Apply HN: An app that teaches people how to code and make apps

[andrei512]

Hello internet,

I am the founder of We Heart Swift - one of the first swift only websites/blogs - we have about 50k monthly visitors on the site.

I've learned how to code by myself at age 10 by reading the help section of Borland Pascal. In high school I've been a competitive programmer and even got a medal at the international olympiad in 2009. I've always been interested in teaching others how to code and trough We Heart Swift I think I found a way to make it sustainable.

Our main product is an learning platform similar to codecademy. Its not web based, instead it builds on top of xcode and playgrounds in order to give feedback to the user.

The first version teaches people how to code in one month - https://www.weheartswift.com/swift-programming-scratch-100-exercises/ - it has close to 1000 users. At the moment we are working on the second version of the platform which offers a similar experience on iOS.

Beside people on the internet wanting to make apps or learn how to code we have been contacted by a few universities and programming bootcamps for bulk purchases.

If you have any questions please let me know :)

[buss]

Looks like you're having some great success with a how-to-code book. What would an app do better than the book?

[andrei512 → buss]

The app understands a lot of things about the code you used to solve and exercise. This comes either from understanding the syntax tree or from the output of the code. Based on that it gives feedback to the user. It can tell if a exercises is solved correctly. Or it can help fix mistakes: finding typos or checking if a function is recursive and many others... The usual feedback you would give a person that's learning how to code. So basically fancy training wheels. Another factor to consider is that people are lazy - working through the exercises without having to click "new project" 100 times is way easier.. + bonus a tiny amount of gamification. Also not sure if its clear - the learn how to code app is already implemented and used by over 1000 people. The iOS version is in development.