
|
| You were lucky, when I were a lad, the computer turned on
| and presented me with a monitor ROM prompt, then I had to
| work it out from there ;)
| JCharante wrote:
| A similar line of thought made me think about the
| usefulness of apps like Duolingo. People who learned
| languages back then did it with textbooks and most serious
| learners still do. Do we really need new methods other than
| spaced repetition (of which software is a slightly more
| efficient version of flash cards)?
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > I don't think it takes a "special individual", it just
| takes a bit of willpower and attention.
|
| In my mind this is a statement that contradicts itself.
| Having the prerequisite willpower and attention is the
| special attribute.
| stevesearer wrote:
| I feel like I learned willpower and attention (directed
| focus towards a goal) by playing online RPG games which
| required grinding for EXP and leveling.
| JALTU wrote:
| Thank you for sharing your story! (I'm a former skills
| instructor, although not at CA.) Hearing about this kind of
| life-change makes my day. :)
| oschvr wrote:
| I learnt to program using codecademy !
| zds wrote:
| Co-Founder and CEO here. We started Codecademy and launched on HN
| 10 years ago. I'm so thankful to this community for helping us to
| get started and to see up the momentum! We're committed to making
| sure that the product stays as great as the one you've used for
| years (and gets even better!).
| d0gsg0w00f wrote:
| I taught myself Python using Codecadamy in 2010 and I've since
| increased my salary 720%. Wanted to just say thank you for all
| of your team's efforts that touched so many lives like my own.
| [deleted]
| vhiremath4 wrote:
| Congrats Zach to you + Ryan! I was just talking to my co-
| founder (Shahed Khan) yesterday and you came up in conversation
| as someone he really admires. :)
|
| Best of luck in this new chapter for your company, your team,
| your loved ones, and your life.
| dang wrote:
| Looks like these were the first two HN threads:
|
| _Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2901156 - Aug 2011 (232
| comments)
|
| _Codecademy Surges To 200,000 Users, 2.1 Million Lessons
| Completed In 72 Hours_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2914854 - Aug 2011 (75
| comments)
| varelse wrote:
| InspiringAF now use your freedom to do even more...
| Robelius wrote:
| This feels a bit strange. I remember Codecademy as the first
| wow moment where I saw items being discussed here also being
| discussed "in the real world".
|
| You're also reminding me that I've been on here for 10 years.
| jbuild wrote:
| Thanks so much! Codecademy taught me to program and it's
| something I'm still getting paid to do 10 years later. Amazing
| product!
| vm wrote:
| Congrats! I've watched your 10+ year journey from afar and been
| inspired by the impact you've had on this industry & and your
| persistence during the ups/downs. Excited for your and the
| great acquisition.
| 2arrs2ells wrote:
| Congratulations, Zach! Codecademy was a huge inspiration for me
| and a whole generation of edtech founders. It's been amazing
| watching the company transition from a wildly viral consumer
| company to an enterprise powerhouse.
| jeofken wrote:
| I remember the thread. Reading about it on HN back then I
| started programming stuff outside of game scripting. I had just
| finished high school. At a meetup it led to my first job. It's
| been a good 10 year career and couldn't have gone better in
| this regard. Thank you for Codecademy which was life changing
| for me.
| axiosgunnar wrote:
| Congrats! I'm curious, are you a millionaire now? :)
| tannhauser23 wrote:
| Your site helped me find a new career! I am so much happier in
| my new life. Congratulations!!!
| ijustwanttovote wrote:
| Congrats! It's been great to watch your journey. I've always
| recommended Codecademy to my friends who wanted to learn to
| program. I can safely say you helped three people get into the
| industry.
| jeremymims wrote:
| Congratulations, Zach! It's been very cool watching Codecademy
| go from electrifying prototype to media darling to quiet giant.
| the_watcher wrote:
| I discovered Codecademy in late fall 2011, while miserable in
| my first semester of law school. I had no idea how to code, and
| had only found it after stumbling on PG's essays for the first
| time (which led me to google "learn to program"). I dropped out
| of law school after a year and ended up a self-taught data
| scientist. Codecademy was only a part of my journey, but you
| kicked it off. Congrats, and thank you.
| maverick2007 wrote:
| Congrats Zach! I owe you a lot. I started using Codecademy in
| 2011 or 2012 when I was in high school and it was one of the
| main tools I used to teach myself programming. Fell in love
| with the hobby/profession and it's what I'm doing (and still
| love doing) 10 years later!
| surfingninja wrote:
| I started learning HTML/CSS on Codecademy about 8 years ago
| when I was in early highschool. Now about to graduate from
| college with my CS degree. Thanks for making a great service
| that helped shape my life
| keithnz wrote:
| quite fun looking through your activity on HN, right back to a
| :- Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code
|
| very cool
| shippintoboston wrote:
| I was a freshman in college in Fall of 2011 and took the python
| course because I was starting to regret majoring in business.
|
| 10 years later I'm a senior engineer and can take care of my
| family for life. I wouldn't be where I am today without the
| start you and the company gave me. Thank you and best of luck
| in whatever you choose to do in the future.
| NickC25 wrote:
| Hi Zach, I owe a great deal of thanks to you and the rest of
| the Codecademy team for providing me (and millions of others)
| with the tools to make a career transition. Hope this is just
| the beginning, can't wait to see what's next!
|
| (Also, great to see someone from my high school class doing
| huge things. Well done!)
| steelbrain wrote:
| Congratulations Zack! I learned to program at Codecademy and it
| has played a very important role in my life/career. I'm working
| as an Engineer in an ed-tech company. This was all enabled by
| you and your team!
|
| Thanks again
| hobofan wrote:
| I'm glad for all the people in this thread, for whom Codecademy
| worked, but I strongly suspect it worked for them because of
| their drive, and not because of the quality of Codecademy.
|
| ~1 year ago I pointed some friends that wanted to learn Python
| towards Codecademy (because it's just the most prominent example
| of it's kind of platform). Just out of curiosity, I looked over
| their shoulders, and I'm glad I did.
|
| From what I could the tell the course offered very little beyond
| a Python REPL in terms of guidance. It didn't teach the
| difference between a variable name `foo` and a string `"foo"`
| (one of the most common struggles for newbies), at a point in the
| course where it assumed that knowledge to complete a step. And
| all it gave as feedback were bad error messages (IIRC 1:1 the one
| of the Python interpreter, which are very hard to interpret for
| newcomers). I was baffled that the flagship learn-to-code-
| platform had that level of quality after ~10 years of operation.
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| I've never use codeacademy, but with exercism and the like the
| exercises are all very much "puzzles" rather than actual
| software engineering challenges. I want to see database
| problems, architectural questions, networking, reverse
| engineering, security concepts, API authoring, etc.
|
| So as you describe, they're not great for starting out with
| programming, and for advanced programmers, string manipulation
| exercises just don't teach you anything.
| byproxy wrote:
| Are you aware of any online courses that teach these things?
| CodeGlitch wrote:
| There are plenty of video courses, stuff on Udemy teaching
| you databases, etc.
|
| I think it's an untapped market for the webbased coding
| challenges, although quite hard to pull off if you are
| needing to have a database for the users to interact with,
| etc. The same would apply for any network-based challenge,
| or ones requiring interacting with an API, etc.
| SirYandi wrote:
| If you've ever played with HackTheBox / TryHackMe
| (hacking playground) they provide VPN config details
| where you connect and can access all sorts of services,
| DBs etc to hack.
|
| I imagine a similar solution could work for coding,
| networking etc training.
| jeofken wrote:
| Ten years ago when I tried it, it was the closest I as a non-
| coder ever come to a REPL. Thanks to Codecademy I got my start
| and learned I can do it. It's been my career since. So for it's
| audience (me ten years ago) it ain't bad. Nothing was as
| inviting as approachable.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Although I still think services like Codeacademy and Exercism
| are really useful, what you've said describes my main gripe
| with them, which is that these services are seemingly designed
| for people who have already maneuvered their way into
| programming to some extent. Someone who wants to learn
| programming from scratch probably won't get much out of having
| a "hello world" exercise thrown at them followed by FizzBuzz.
| Not only does the value of such exercises not necessarily
| translate to someone who has yet to fool with computers
| themselves, but these systems overall fail to educate new
| programmers on the many things that matter besides language
| constructs for a particular language. In my opinion, these are
| tools designed by programmers _for_ programmers. Not that there
| 's anything wrong with that... but not once have I become
| proficient in a language by doing online code challenges in a
| REPL; I always learn by doing, as was recently the case for me
| delving into C++ via an Arduino project. The C++ skills I
| momentarily learned online didn't stick because FizzBuzz isn't
| really applicable to anything (obviously I'm kind of
| oversimplifying things here).
| rmbyrro wrote:
| I was baffle the first time I realised differentiating a
| variable from string was a thing for beginners, but it's true,
| a lot struggle with it at start...
| davidsawyer wrote:
| I emailed contact@codecademy.com back in September of 2011 with
| ideas for the site, and Zach got back to me in no time. Been
| cheering for Codecademy ever since.
|
| Congrats, guys!
| imwillofficial wrote:
| I started my IT career with Skillsoft training for A+
| certification nearly 20 years ago. Good times. Thanks Skillsoft,
| good luck with the transition Code Academy
| mehlmao wrote:
| So how are the new owners going to squeeze more than $525 million
| out of it?
| choward wrote:
| Another thing that makes me suspicious is that Skillsoft just
| went through chapter 11 bankrupty summer of 2020. It's near the
| start of a pandemic and people are at home yet these guys
| struggle? Also look how many owners skillsoft has passed
| through.
| [deleted]
| ramesh31 wrote:
| I remember using codecademy the day they launched, January 2012,
| to start learning Javascript. The interactive CLI based courses
| were a breath of fresh air from the old school W3 style tutorials
| that I had gotten stuck on. It sent me down the path of building
| a serious career and making a six figure salary that I could have
| never dreamed of otherwise as a high school dropout.
|
| Thanks codecademy.
| lucasverra wrote:
| Same feeling. Then, following the path of
| https://www.freecodecamp.org/, that has to be one of the most
| inclusive tech endeavours out there.
| soneca wrote:
| It did include me.
|
| freeCodeCamp was 5 years ago the foundational first step on a
| path to my current 6 figure salary in a job that enjoy a lot
| more than any previous one of my other careers.
|
| I never learned well with videos, so codeCademy interface
| (which I think inspired freeCodeCamp's) was a great
| innovation for me.
| estaseuropano wrote:
| I thought freecodecamp is mainly a collection of Videos? At
| least that's what its been like every time I tried.
| MikusR wrote:
| The web and JavaScript is the same as codecademy - no
| videos.
| JALTU wrote:
| Same comment as above! Thanks for sharing your story!
| jeanloolz wrote:
| I learnt coding with Codecademy back in 2013. I was 32 years old
| with a career in marketing. Their Python class was the perfect
| introduction to coding in general and I got hooked instantly. I
| took my first job as a software developer 6 years ago after an
| intense 2 years of self learning following the codecademy class .
| I'm now senior data engineer in a pretty big company in Europe. I
| feel blessed for discovering Codecademy.
|
| A big thanks to them. I owe them my new career.
| chux52 wrote:
| Along with others I joined Codecademy shortly after launch after
| seeing it on HN (2012). My coding journey started much earlier,
| having no direction and trying to learn from one of those giant
| Visual Basic books I talked my parents into buying from a
| bookstore in the mall in the 90's. Went to college (early 00's)
| with hopes of learning there, but I was too far behind and not
| really interested in the focus, so switched to a business degree.
| Graduated and started work as an Accountant and hated the
| repetitiveness, so picked up some VBA and Access.
|
| Real breakthrough for me was the Codecademy Python class and the
| benefits of the short form format. Get frustrated, take a break
| and come back fresh the next day or two.
|
| That along with seeing Wes McKinney's Intro to Pandas talk around
| the same time ('13?) changed my career.
| visarga wrote:
| How is Codecademy pronounced correctly, "code academy" or "code
| cademy"?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| "Codec ademy"
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