User:Vipul/Code.org

Code.org is a non-profit organization (and eponymous website) led by brothers Hadi Partovi and Ali Partovi that aims to encourage people, particularly school students in the United States, to learn to code. 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.

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, including TechCrunch,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
On December 9, 2013, Code.org launched the "Hour of Code Challenge" on its website. 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 initiate was supported by then 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.

Reception
Writing for San Jose Mercury News, Mike Cassidy praised Code.org and the Hour of Code, writing: "A publicity stunt is what we need."

John Dvorak was critical of the Hour of Code in an articlefor PC Magazine. Dvorak wrote: " I see it as a ploy to sell more computers in schools."

Earlier, Dave Winer had responded to Code.org's first video launch by writing: "I don't like the way people at code.org are pitching it. And I don't like who is doing the pitching, and who isn't. Out of the 83 people they quote, I doubt if many of them have written code recently, and most of them have never done it, and have no idea what they're talking about."