Codecademy Go 4+

At first I thought CodeAcademy could have done a better job with the iPhone app like allowing full use of the features found on the website. The current iPhone app makes sense as it allows new learners to practice what they’ve learned and currently learning on the go; hence, the “Go” in CodeAcademy Go. I’m still not completely happy that the iPad version is just a miniature version of the Go app. They should have created a full feature app on the iPad utilizing the bigger screen. Though you can use the web browser to access their website, the coding interface is a bit buggy and cumbersome to use. Still a 5 star for the CodeAcademy Go app though.

This app however is completely unusable. I bought Codecademy pro a few weeks ago (around 200$ for a year) and study on my laptop and it’s amazing. I’m learning so much more than I ever have with any other platform. The structure, pacing and format is unmatched by any other course I have seen so far and it has been worth every penny. That’s why I’m baffled by how low quality this app is. As many others have said, most of the quiz parts just straight up don’t work and when they do they are super unintuitive and confusing to answer. The review parts are ok but kind of all over the place and not in an order that makes sense to learn as a beginner (easier subjects to harder). All this said, to me it’s not a big deal because like I said, the actual Codecademy pro course is amazing and if you are serious about learning programming you aren’t going to do it on a smartphone. I downloaded this mostly out of curiosity but never had any intention of making it my main method of study. Anyone that’s dissatisfied with this app and is serious about learning I would strongly encourage you to try Codecademy’s free version on their website and see if the style fits you and if it does I would say take the plunge as it has been well worth it for me and I am getting insane value for what I paid.

I tried the html module and it was completely impossible to follow! I got some cards with randomly generated concepts and some poorly made user-generated practice questions. I couldn’t travel back to a previous question, if I exited a lesson, I got a new, totally different lesson when I entered again. You can’t just teach a beginner by just presenting random concepts in no particular order. I had no foundation to make sense of anything. The only reason I can fathom for this level of incompetence is that some MBA decided to cut costs by cutting educators out of education. I’m attributing the one star I’m forced to give to the fact that I was able to easily cancel my trial.

Edit: I talked to a friend and they were confused by my description of CodeAcademy content. So I spent some time researching and found out this is a “companion app” to the actual product. How did this make it past branding?! You need to rename this app CodeAcademy Review or add something to the Home Screen that makes it abundantly clear to a new user that this isn’t your main product. After talking to my friend I signed up and am paying to take classes on my desktop.