Getting With the Program: Code Year

So, two hundred thousand of us do not want to get silicon kicked in our faces, but how many of us will make the commitment to see Code Year through? The sign-up page does not advertise how much time is required, but Slate’s Farhad Manjoo reports Codecademy’s estimate that “it will take a person of average technical skill about five hours to complete a lesson, so you’re looking at about an hour of training every weekday.” That’s four times what Charles Atlas asks for to make YOU a New Man. Some of those ninety-eight-pound weaklings who sent away for Atlas’s free brochure must have become bodybuilders—but I suspect more of them became programmers.