With the explosion of the World Wide Web and advanced web 2.0 and 3.0 technologies, it is more important than ever to gain a rudimentary understanding of basic programming. Most experts agree that technological innovation will produce vast numbers of high paying jobs in the United States in the coming years, and the United States is already struggling to play “catch up” with countries like India and China who are graduating more engineers than the US in ever increasing numbers. In today’s blog post, we will be looking at a new startup called codecademy.com, a free online instructional website that makes learning to code easy and fun.

Codecademy.com was started by two entrepreneurs who believe that with the right instruction, anyone can learn to code. The website allows users to take basic lessons with an easy-to-understand interface based on a mastery-based approach to learning. The lessons start with basic coding, progress to Document Object Model and jQuery, and finish with excellent courses on Javascript, which is used in many programs that you use every day. The first assignment teaches you to write your name in quotes and gets progressively more challenging from there. Each time you pass a new module, you get rewarded with cool badges, and there is also functionality to learn with friends, keep tabs on your friends’ progress, and track and share your progress with your mentors or friends.

Best of all – the service is free!

We hope that you will take some time to explore this interesting free resource. You can set up a free account at www.codecademy.com and code away. All you need is an internet connection and you are on your way.