Now Anyone can Learn Programming with Code.org

Code.org is a non-profit organization and eponymous website led by brothers Hadi and Ali Partovi that aims to encourage people, particularly school students in the United States, to learn computer science. The website includes free coding lessons, and the initiative also targets schools in an attempt to encourage them to include more computer science classes in the curriculum. On December 9, 2013, they launched the Hour of Code 2013 challenge nationwide to promote computer science during computer science week until December 15, 2013. Major tech companies and their founders, including Bill Gates and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, have put up about $10 million for Code.org.

Goals:

According to its website, Code.org has the following goals:

Bringing Computer Science classes to every K-12 school in the United States, especially in urban and rural neighborhoods.

Demonstrating the successful use of online curriculum in public school classrooms
Changing policies in all 50 states to categorize C.S. as part of the math/science "core" curriculum
Harnessing the collective power of the tech community to celebrate and grow C.S. education worldwide
Increasing the representation of women and students of color in the field of Computer Science.

Launch and first video release:

Code.org was launched in January 2013 by Hadi and Ali Partovi, with the goal of making programming accessible to everyone. Their initial focus was on creating a database of all computer science classrooms in the United States. The launch was covered in a number of technology publications online, includingTechCrunch,and Geekosystem. In late February 2013, a month after launch, they released a video featuring Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jack Dorsey and other programmers and entrepreneurs on the importance of learning to code. This video was covered in a number of news sources. Two weeks after the launch, TechCrunch reported that the video had been a "blockbuster hit".

Hour of Code challenge:

During Computer Science Education Week  from December 9 to December 15, 2013, Code.org launched the "Hour of Code Challenge" on its website to teachcomputer science to school students, enticing them to complete short programming tutorials. The challenge involved getting people to write short snippets of code to achieve pre-specified goals using Blockly, a visual programming language of a similar flavor as Logo. The initiative had been announced about two months in advance. At the time of launch, the initiative was supported by United States President Barack Obama as well as leaders of many technology companies such as Microsoft and Apple Inc..About two weeks later, it was announced that over 20 million people had participated and over 600 million lines of code had been written as part of the challenge.