Learning to code will be one of the most important skills kids can learn in coming years. Free-to-use website Codecademy is a major resource for those looking for coding lessons—in English.
Now, all that is changing.
Codecademy offers lessons in a variety of programming languages and lets users build their own lessons and teach others their skills. It’s an amazing resource, and it’s finally being adapted for users who don’t speak English.
Currently Codecademy is working with government and learning organizations (like Libraries Without Borders) to manually translate lessons into Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
This is a huge deal—just by adding three languages, Codecademy will be more accessible to users not only in Europe, but in Africa and South America as well. Spanish is the second-most spoken language in the world, with over 400 million native speakers.
On Codecademy.com, Zach Sims writes about how he was inspired by meeting, over and over again, people outside the English-speaking world who had used Codeacademy to succeed. He reports that 70% of Codecademy users don’t live in the United States. Part of the overarching goal of partnering with organizations like Libraries Without Borders is to help bolster employability and make sure coding is taught in schools around the world.
Coding is truly an international language (or many, many international languages), and by expanding its lessons Codeacademy is acknowledging how important it is that all people are offered the opportunity to learn, regardless of where they live or what their native language is.
Here’s to seeing Codecademy continue to grow!
